Norddeutscher Lloyd (NDL; North German Lloyd) was a German shipping company. It was founded by Hermann Henrich Meier and Eduard Crüsemann in Bremen on 20 February 1857. It developed into one of the most important German shipping companies of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and was instrumental in the economic development of Bremen and Bremerhaven. On 1 September 1970, the company merged with Hamburg America Line (HAPAG) to form Hapag-Lloyd.
Establishment of the company
The company was founded by the Bremen merchants Hermann Henrich Meier and Eduard Crüsemann on 20 February 1857, after the dissolution of the New York based Ocean Steam Navigation Company, a joint German-American enterprise.Edwin Drechsel, Norddeutscher Lloyd, Bremen, 1857–1970: History, Fleet, Ship Mails, volume 1 Vancouver, British Columbia: Cordillera, 1994, , p. 7.NDL's history and house flagGeorg Bessell, Norddeutscher Lloyd, 1857–1957: Geschichte einer bremischen Reederei, Bremen: Schünemann, , , pp. 18–20 Rolf Böttcher: Ankunft des Raddampfers „Washington“ in Bremerhaven 1847. Bremerhaven 1997 The new shipping company had no direct association with the British maritime classification society Lloyd's Register, but by the mid-19th century, "Lloyd" was commonly used to refer to NDLBessell, p. 24. (an earlier user of the term in the same context was the Trieste-based Österreichischer Lloyd, originally intended to be modelled on Lloyd's of London).
H. H. Meier became NDL's first chairman of the supervisory board, and Crüsemann became the first director of the company (German Aktiengesellschaft – AG). Crüsemann was in charge of both cargo services and passenger transport, which was growing significantly as a result of emigration. The company was also active in other areas, including tugboats, bathing, insurance, and ship repair (the last of which it still provide). The first office of the company was located at 13 Martinistraße in Bremen.
The company started with establishing a route to England prior to starting a transatlantic service. In 1857, the first ship, Adler, began regular passenger service between the Weser region (where Bremen is located) and England. On 28 October 1857, it made its maiden voyage from Nordenham to London.Norway-Heritage
Just one year later, regular, scheduled services were started between the new port in Bremerhaven and New York using two steamships, and . International economic crises made the first years of NDL extremely difficult, and the company took losses until 1859. In the following years, passenger connections to Baltimore and New Orleans were added to the schedule, and the company first rented (and then purchased in 1869) facilities on the waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey.Bessell, pp. 35, 36.
In 1867–1868, NDL began a partnership with the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, which initiated the Baltimore Line; until 1978, it had its own ships. In 1869, Crüsemann died at the age of 43 years. From 1877 to 1892, the director of NDL was Johann Georg Lohmann. He established a new policy for the company, emphasizing building fast liners. Eventually H. H. Meier and Lohmann fell out over the direction of the company. In 1892, a twin-screw steamship (the company's first) was christened H.H. Meier after the founder; this helped to heal the breach between them.Bessell, p. 70.
Foundation of the German Empire
During the Gründerzeit at the beginning of the German Empire, NDL expanded greatly. Thirteen new ships of the "Strassburg class" were ordered. A route to the West Indies, offered from 1871 to 1874, proved unprofitable, but it was replaced by a permanent route to the east coast of South America. On the transatlantic route, the HAPAG, the Holland-America Line, and the Red Star Line were by then all fierce rivals. Beginning in 1881 with , eleven fast steamships of from 4500 to of the so-called "" (all named for German rivers), were introduced to serve the North Atlantic route.The Ships List
In 1885, NDL won an agreement to provide postal service between the German Empire, Australia, and the Far East.Bessell, pp. 50, 53. The associated subsidy underwrote further expansion, beginning with the first large-scale order placed with a German shipyard for three mail steamships for the major routes and three smaller steamships for branch service from AG Vulcan Stettin. It was a requirement of the agreement that the ships be constructed in Germany.
By 1890, with 66 ships totaling , NDL was the second largest shipping company in the world, after P&O, with 48 ships totaling , and dominated shipping to Germany with 31.6% of the traffic. NDL was also carrying more transatlantic passengers to New York than any other company, due to its dominance in steerage, which consisted mostly of immigrants. In cabin class, it carried only slightly more passengers than Cunard and White Star Line. New York accounted for 42% of NDL's passenger traffic, and 15% to other US ports, but only 16.2% eastbound from New York. Its westbound South Atlantic service represented 17.3% of its passengers; eastbound from South America represented only 1.7%.
In 1887, the NDL withdrew from the route to England in favor of Argo Reederei, but continued to provide tug services through participation, beginning in 1899, in the Schleppschifffahrtsgesellschaft Unterweser (Unterweser Tug Association, now Unterweser Reederei).Bessell, p. 80.
Expansion and competition H. H. Meyer stepped down from the board in 1888. He was succeeded by Friedrich Reck. Johann Georg Lohmann became director of the company. Following his death in 1892, Reck stepped down and Georg Plate became the chairman. The lawyer Heinrich Wiegand became Director; from 1899 onwards, his title was Director General. He held this position until 1909, and presided over significant expansion.
