Never a ‘DAL’ moment...
In an age of impersonal shipping giants, maritime journalist
Judy Bryant charts the path of a family-owned shipping
company that proudly retains the personal touch.
The family group, headquartered in Hamburg,
has African links both through
its Deutsche Afrika Linien divisions (DAL, formerly DOAL) and the John T Essberger tanker division, whose vessels serve mostly
Mediterranean, Baltic and North Sea ports.
The organisation has connections that go right
back to the early nineteenth century with a cast of players that includes war heroes and
powerful, charming women.
The story commences back in 1837 when German
entrepreneur Carl Woermann registered his company C. Woermann & Co. in Hamburg.
Twelve years later the first Woermann ship departed for West Africa. Within 30 years
the fleet had grown to 35 sailing ships plying between Northern Europe and West
African ports on the former Gold Coast and Nigeria carrying a variety of general
cargo.
The next Woermann generation benefited when
Chancellor Bismarck passed a subsidy law in 1890 to establish a shipping line to serve the East African colonies. The contract was
won by a consortium led by Carl Woermann’s son Adolph Woermann, who started up this new service as the Deutsche Ost-Afrika-Linie
(DOAL). It initially ran from Hamburg to Delagoa Bay (Maputo) via Suez every eight weeks. Within two years the service was extended to Durban and in 1898 to Swakopmund in German
South West Africa. Then at the turn of the century DOAL started a round Africa service,
via Suez to East Africa, down to Cape Town and back to Hamburg. Woermann and Co.
subsequently sold their shares and those of DOAL to the German state-owned Hapag
Lloyd Union.
At this chapter in the story one encounters
the charismatic and entrepreneurial John T
Essberger: A former officer in the elite German Imperial Navy and a torpedo boat
commander, he founded, with fellow naval officers, a tanker shipping line in 1924. It grew
rapidly into Germany’s largest private shipping line, boosted by the growth in road
transport and the demand for
liquid fuels.
A British subject by birth, Essberger was a Hamburg councillor and chairman of
the German Shipping Lines Association until 1941. Both promoted and opposed by
the National Socialists – his
second wife Elsa was the widow of Jewish fighter pilot Jacob Wolff, and he employed
and did business with many Jewish colleagues – his closest friend was the head
of counter-espionage, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, who was later involved in the resistance
against Hitler, arrested, and
hanged.
Essberger lost most of his vessels during World War 1, whilst Germany’s two
major state-owned shipping companies, Hapag and North German Lloyd, were in dire
straits. Following an expert report
by Essberger (who succeeded in rebuilding his own fleet) only the transatlantic liners
remained in state ownership. The remaining parts of both shipping line groups were
broken up and privatised, taking on a new and profitable lease of life.
In 1941 DOAL, part of Hapag and regarded as
needing restructuring, was taken over by John T. Essberger and his friend the tobacco
magnate, Reemtsma. Under John T Essberger,
however, DOAL began a “meteoric rise and became a
real goldmine for its owner”
according to author Svante Domizlaff, who wrote a history of the tanker shipping dynasty.
In 1959, after John T Essberger’s death, his daughter Liselotte von Rantzau- Essberger took over the Group. With the assistance
of directors such as Prof. Rolf Stödter, also chairman of the German Shipping Lines
Association for many years, there was strong growth in all the services operated to
the African continent as well as the tanker division under the name John T Essberger, its
founder.
Mrs von Rantzau-Essberger was a powerful individual in the male-dominated shipping
industry. She was a bridge
builder in Africa and developed personal contacts with the presidents of South Africa,
Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Kenya and many
other countries.
Her father had shown an exemplary concern for the
welfare of the staff, supported
by his second wife Elsa, who
as a young widow had been
applauded in Hamburg for
her beauty and wealth, and
her skilful manoeuvring of
her heavy Harley-Davidson
motorbike on the frozen Alster
city lake.
Mrs von Rantzau,
affectionately known as “Aunt
Lilo”, continued this tradition,
with company excursions and Christmas and summer
festivities for staff members and pensioners. Every employee received a turkey at
Christmas while the children were invited to a fairytale performance at the Altona
Theatre.
The Group met the challenges of adapting to a
totally new form of transport,
namely containerisation, but in the 1970s trade to Africa began to deteriorate. Many
countries in West Africa were ravaged by civil war and resultant economic chaos.
Economic sanctions on South Africa made an impact. DAL – Deutsche Afrika Linien
–became a member of the SAECS consortium and
together with its partners Safmarine, P&O, Nedlloyd and later Maersk, began to operate
weekly services with fully
cellular container ships from
1977 onwards to all the main
ports of South Africa. Liselotte von Rantzau died
in 1993 of complications
following a heart attack. About 3000 people from all walks of life were present at
her funeral and South Africa’s ambassador to the European Community, Neil van Heerden, spoke on behalf of President FW de Klerk.
Total responsibility for the running of the organisation is now in the hands of two of
her three sons, Dr Eberhart and Heinrich von Rantzau.
Both men have been groomed at leading
universities and corporations to steer the group through the choppy waters of modern
fleet management. Heinrich von Rantzau,
born in 1944, studied law
at Munich, Freiburg and Hamburg universities. He
gained practical shipping experience in South Africa, the UK and the USA, as well as
additional training with Mobil
Oil, Lykes Bros. and OOCL.
His younger brother Eberhart became a reserve
lieutenant in the Federal
German Navy, temporarily assigned to a destroyer,
like his grandfather John T Essberger. He studied business management in Bonn and
Hamburg, obtaining his doctorate, and notched up
practical experience at various French, British and American shipping companies and
banks. Both brothers hold the position of managing director and run the company jointly.
With the third generation
now at the helm, the focus has been on further development of container services, bulk
carrier operations, and chemicals shipping, which is being expanded and updated.
A few years ago the Dutch
chemical tanker company Broere Shipping was taken
over and merged with John T Essberger’s own organisation.
A fleet of chemical tankers (now in excess of 25) is operated mostly in the Baltic,
North Sea and the Med. New vessels are on order at regular intervals to replace those that no longer meet the stringent safety requirements
of the major liquid chemical shippers.
DAL’s service to the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius, Madagascar and Reunion via
Suez from Europe was recently
expanded when the company entered a much larger
consortium known as NEMO of which the other partners are CMA/CGM. The service
on a weekly basis serves ports
in Northern Europe to the
Indian Ocean islands and on to Australasia, the islands of the Pacific and back to Europe
via Indonesia, India and the Middle East.
The Western Mediterranean ports are
serviced by DAL with a fully
containerised service to and
from southern Africa. Feeder
vessels to and from Las
Palmas connect with the main
line SAECS service.
Lastly DAL also has a
1700 teu vessel, in the so called
Second String Service from Northern Europe to
South Africa. This is operated
jointly with other SAECS partners and serves East
London as well as Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town.
The fully cellular container
vessel (4500 teu) DAL Kalahari employed in the main SAECS service is currently
the only vessel which can accommodate passengers
between South Africa and the UK/Europe. It is very popular with the older generation
who well remember the regular mail service of the
Union Castle Line some 30 years ago.
This dynamic and constantly evolving group is
well positioned to continue successfully, since Eberhart von Rantzau has a young son
and daughter, and his brother
Heinrich also has three sons,
two of whom are currently
being trained in all aspects of
the ship owning and operating business. Thus the fourth generation of John T Essberger
should ably steer the family’s fortunes well into the 21st century.
