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Founded in 1866 in the city of Hamburg as the Vereinigte Bugsir-Dampfschiff-Gesellschaft, this firm is Germany’s largest commercial towing and salvage firm. It operates a fleet comprising tugs of varying types, barges, lighters, pontoons and other maritime equipment. Despite its amalgamation with a number of firms over the years control has remained in the hands of the Schuchmann family of Geestemünde.

At the present time it operates a fleet of twenty-eight tugs, including four ocean-going salvage tugs, three floating cranes, seventeen self-propelled barges and forty-eight large and small cargo lighters for harbour work.

This firm was organised in 1913 to provide river transportation services on the upper and middle reaches of the Danube; it is based in the city of Regensburg. During the Great War its tugs and barges were instrumental in supplying German and Austro-Hungarian forces operating in the Balkans; consequently, it suffered heavy losses in the latter part of the war and its fleet had to be completely refurbished in the postwar period. The firm has pioneered the integration of road and river transportation and in addition to its fleet of vessels it operates more than one hundred motor vehicles of the heaviest classes. The current fleet comprises eleven river tugs, thirty-one barges, four self-propelled lighters and two new motor vessels of the Europa type.

Founded in March 1829 this firm is one of the oldest continuously operating shipping companies in the Danube Basin. Based in Vienna it operates services southward as far as the Black Sea, though its principal activities are confined to the transport of freight and passengers on the middle and upper reaches of the Danube. The firm is popularly known for its side-wheel passenger steamers which operate passenger services between Vienna and Passau and between Vienna and Budapest, but its cargo services are of far greater value. It is one of the principal means of transporting the agricultural products of Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia to German markets; its motor tank barges play a vital role in the export of fuels from the oilfields of Romania and from further afield in Russia. It was among the first to introduce river-sea ships of the Europa type, and has recently commissioned the construction of two large river-sea vessels in order to open a service from Vienna to Byzantium and thence to the Levant.

The company’s present fleet includes eight passenger steamers, five river-sea cargo ships (plus two under construction), fifteen motor barges, nine river tugs and forty-four cargo lighters of varying sizes.

This firm was organised in 1937 to improve the capacity of shipping on the Danube. The headquarters of the firm were at München. It was the first river transport firm to order the new Europa class river-sea ships, and its fleet presently has six such vessels in service, together with seven tugs, thirty six cargo barges and eleven tank barges. It is a major transporter of oil and petroleum products from Romania.

In 1883 the river shipping company Dampfschleppschiffahrts Gesellschaft Elbe und Saale was founded in Dresden by the shipowner Carl Böhme; its purpose was to operate tow boats and barges on the river Elbe, hauling coal and other cargos in the Saxon industrial region. Böhme subsequently acquired several other river shipping companies including the Elbe-Saale Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft of Alsleben and the Handelsgesellschaft Gebrüder Tonne of Madgeburg. In 1903 Böhme’s enterprise merged with the Deutsche Elbschiffahrts Gesellschaft of Dresden to form the Vereinigte Elbeschiffahrts Gesellschaft, the largest cargo shipping firm operating on the River Elbe and its connecting canal system. In the years before the Great War it employed more than three thousand bargemen and more then five hundred tow-boats, barges and lighters.

The importance of river shipping insured that the firm would receive Government support in the immediate postwar period, and it was rapidly able to recover its position as the leading inland shipping company in the Elbe basin. It acquired several competing companies in the early 1920s, entering the passenger and packet goods trade on the Elbe. The firm introduced motorised barges to the trade in 1928, its first river-sea ship in 1935 and its first tank barges in 1937. The headquarters of the firm remains in Dresden. The present fleet includes more than two hundred tugs and towboats, three hundred barges, lighters and self-propelled barges and eleven river-sea cargo ships. Additional vessels are operated by its subsidiaries.


Subsidiaries of the firm include:

Deutsche Böhmische Elbeschiffahrt AG, Dresden (passenger and packet cargo shipping)
Sächsisch-Böhmische Dampfschifffahrt AG, Dresden (passenger and packet cargo shipping)

This firm was founded in 1846 to transport freight on the Weser River, its tributaries and its associated canal systems. In its early years there was great competition from railways, but from 1874 the firm was able to place itself on a firm footing by concentrating on freight traffic. From its headquarters in the city of Hameln it presently operates a fleet including twenty five river tugs boats and motor barges on the Weser, the Fulda and the Werra, and the canal system of northwestern Germany.

This firm was organised in the wake of the Great War to amalgamate several firms engaged in providing technical services for the shipping industry, including towing, dredging, salvage and ice-breaking, exclusive of pilotage. It operates numerous small craft, barges, lighters, tugs and workboats; dredges of several types and sizes; specialist harbour and salvage tugs and provides such services as tank cleaning, waste-disposal and underwater diving. Its headquarters are located in Rostock, but services are provided at major Baltic ports including Lübeck, Stettin and Stralsund. Its fleet comprises some one hundred thirty vessels and craft, and it employs more than two thousand five hundred workers in various capacities.