In 1897, with the completion of , the NDL finally had a major ship for the North Atlantic route. It was the largest and fastest ship in the world at the time, and the company benefited from the reputation gained by the ship winning the Blue Riband for the fastest Atlantic crossing with an average speed of 22.3 knots. Between 1897 and 1907, the company followed with three more ships of the same , with tonnage ranging from to : , and . With these ships the company offered a regular service across the Atlantic to its docks at Hoboken, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York. On 30 June 1900, over 300 dock workers and others were killed in a fire at the Hoboken docks.
During the first decade of the 20th century, NDL and HAPAG competed in the transatlantic routes with several record-breaking ships and vied with the British Cunard and White Star Line as the largest shipping companies in the world. In 1902 and 1904, two NDL ships again won the Blue Riband: Kronprinz Wilhelm with an average speed of for the westbound passage from Cherbourg to New York, and Kaiser Wilhelm II at on the eastbound passage. In 1907, , and then in 1909, , both of Cunard Line, won the Blue Riband back for the British. The Mauretania then retained it until 1929.
Between 1894 and 1908, NDL ordered many other freight and passenger ships from several German shipyards. These included the (larger than , for Australia, the Far East, and the North Atlantic) and the Generals class (about , for the Far East and Australia).
Early 20th century
Beginning in 1899, NDL expanded into the Pacific, acquiring the entire fleets of two small British lines, the Scottish Oriental Steamship Company and the Holt East Indian Ocean Steamship Company. There, it set up between 14 and 16 passenger and freight routes in conjunction with the postal service.Bessell, p. 78. In 1900, fourteen of NDL's passenger ships were requisitioned as troop transports due to the Boxer Rebellion in China. On 27 July, Kaiser Wilhelm II delivered his infamous Hun speech, in which he compared the military of the German Empire to the Huns, at the departure ceremony for . In German, these ships were collectively named "Hunnendampfer" (Huns' steamers).
At the beginning of the 20th century, the U.S. banking magnate J. P. Morgan began to acquire a number of shipping companies, including White Star Line, Leyland Line, and Red Star Line, to build the trust International Mercantile Marine Company in order to monopolize transatlantic shipping. He succeeded in signing both HAPAG and NDL to a profit-sharing agreement, but was unable to acquire the British Cunard Line, or the French Compagnie Générale Transatlantique (CGT).Lamar Cecil, Albert Ballin: Business and Politics in Imperial Germany, 1888–1918, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University, 1967, , pp. 52–53, 56–57. HAPAG and NDL gave Morgan the largest U.S. rail company, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, and so Morgan offered to divide the market. The Holland-America Line and the Red Star Line together divided a contract for the passengers of the four companies. Damaging competition was prevented between them. In 1912, the agreement with Morgan was terminated.Krass, Peter (May 2001). "He Did It!(creation of U.S. Steel by J.P. Morgan)". Across the Board (Professional Collection).
In 1907, the Norddeutscher Lloyd's 50th anniversary, the company had 93 large ships, 51 small ships, two sail training ships and other river steamers. It had around 15,000 employees. Because of the high investment costs and an international economic crisis, the company celebrated at this time but also realized that it had considerable financial difficulties.
Despite the financial difficulties, between 1907 and 1910, the company built a new headquarters on Papenburgstrasse in Bremen. The building was designed by architect Johann Poppe, who was also the lead interior designer for the company's liners. The building, the largest in the city at the time, was in eclectic Renaissance Revival style with a tower. It was sold in 1942 to Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau and, when that company was broken up into its constituent parts after World War II, passed to AG Weser. The building had been severely damaged by bombing and was demolished and a Horten department store built on the site in 1969. The adjacent new shopping mall bears the name Lloyd Passage.Lloyd Passage, Bremen
The lucrative North Atlantic route was extremely competitive in this period, with new, attractive ships from other large shipping companies including , , and of the Cunard Line, and White Star Line's , , and . The HAPAG introduced three new ships of the Imperator class: , , and , each with a size of around 50,000 GRT. The NDL responded with smaller but prestigious ships such as and , and transferred Berlin from Mediterranean service to the New York run. Finally in 1914, the company ordered two liners of the . However, World War I prevented their completion.
In this era of "open borders" to transatlantic travel, the largest group making the transatlantic crossing were immigrants from Europe to the United States, and NDL carried more of them than any other company.Keeling, Drew (2014), business-of-migration.com "North Atlantic migration flows" During 1900–1914, the three NDL ships carried the most transatlantic migrants, , and , each brought over 100 thousand steerage passengers to New York, Baltimore and Philadelphia.Keeling, Drew (2014), "Voyage Database" The economic downturn following the Panic of 1907 led to a sharp fall-off of migrant traffic to America, only partially offset by increased steerage flows back to Europe. This was the main contributing factor to "one of the blackest years in the Company's history."NRP Bonsor, North Atlantic Seaway, p. 532, Mark Wyman, Round-Trip to America (1993), p. 74
In 1914, NDL employed approximately 22,000 people. Its success thus directly influenced the rapid growth of the city of Bremerhaven, which had only been founded in 1827.
Director General Dr. Wiegand died in 1909, and was succeeded by Director Phillip Heineken, who served until 1920.
NDL's routes around 1907