United Baltic Corporation
The United Baltic Corporation Limited (UBC), headquartered in London, is a British shipping line.
history
Since after the end of the First World War there was no longer any direct line service between London and the Baltic States , which were now fighting for their independence , King George V went to the Scottish shipowner and then British Minister of Munitions Andrew Weir (1865–1955), later Lord Inverforth, with the order to found a new shipping company for this line. The company was founded on May 20, 1919 in equal parts by the London shipping company Andrew Weir & Company and the Copenhagen shipping company Det Østasiatiske Kompagni (EAC) and initially began to build up passenger and cargo liner services between London, Poland and the Baltic States with charter tonnage. In June 1920 the shipping company acquired its first used steamer and two more ships were added in the same year. This service gave emigrants from the Baltic Sea region direct access from the East India Docks to the scheduled services going to America. In 1922 the UBC moved its port operations in London to Hays Wharf and in the 1930s the service was expanded with connections to Newcastle. In 1935 UBC took over the Liverpool shipping company MacAndrews & Company , which maintained services to the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and the Canary Islands and continued to work independently after the takeover. Shortly before the outbreak of World War II, three subsidiaries, Anglo-Latvian Steamship Company , Anglo-Lithuanian Steamship Company and Anglo-Estonian Steamship Company were founded. During the war, the shipping company continued under the control of the British Admiralty and the Ministry of War Transport .
After the war-related interruption, the company resumed its service to Poland in 1946 in cooperation with Polish Ocean Lines . In 1947 UBC acquired three formerly German ships of the type Hansa "A" to make up for war losses. Since the lines to the now Soviet-controlled Baltic states remained interrupted, the line network was expanded to include Finnish ports in cooperation with the Finnish shipping company Finska Ångfartygs Aktiebolaget . Large-scale passenger transport was abandoned after the last passenger ship was sold in 1947, with some of the cargo ships still able to carry six to twelve passengers.
In the 1950s, UBC began working with the Hamburg shipping company Rob. M. Sloman under the name United Sloman Mediterranean Line . In the early 1960s, United Baltic Corporation diversified its business areas and founded or took over other companies: Anglo-Finnish Steamship Company , Frame & Company , Initial Metals , United Baltic Airways , United Baltic Corporation GmbH Germany and United Baltic Corporation USA in the 1970s Years ago, the shipping company switched some of its services to RoRo ships. After taking over the 50 percent stake in EAC, Andrew Weir became the sole owner of UBC in 1982. In January 1998, UBC brought its shipping agency on the Kiel Canal run by United Baltic Corporation GmbH Germany into the joint venture UCA United Canal Agency, under whose roof the three canal agencies Karl Grammerstorf, United Baltic Corporation and Zerssen & Co. are operated . Andrew Weir last continued to operate UBC under the umbrella company Andrew Weir Shipping Baltic Services and finally discontinued it in 2003. In 2003, MacAndrews & Company was sold to the French shipping company CMA CGM and by 2005 the last three UBC own ships were also sold to finance the construction of the Point class . The company UBC is still registered.
literature
- Laurence Dunn: United Baltic . In: Ships monthly . Vol. 33, No. December 12 , 1998, pp. 18-20 .
- Appleyard, HS: Bank Line and Andrew Weir and Company . World Ship Society, Kendal 1985, ISBN 0-905617-34-7 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Page of the UCA ( Memento of the original from June 26, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ History compilation at MacAndrews & Company ( Memento of the original from June 10, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English)
- ↑ Entry at companiesintheuk (English)