Founded in December 1939 through the fusion of the Bremer Schleppschiffahrtsgesellschaft (founded 1886) and the Mindener Schleppschiffahrtsgesellschaft (founded 1893) this firm provides inland shipping services on the river Weser, its tributaries and the intervening canal system. It particularly provided transport for potash mined in Hesse and Thuringia via Hannoversch Münden. The firm operates ten large tugs and a number of barges, and provides an important link for cargos going to the port of Bremen.

This firm came into being in 1897, to acquire the North Sea shipping business of the Norddeutscher Lloyd. Prior to the Great War it operated passenger and cargo services between Bremen and Hamburg and London/Harwich and Hull/Leith, in cooperation with the General Steam Navigation Company and the Leith, Hull and Hamburg Steam Packet Company. Following the Great War cargo services were restored in the early 1920s, with expansion during the latter 1920s and 1930s.

The firm presently operates services on the routes Bremen-Harwich-London, Hamburg-Harwich-London, Bremen-Hull-Leith and Hamburg-Hull-Leith, with a fleet of seven short-sea cargo vessels totaling 10,180 tons gross and 18,830 tons deadweight.

Adolph Kirsten entered the shipping business in Hamburg in 1878 with a single steamer; in 1879 he opened a regular service between Hamburg and London, the Hamburg London Dampfschiffs Linie. Kirsten took over the four ships of Gebrüder Schiller & Company in 1881. A service to South America, Hamburg Pacific Dampfschiffs Linie, was opened in 1886 but sold to the DDG Kosmos in 1896; a service to India was organised in 1886 as the Hamburg Calcutta Linie AG but liquidated in 1897. Thereafter the firm concentrated on short-sea shipping services to Britain, the Netherlands, northern France and Scandinavia; in 1914 the firm operated no fewer than twenty-nine steamers.

War losses and confiscations reduced the firm’s fleet to two small vessels, but it was able to rebuild its fleet in the postwar period, re-establishing its routes to Britain and northern Europe, operating as the Hamburg London Linie, the Hamburg Rotterdam Linie and the Hamburg Nordland Linie. It presently operates a total of ten short-sea cargo vessels totaling 12,780 tons gross.

The history of this inland-transport firm is inextricably linked to the Dortmund-Ems Canal, which in 1899 linked the coalfields and steel mills of the Ruhr district with the port of Emden on the North Sea. The concern was founded by the Rheinisch-Westfälisches Kohlen-Syndikat to carry its coal to the sea and return with imported iron ore for the steel mills of the Ruhr; minority shareholders included the municipalities of Dortmund, Emden and Duisburg. By 1913 one-eighth of the iron ore imports for the Ruhr moved through the port of Emden.

In 1903 the concern’s fleet comprised fifty-six river steamers, barges and tow-boats. In 1907 it expanded its operations by acquiring the Schleppschifffahrts-Gesellschaft Dortmund-Ems. Losses in the Great War were quickly overcome in the postwar period, during which the concern expanded its operations to include the Elbe, the Weser, the Main and the Neckar rivers. In 1926 it sold its subsidiary, the Emder Hafenumschlagsgesellschaft, to the municipality of Emden, acquiring in the following year the assets of the Münsterische Schifffahrts und Lagerhaus AG, greatly expanding its scope of activities across northern Germany.

The combined river-sea fleet of the firm presently comprises no fewer than 187 ships, barges and tow-boats.

The origins of this concern lie with the Mannheim entrepreneur Joseph Conrad Fendel who in 1887 entered the barge transport business on the river Rhein. In 1890 he constructed the first purpose-built tank barge to operate on the river, hauling petroleum from Dutch ports to the industrial region of the middle Rhein. In 1894 the business was organised as the Reederei Gebrüder Fendel; by 1899 the firm was operating a fleet of seven steam tugs and twenty three barges.

In 1912 the Reederei Gebrüder Fendel merged with the Badischen AG für Rheinschiffahrt und Seetransport to form the present concern, with its headquarters in Frankfurt. Other acquisitions followed in the years before the Great War, including the freight forwarding firm of William Egan und Compagnie, the Bayerischen Transportgesellschaft Ludwigshafen, the Rhein- und Seeschiffahrtsgesellschaft of Köln, the Mannheimer Lagerhaus-Gesellschaft and the venerable Mannheimer Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft.

The firm survived the vicissitudes of the Great War and rebuilt its fleet, becoming the greatest single operator of inland navigation vessels in Germany, operating a fleet that includes 283 barges, 137 river motor ships and motor tankers, twenty-six river steamers and fifty-six motor and steam tugs.

