The Albert Ballin Class

[ranwhenparked]

OK, first time doing this on the 'ol new Opposite-Lock.com The Hyphen, so let's see how it goes.

This is the story of a visionary man, the company he built, and the ship class named after him.

Easily one of the most revered German business leaders of the 19th century, Albert Ballin was born in Hamburg in 1857, the son of a Jewish immigrant from Denmark who established an immigration agency in that city, which Albert inherited in 1874. The Ballins' firm handled immigration paperwork and ticket booking for those who wished to relocate, and, by the 1880s, Albert had expanded the company into owning and operating their own ships on transatlantic routes to North America. His main innovation was to equip their vessels with flexible steerage spaces, able to convert easily between cargo and passengers – carrying immigrants on the Westbound run, and cargo on the return voyage, when, previously, that space would have been left mostly empty.

This activity caught the attention of the big shipping firm in town, HAPAG (Hamburg America Line), who poached Ballin in 1886, initially placing him in charge of managing and growing their business with immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe, but, in 1889, he was named Managing Director of the entire company. Under Ballin's leadership, HAPAG grew from an also-ran against the big British, French, and Dutch shipping lines into the biggest on the Atlantic. By 1914, the company had a fleet of 175 main ships (and a number of additional tenders and feeder liners) serving 500,000 passengers a year, with 25,000 total employees. He had been the first to run leisure cruises during the winter, when passenger volume was at its lowest on transatlantic runs, built the first purpose-built cruise ships, developed a massive immigration processing depot (Ballinstadt) on an island in Hamburg, introduced the first twin-screw ships on the Atlantic, innovated in steam turbine power, and built the 4-funneled Deutschland, which set 4 speed records between 1900-1903.

On the even of World War I, HAPAG was in the process of commissioning the world's three largest ships – the successively larger sisters Imperator (1913), Vaterland (1914) and Bismarck – planned for 1915 or 1916, but delayed due to the war. Although Jews faced considerable discrimination at the time (though, things would certainly get far, far worse in a few short decades), Ballin became close friends with Emperor Wilhelm II, who certainly appreciated the prestige HAPAG was bringing to the country, and was a regular visitor to the court at the Berlin City Palace, and the Kaiser would usually stay with the Ballin family as a house guest during his visits to Hamburg.

By 1918, the situation had changed. Most of HAPAG's fleet had been commandeered for naval use during the war, and many of them had been sunk, and it was quite apparent that the victorious Allies would be claiming nearly everything left as war prizes. The 48,000 ton Imperator would go to Britain's Cunard Line as reparations for Lusitania, to become their Berengaria; the unfinished 56,000 ton Bismarck would go to White Star Line as the Majestic in reparations for Britannic; while the United States had already seized the 54,000 ton Vaterland (which became Leviathan for the new United States Lines). With the empire he had spent 30 years building in ruins, Albert Ballin overdosed on sleeping pills and died on November 9, 1918 at the age of 61.

However, the company he built did survive, barely, and did set about rebuilding as soon as it was possible to do so. HAPAG's weakened financial state meant that giant, record breaking superliners would be a thing of the past, and the new American immigration quotas meant that massive passenger capacities wouldn't be needed anyway. HAPAG's new postwar liners would be small and economical, comfortable, but not ostentatious, but would do a capable job of getting traffic moving again between Hamburg and New York. Fittingly, the first of the class was named in honor of the company's departed CEO. All three ships of the Albert Ballin-class would form the backbone of HAPAG's operations throughout the interwar period.

SS Albert Ballin

Built in Hamburg by Blohm & Voss AG and delivered in 1923, she measured 20,815 gross tons and 602 ft long. Her steam turbines were tuned for maximum fuel economy, delivering an unexceptional 16 knots cruising speed. In 1928, the 3rd Class accommodations were upgraded to Tourist Class, with a new focus on appealing to budget-conscious leisure travelers, rather than immigrants. Her engines were replaced in 1929, allowing a more respectable speed of 19.5 knots. Once Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in 1933, Albert Ballin was deemed no longer acceptable, and anything memorializing him was targeted for removal or renaming. Accordingly, SS Albert Ballin became SS Hansa in 1934, a name change that also coincided with a refit, in which the ship was lengthened by 50 feet, increasing her size to over 21,000 tons, and the engines were further modified to allow cruising at up to 21.5 knots.

Upon the outbreak of WWII in 1939, Hansa was seized by the Kriegsmarine, but didn't see much action, spending most of the war as a barracks ship tied up in Kiel. In the closing days of the conflict in 1945, Hansa was activated to evacuate civilians from East Prussia in advance of the Soviet Red Army. It was on one of those voyages that she struck a mine off Warnemüde and sank on March 9, 1945.

But, that wasn't the end. The Soviet Union had suffered more severely than any of the other Allies in terms of casualties and the destruction caused on their home soil, and were understandably more zealous than the other powers in extracting the maximum reparations from Germany, packing up entire industrial plants and shipping them East, dismantling ruined buildings for expensive materials, and, even, salvaging sunken passenger ships.

