QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Germany’s Baltic shipyards joined another thread to Queensland, via the shipping line which became Hapag-Lloyd, when Prinz Sigismund was launched at the Neptun yard in Rostock. Hamburg-Amerika ordered a five-ship class of “Princes” designed principally for the Far East Reichspostdienst services operated by associate NDL (Norddeutscher-Lloyd) to the German colonies in the western Pacific. Taking the water from various shipyards on Germany’s coasts between 1902 and 1904, they were rather stiff-looking ships displacing around 8,000 tons. An unusually wide promenade deck sheltered by a permanent roof was a distinguishing feature of the class, designed to provide protection from the tropical sun and rain. Sailing out of Sydney, services called at Brisbane, then Friedrich Wilhelmshafen (Madang) in German New Guinea, and Simpsonshafen (Rabaul) in the Bismarck Archipelago. On occasion, calls were made at Port Alma (Rockhampton) on the northward run. From New Guinea, services routed to Singapore or Hong Kong and on to Japan (Kobe or Yokohama). Other ports of call included Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta), Yap in Die Karolinen (Caroline Islands) and Manila (The Philippines). Prinz Waldemar accommodated 94 passengers in three classes and arrived in Sydney in September 1903. Two months later, Prinz Sigismund joined her, with berths for 30 first class and 40 second class passengers. Die Prinzen der Südsee

In Germany there was anticipation of a call from the substantial German population in Queensland for sea travel to the Imperial colonies of the south west Pacific. This proved to be overly optimistic, and the passenger services never achieved the planned numbers, although the cargo business was profitable. The Princes served in the Caribbean as well as the Pacific, and Waldemar was said to have been damaged in the tsunami following the magnitude 6.5 earthquake which struck Kingston, Jamaica in 1907. Most of the Princes were in North American ports – or ran for safety there – in 1914, where they were promptly interned until the USA entered the war in 1917, and were then pressed into military service. Some sources report Sigismund as being in Brisbane, and the image on page 67 appears to bear this out. Waldemar was scrapped in 1925, but Sigismund soldiered on as a US transport until 1945, when she was transferred to the Soviet Union. With the advent of containerisation at the start of the 1970s came the Hapag-Lloyd of today. Part of a global shipping and travel group which operates in 114 countries with staff in 300 locations, Hapag-Lloyd moves almost five million containers a year on a fleet of more than 135 container ships. Of the 80 or so scheduled services to all continents of the world, four visits are made each week to the Port of Brisbane. The city’s cruise ship terminal hosted a rare Hapag-Lloyd visitor on Australia Day 2012, when the 15,000 GRT c.Columbus visited on one of its ‘boutique’ voyages.

Above: Prinz Sigismund is seen leaving Sydney in this undated postcard view; the ship behind her is very likely the Orient Line’s 5,300-ton SS Orient , this prestigious competition on the UK-Australia route perhaps a clue to the doubling of the German ships’ funnels. Below: As the USS General W C Gorgas from 1917 until 1945, Sigismund reverted to a single funnel, before becoming the USSR’s Mikhail Lomonosov at war’s end.

Dimensions (Prinz Sigismund): length 118m (386ft), beam 13.8m (45ft 3in); 4,680 tons (gross) Speed: 12 knots (later 10, maximum, in US service)

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