The shipping firm of Robert Meyhoefer is a leading coastal shipping firm based in the province of East Prussia. Founded in 1869 at Tilsit, it moved its headquarters to the city of Königsberg in 1872. Initially is operated as a freight forwarder, shipping goods regionally along the Pregel and its tributary, the Hundegatt. It expanded through the acquisition of smaller companies and soon moved into the operation of its own coastal steamers and barges, operating services to Danzig and to Libau and Windau in Courland. In 1896 Justus Haslinger became a partner in the firm and following the death of Meyhoefer in 1910 it was converted to a joint stock company with Haslinger as managing director.

During the Great War the firm extended its activities into the German-occupied portions of then-Russian Lithuania and Latvia. Upon the death of Justus Haslinger in 1919, his sons, Erich Haslinger and Oswald Haslinger, continued to direct the fortunes of the firm. In 1920 it founded a travel agency, the first in East Prussia, which contributed greatly to the firm’s profits in that period.

Working closely with the Government’s Seedienst Ostpreußen it strove to overcome the negative consequences of the separation of the province from the rest of the Reich. Local steamer services were re-established and by 1925 it operated warehouses and offices in nine locations along the Baltic littoral. Today it continues to function as a leader in regional transportation and logistics.

In 1830 Hamburg merchant Heinrich Martin Gehrcken entered the shipping business on his own behalf with one used sailing vessel. Concentrating on routes from Hamburg to the Baltic and to West Africa the new venture prospered, and by 1869 it already had eight vessels under its house flag. The founding of the Reich in 1871 ushered in a period of entrepreneurship, corporate finance, and overseas trade. The Gehrcken concern followed a different path – remaining a family-owned firm and entering the short-seas trade across the North Sea and into the Baltic; a half-share interest was acquired in the British-flag King’s Lynn Line and a new steamer line to Scandinavia was organised. In this capacity the firm contributed significantly to the growing shipping services linking Germany and Nordmark.

The firm was in the forefront of development of Hamburg’s transit trade – delivering South American coffee to Nordmark and from there iron to England, or bacon and flour from the North America to the Baltic, and from there butter to England. This traffic was all the more profitable following the opening of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal in 1895. Before the Great War the firm had an average of fourteen ships in operation; most were lost or requisitioned during the hostilities and in the postwar period the firm had to rebuild its fleet from nearly nothing. While the traditional transit trade remained a staple of its business, new lines of trade were developed, including that in forestry products from the Baltic to Western Europe, in coal to meet the growing demand in Nordmark, and the Iberian fruit trade, for which the company constructed several small, fast refrigerator ships.

This concern was founded in 1938 and headquartered in the city of Linz. Its principal business is river transport in the Danube basin; with the completion if the Rhein-Main-Danube Canal is has expanded its activities further afield. It operates a fleet of river tankers, river freighters, tugs, and river barges for dry and liquid cargos, with the latter predominating. Its principal purpose is to serve the growing mineral oil industry of the Austrian provinces. Ownership of the concern is shared with the Ostmärkische Mineralölverwaltung (40%), Danuvia Mineröl (20%), and the Vacuum Oel AG (40%).

In 1942 is acquired a substantial interest in the Romanian firm Societatea Anonimă Română de Navigațiune pe Dunăre, which operates as an affiliated firm in conjunction with the parent’s activities.

In June 1871 investors formed the Dampfschiffsrhederei Norden to “bring traffic to the islands of Norderney and Juist in an orderly fashion”, or so it was stated in the company’s prospectus. A year later its first steam ferry was placed into service and a fortified jetty was constructed in the port of Norderney for a landing stage. Competition arrived in 1893 with the formation of the Norderneyer Dampfschiffsrhederei Einigkeit, but the two firms soon reached an understanding and commenced complementary services to meet the needs of the popular summer resorts, and services were expanded to the neighbouring islands of Baltrum, Langeoog, and Spiekeroog. Further competition arrived in 1906 with the formation of the Neue Dampfschiffs-Reederei Frisia. To avoid a ruinous rate war, a plan of amalgamation was worked out and in 1909 the Reederei Norden-Frisia was formed to operate general passenger and cargo services to the East Frisian Islands, chiefly the resorts of Norderney and Juist.

1922 the shares of the Wyker Dampfschiffs-Rhederei were acquired. This enterprise, first formed in 1885, operated ferry services from the mainland ports of Dagebüll and Amrum to the outer Frisian islands of Wyk and Sylt. The Wyker Line formally became a subsidiary of the Reederei Norden-Frisia in 1929. That summer services were opened to Heligoland from Hörnum, Wyk, Wittdün, and Dagebüll.