Ropner Shipping Company

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The Ropner Shipping Company Ltd. was a British shipping company that existed from 1874 to 2006. It was at times the largest shipping company in West Hartlepool and one of the largest trampoline shipping companies in Great Britain.

history

The company's founder, Sir Robert Ropner was 1838 in Magdeburg as Emil Hugo Oscar Röpner born and emigrated at the age of 19 years on Hamburg from the UK. He settled in West Hartlepool and started working as an office worker. 1866 Ropner partner in shipping and coal exporting companies was T. Appleby & Company , which then aunter Appleby, Ropner & Company changed its name .

In 1874 the partnership with Appleby was dissolved and Ropner went into business for himself. After initially operating small coastal vehicles, Ropner quickly turned to larger units in the worldwide voyage and had expanded his fleet to 19 ships by 1884. In 1887, Ropner took over the yard from Matthew Pearse in Stockton-on-Tees and expanded it into the successful shipbuilding company Ropner Shipbuilding .

By 1911 the fleet of 41 trampers was owned by R. Ropner & Company as well as nine units of the subsidiary Pool Shipping Company Ltd. - the largest tramp fleet of its time. The names of the Ropner ships ended with the syllable “by”, those of the pool ships with the ending “pool”.

The Ropner fleet lost 29 units in the First World War and acquired the nickname Ropner's Navy due to the sinking of one and the damage of another German submarine by ramming .

Robert Ropner died in 1924 and the Stockton-on-Tees shipyard was closed. With a reduced fleet, the shipping company survived the global economic crisis and began to increase the fleet again in the 1930s. In 1936, Ropner took over the first motor ship, the Moorby .

During the Second World War, Ropner managed 48 own ships and a further 52 units for the Ministry of War Transport . By the end of the war in 1945, 33 ships were lost to enemy action.

From 1948, Ropner Shipping Co. Ltd. and Pool Shipping Co. Ltd. under the umbrella of Ropner Holdings Ltd. summarized. In 1997, Jacobs Holdings plc. Ropner, moved to Dartford in 2000 and ran it from 2005 as part of the Bidcorp Shipping Division as Dartline Ltd. away. In 2006 Dartline was taken over by Cobelfret and incorporated there.

literature

  • Norman L. Middlemiss: Travels of the Tramps. Twenty Tramp Fleets. Volume III, Shield Publications, Newcastle upon Tyne 1992, ISBN 1871128080 .

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