After 4 years on the bottom, Hansa was raised in 1949 and extensively rebuilt, entering service in 1953 as Sovetskiy Soyuz, then the largest passenger ship in the Soviet merchant fleet. She was used by the Far East Shipping Company (FESCO) on routes out of Vladivostok to ports in East Asia – calling on North Korea, China, and other friendly or quasi-friendly places. As she aged, she was eventually deemed no longer worthy of carrying the nation's name, and so became Tobolsk in 1980, but carried on for another two years until withdrawn from service and scrapped in 1982, after a nearly 60 year service life.

SS Deutschland


Delivered in 1924, the somewhat enlarged and upgraded Deutschland measured 21,046 tons and 643 ft. long, with a speed of around 14.5 knots. Like her sister, Deutschland was also re-engined in 1929, increasing speed to around 20 knots. In 1939, she was also requisitioned by the Kreigsmarine, but not initially used, until converted to a barracks ship moored at Gotenhafen in 1940. Like her sister, she was reactivated in 1945 to transport refugees from East Prussia, which lasted until April of that year, when she was further converted to a hospital ship. Unfortunately, due to insufficient markings to identify her as such, she was attacked by the Royal Air Force on May 3, 1945 and sunk in the Bay of Lübeck. The Soviets raised the wreckage in 1949 with the goal of rebuilding her, but found the damage too extensive even for them, and she was subsequently scrapped.

SS Hamburg


The final member of the class, Hamburg was delivered by Blohm & Voss in 1926, and was further enlarged to 22,117 tons and 677 ft. long, and was equipped from the start with more powerful engines, allowing a 19 knot service speed. Hamburg was also requisitioned in 1940 and used as a naval barracks ship for U-boat crews, first moored at Kiel, then Danzig, and finally Gotenhafen. Like her sisters, she was reactivated in 1945 for the evacuation of East Prussia. Like Hansa/Albert Ballin, it was on one of those evacuation trips that she struck a mine and sank on March 7, 1945, off the coast of Sassnitz. The Soviets opted to raise her as well, refloating the wreck in 1950. They spent 10 years on rebuilding work at an East German shipyard (I don't know if she was actually under construction the entire time, or if they laid the wreck up for awhile while deciding what to do with it), and she eventually returned to service in 1960, radically transformed as the whaling mothership Yuri Dolgoruki. During the 1970s, the Soviet Union agreed by international treaty to significantly reduce their whaling operations, which lead to the over 50 year old Yuri Dolgoruki being withdrawn and scrapped in 1977.

As a postcript, the Ballinstadt facility was reconstructed in the 1990s and operates as an immigration museum, Albert Ballin's former home in Hamburg is now owned and operated by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization as their Institute for Lifelong Learning, and, when HAPAG's successor company, HAPAG Lloyd, ran into financial difficulties in the 2000s, the City of Hamburg formed a public-private partnership to acquire and rescue the firm in 2008, which was named the Albert Ballin Consortium.

[NomDePlume]

@ranwhenparked Going to be honest I clicked expecting a Ballaban story. Hardly a surprise to see nothing fun and/or exciting coming from those quarters.

Anyways, I enjoyed the write up. Good to see these continuing here.

[ranwhenparked]

@nomdeplume Never say never, he could show up here eventually

[Chariotoflove]

Good stuff. I love the interior pics of these ships. Don’t know where you find all this material.

[CB]

@ranwhenparked Solid write up! Though it was depressing in the middle end there.

[ranwhenparked]

@cb On the plus side, Yuri Dolgoruki did manage to kill over 3,500 whales in just her maiden season, playing an important part in achieving the goals of the Seventh Five-Year Plan, and her crew were honored with the Red Banner of Labor for their efforts .

[CB]

@ranwhenparked that may be good news depending on how much you hate whales.

[ranwhenparked]

@chariotoflove Various places, the New York Public Library has a pretty solid archive of vintage interior photos, which seems to be the best source, especially for more obscure ships. Exterior photos and postcards are easy, they're all over the Internet, but the inside shots are kind of necessary when you're talking about passenger liners.

[ranwhenparked]

@cb It isn't a matter of love or hate, its a matter of striving together to reach the goals set by Gosplan so that full Communism may be achieved by 1980.

[Chariotoflove]

@ranwhenparked
I like imagining what it must have been like to be there as a passenger. I have the same pseudo-nostalgia for train travel.

[CB]

@chariotoflove Via Rail does a scenic train trip through the Rockies. I don’t know if any American lines do something similar to scratch that itch.

[ranwhenparked]

@chariotoflove Same. Things certainly did seem a bit classier in the era when travel was more expensive

[Chariotoflove]

@cb said in The Albert Ballin Class:

@chariotoflove Via Rail does a scenic train trip through the Rockies. I don’t know if any American lines do something similar to scratch that itch.

Ooo, that would be cool. All I need now is the time to take a trip where I don’t need to be anywhere on schedule and some fuck you money to blow on it.

[Chariotoflove]

@ranwhenparked said in The Albert Ballin Class:

@chariotoflove Same. Things certainly did seem a bit classier in the era when travel was more expensive

Yeah, even air travel seemed more romantic and luxurious when I was a kid before deregulation.

[pip bip]

@ranwhenparked very interesting story. thank you.