Fast freighter

Schnellfreighter is a term for above-average fast general cargo carriers .

history

There were early series of fast freighters as early as the 1920s. For example, from 1926 onwards, 17 express freighter units came into service for North German Lloyd's Australia and East Asia service. The development was based in particular on the classes of ship that were used on long-distance services with high-quality cargoes, for example from Europe to the Far East . The economic background was the idea of compensating for part of the type-related long port lay times of the general cargo ships used at the time.

In the period after the Second World War, starting with the ships of the Mariner class built from 1952 onwards, a number of high-speed freighter series were built in the United States , but their design for very high speeds primarily met military requirements. In the course of the 1950s and early 1960s, the trend towards faster types of ships, but also among European liner shipping companies, took hold again for purely economic reasons.

The triumphant advance of container traffic replaced the traditional general cargo line services worldwide from the mid-1960s, whereupon the majority of the existing fast freighters were converted or scrapped within a few years.

During the period mentioned, the shipbuilding development of the fast freighters overlapped in parts with that of the refrigerated ships , as a number of the same basic conditions existed and followed - with a significant time lag - the container revolution .

Known types of fast freighters (selection)

Mariner class Cap-San Class (1961)

Benledi class Priam class

Westfalia class Friesenstein class

literature

• Karl-Heinz Schwadtke: The new German merchant fleet in the picture . 2nd Edition. Gerhard Stalling Verlag, Oldenburg 1966.
• Hans Georg Prager: Blohm + Voss - ships and machines for the world . Koehlers Verlagsgesellschaft, Herford 1977, ISBN 3-7822-0127-2 .
• Fleet sisters . In: Der Spiegel . No. 45 , 1963 ( online ).