The newly built midship sections, with which the T3 tankers were converted into container ships, were built in Hamburg in 1962/63 at the Schlieker shipyard and Blohm & Voss . The engineer Henry J. Karach of the marine engineering office JJ Henry & Company in New York was responsible for their design for the conversion of the ships. With the arrangement of the deckhouse very aft above the engine area of the former tankers (whose bridge superstructures were previously amidships), he continued an idea that he had already implemented when extending existing T3 tankers for the tanker shipping company Hess Petroleum. This arrangement is still the standard for small and medium-sized container ships today.
After the propulsion systems of the standard tankers built in World War II had reached the end of their lifespan, they were sent to the Mitsubishi shipyard in Kobe in 1977 , which built new container ships using the central aisles built in Hamburg. The fore and aft hulls were separated and later scrapped, the remaining midships received new fore and aft hulls from Mitsubishi for 52.2 million US dollars and were put back into service as the D-6 class .
The ships
T3 class
Building name
Shipyard / construction number
IMO number
delivery
Client
Later names and whereabouts
Esso New Orleans
Sun Shipbuilding, Chester / 235
5101835
1942
United States War Shipping Administration, San Francisco
Housatonic , New Orleans , converted to the container ship Elizabethport in 1962
Esso Albany
Sun Shipbuilding, Chester / 217
5212426
1941
United States War Shipping Administration, San Francisco
Esso Bethlehem , converted into the Los Angeles container ship in 1962
Esso Trenton
Sun Shipbuilding, Chester / 218
5309815
1941
United States War Shipping Administration, San Francisco
Chicopee , Esso Trenton , Esso Chattanooga , converted into the San Francisco container ship in 1962
Esso Raleigh
Sun Shipbuilding, Chester / 237
5310034
1942
United States War Shipping Administration, San Francisco
1962 container ship San Juan rebuilt
Data: Equasis, large tonnage
literature
Cudahy, Brian J .: Box boats . How container ships changed the world. Fordham University press, New York 2006, ISBN 0-8232-2568-2 .
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