http://www.shipsmonthly.com • Summer 2018 • 51
Albert Ballin served on the Hamburg-New York City route. In 1935 the Nazis ordered the ship to be renamed Hansa
(Ballin having been Jewish). In 1945 she was employed to evacuate Gdynia, but on 6 March hit a mine off Warnemünde
and sank. Raised by the Soviets in 1949, she was renamed again as Sovetskiy Soyuz and became the largest Soviet
passenger ship. Renamed Tobolsk in 1980, she sailed under that name for only a year before being scrapped.
SHIPYARD
met a sad fate, her sinking in
the Atlantic in 1957 claiming
80 lives, but another of these
magnifi cent sailing vessels,
Passat, is now on display as a
museum ship at Lübeck.
By the start of the 20th
century Blohm and Voss had
become one of Europe’s
leading shipyards, and had
the largest enclosed shipyard
site in Europe, as well as
having the largest dry dock.
But the two partners wanted
to expand and focused on
investing in the Putilov shipyard
in St Petersburg; however, the
outbreak of World War I saw
this endeavour come to nought.
Leading up to the confl ict,
Blohm and Voss had been
at the forefront of buildingthe Imperial Navy’s fl eet of
battlecruisers, with Von De
Tann, Moltke, Goeben, Seydlitz
and Derffl inger all being
products of the shipyard. The
yard was also instrumental in
building many submarines.
By 1914 Blohm and Voss
had become the world’s largest
shipyard and had also built the
world’s largest liner, Majestic,The four-funnelled battlecruiser
Scharnhorst at speed.
for the White Star Line the
same year. The transatlantic
passenger ship trade of the late
19th and early 20th centuries
led to the construction of
many fi ne ships, including the
54,282gt Vaterland, launched
in 1913. Vaterland played no
part in World War I, as she
was impounded at New York,
later being renamed Leviathan.
Another of the famous liners
built by the yard was the
56,551gt Bismarck, which was
handed to Britain in 1918 as
part of German war reparations.
The inter-war years, as with
many businesses in Germany,
were a struggle. Lack of
orders, the rise of communism
and fascism and hyper-
infl ation made trading and
constructing ships a dangerous
and diffi cult undertaking.
Under the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles, warship
construction was banned, but
the yard did secure some work.
The most notable produced
the successful passenger ships
of the Monte class, Cap
Arcona and Europa, the latter
of which won the Blue Ribbon
of the North Atlantic on her
maiden voyage in 1930.