QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

World Wars – between and after

All surviving tonnage was to be handed over with out compensation, and Germany was forbidden any overseas shipping activity until 1950. Loans and tax concessions granted by the new Federal Government in Bonn in September that year, along with elements of the US’s reconstruction Marshall Plan, helped overcome these difficulties. The situation on NDL’s and Hapag’s Australasian routes was made even more difficult by the earlier re-establishment of services by British, Dutch, Scandinavian and other shipping lines. But, almost 68 years to the day since the Imperial Mail Steamer Salier set off for Australia, a new era began with the departure of NDL’s Weserstein , a 10,000 DWT, 17.5 knot, turbine-driven freighter.

During the First World War, all German offices and companies in Australia were dissolved, and severe restrictions placed on imports. Further impeding the resumption of trade after 1918 were protective Australian tariffs and customs regulations. German services Down Under did not resume until 1922, and then only with the assistance of Liverpool-based Alfred Holt & Co. and their famous ‘Blue Funnel Line’ ships. In 1926, Hamburg-Amerika (Hapag) and NDL grew closer when they acquired DADG and other shipping lines. The black-white-red bands atop yellow funnels and all-black hulls led to the combined group’s ships being popularly referred- to as ‘the black Germans’. The worldwide Great Depression and its aftermath tempered the return of NDL to Australia and the South Seas somewhat. From 1935, however, NDL joint ventures saw services expanded from US ports in the Gulf of Mexico through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific. Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and Fremantle were thus served by the 6,500 GRT Augsburg and a pair of 5,000-tonners: Wido and Wiegand . In December 1936, the all-new diesel-electric drive Wuppertal (6,700 GRT) arrived in the Brisbane River on her maiden voyage from Hamburg, with cargo, 10 first class passengers and 46 crew. By 1938, NDL and Hamburg-Amerika between them were transporting 45% of all Australia-bound cargoes from northern continental Europe. Then came the Second World War.

Above: Weserstein proceeds at light draft down the Elbe River.

Captain Gottfried Clausen, one of the last skippers of a square-rigged sailing ship to have rounded Cape Horn, commanded this postwar inaugural service, and commented: Loaded in Hamburg, Antwerp and Rotterdam, sailed from there on 27.7.1954. Duration of voyage to Adelaide: 26 days. Outbound cargoes discharged in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. This followed by loading in Brisbane and Sydney: 16,500 bales of wool for the continent, plus 3,200 tons of wheat and various general cargo. Homeward voyage from Sydney (without interim ports of call) to Dunkirk: 27.5 days, faster than all the competitors. Discharged in Dunkirk, Antwerp, Rotterdam and Bremen. Length of entire round voyage 101 days. Three weeks later, Hapag’s Heidelberg departed Hamburg for Australia, the resumption of joint sailings – after a 15-year interval – by the two lines Down Under. A corporate history noted that “the whole range of products of German industry was loaded for the outbound traffic, the major part of which consisted of machinery, cars and chemicals. In the homebound trade … as before, wool was one of the main components [and] other important imported goods were meat, hides, skins, fruit (apples and pears), cotton and minerals.”

After 1945-46, the terms of the unconditional surrender of Germany and the Potsdam Agreement were as bad as the post-Armistice period of the 1920s. Above: Wuppertal seen on her maiden arrival in the Brisbane River, in tow by either Forceful or Fearless with the stern of tug Carlock in the foreground.

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