Hamburg America Line

HAPAG flag
Native name	Hamburg-Amerikanische Paketfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft
Industry	shipping
Founded	1847
Founder	Albert Ballin (Director General), Adolph Godeffroy, Ferdinand Laeisz, Carl Woermann, and August Bolten
Defunct	1 September 1970
Fate	Merged with Norddeutscher Lloyd
Successor	Hapag-Lloyd
Headquarters	Hamburg , Germany

The Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft (HAPAG), known in English as the Hamburg America Line, was a transatlantic shipping enterprise established in Hamburg, in 1847. Among those involved in its development were prominent citizens such as Albert Ballin (director general), Adolph Godeffroy, Ferdinand Laeisz, Carl Woermann, August Bolten, and others, and its main financial backers were Berenberg Bank and H. J. Merck & Co. It soon developed into the largest German, and at times the world's largest, shipping company, serving the market created by German immigration to the United States and later, immigration from Eastern Europe. On 1 September 1970, after 123 years of independent existence, HAPAG merged with the Bremen-based North German Lloyd to form Hapag-Lloyd AG.

In the early years, the Hamburg America Line exclusively connected European ports with North American ports, such as Hoboken, New Jersey, or New Orleans, Louisiana. With time, however, the company established lines to all continents. The company built a large ocean liner terminal at Cuxhaven, Germany, in 1900. Connected directly to Hamburg by a dedicated railway line and station, the HAPAG Terminal at Cuxhaven served as the major departure point for German and European immigrants to North America until 1969 when ocean liner travel ceased. Today it serves as a museum and cruise ship terminal.^[1]

The Atlas Service sailed from New York to Jamaica, Haiti, Colombia, Central America.^[2] The service was described as a way to "escape the rigors of Northern winters" through taking a Caribbean cruise and was promoted to tourists.^[2] The ships Altai, Sarnia, Sibiria, Alleghany, Alene, Adirondack, Valdivia, and Graecia provided this service in 1906.^[2]

In 1858, its liner Austria sank, killing 449 people. In 1891, the cruise of the Augusta Victoria in the Mediterranean and the Near East from 22 January to 22 March, with 241 passengers including Albert Ballin and wife, is often stated to have been the first passenger cruise. Christian Wilhelm Allers published an illustrated account of it as "Bakschisch". In 1897, its steamer Arcadia was wrecked on the rocks off Newfoundland.^[3] In 1900, 1901 and 1903 its liner Deutschland won the Blue Riband taking the prize from the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. In 1906 Prinzessin Victoria Luise ran aground off the coast of Jamaica. No people died by the grounding; however, the ship's captain committed suicide after getting all the passengers safely off the ship.^[4] In 1912, its liner SS Amerika was the first ship to warn Titanic of icebergs.

HAPAG's general director, Albert Ballin, believed that safety, size, comfort and luxury would always win out over speed. Thus he conceived the three largest liners yet to be built, named Imperator, Vaterland and Bismarck.

The Imperator and the Vaterland were briefly in service before the First World War. In 1914, the Vaterland was caught in port at Hoboken, New Jersey at the outbreak of World War I and interned by the United States. She was seized, renamed Leviathan after the declaration of war on Germany in 1917, and served for the duration and beyond as a troopship. In 1917, its liner Allemannia was "torpedoed by German submarine near Alicante"; two people were lost.^[5]

After the war, the Vaterland/Leviathan was retained by the Americans as war reparations. In 1919 Vaterland's sister ships – Imperator and the unfinished Bismarck – were handed over to the allies as war reparations to Britain. They were sold to the Cunard Line and White Star Line respectively, and renamed Berengaria and Majestic. A ship chain in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey is identified by the historic society as belonging to either the Vaterland or Imperator. It was acquired in 1921, likely during refurbishments, and now lines a portion of the Boulevard.

In 1939, the HAPAG liner St. Louis was unable to find a port in Cuba, the United States, or Canada willing to accept the more than 950 Jewish refugees on board and had to return to Europe. On 9 April 1940, when German warships attacked Kristiansand, Norway, during Operation Weserübung (the opening assault of the Norwegian Campaign), the HAPAG freighter Seattle sailed into the crossfire between the warships and Norwegian coastal artillery. She was holed and sunk, and her crew briefly became prisoners of war.

According to a 1940 US intelligence report compiled by the US War Department, Louis Classing, general manager of the Hamburg-America in Havana was identified as a "well-known nazi agent" who "imported moving pictures for propaganda purposes to be shown at local theaters".^[6][7]

The Hamburg America Line lost almost the entirety of its fleet twice, as a result of World Wars I and II. In 1970, the company merged with its longstanding rival, Norddeutscher Lloyd of Bremen, to establish the present-day company Hapag-Lloyd.

In the post-war years, HAPAG rebuilt its fleet and focused on cargo container transport. In 1970, the container shipping companies HAPAG and North German Lloyd (NGL) merged into Hapag-Lloyd AG to form one of the world's biggest container shipping companies. In 2008, Hapag-Lloyd was acquired by the City of Hamburg and a group of private investors, the Albert Ballin Consortium.^[8]

This list is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. (June 2022)

• Holland America Line
• Norwegian America Line
• Scandinavian America Line
• Swedish American Line
• SS Cleveland
• SS Hertford
• SS Imperator
• USS President Lincoln

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft.

• Fleet information (in German)
• The history of the Hamburg-America Line
• Historic photos of Hoboken and Hamburg America Line ports
• Passenger Lists from the Hamburg-Amerika Linie GG Archives
• Hamburg-Amerika Line ships This collection contains 16 photographs depicting ship interior and exterior views of Hamburg-Amerika Line's luxury passenger ships Augusta Victoria, Columbia and Normannia by Louis Koch, Bremen
• Documents and clippings about Hamburg America Line in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
• Hamburg-American Line History and Ephemera GG Archives