Hamburg Amerika cruises in 1900-1906

[Nicholas Peppas]

PART 1:

In the beginning of the 20th century the enterprising Director of the Hamburg America Line (Hamburg Amerika Linie, HAPAG for short) Albert Ballin (1857-1918) decided that there was an increased demand for up-scale cruises to the Mediterranean Sea, the Canary Islands and Norway. Thus, he ordered the building of several ocean ships just for the purpose of cruises

The pages below are scanned from an original 1904 book entitled Mittelmeer-Fahrten of HAPAG containing 220 pages in exceptional quality heavy paper that presents pictures of the main ships and ports of the summer cruises from Hamburg, Naples or Trieste to numerous Mediterranean ports, including Corfu, Patras, Nauplion and Piraeus.

We present here some of these pages

Leather cover of the book with an embossed photograph of Moltke

HAPAG Cover.jpg

Moltke: Built in 1901, seized by Italy in 1902, renamed Pesaro. 12,335 tons

Prinzessin Viktoria Luise: Built at Blohm & Voss of Hamburg she was named after the only daughter (1892-1980) of Kaiser Wilhelm II [NB: Viktoria Luise was the mother of the former Queen Frederica of Greece]. She was launched on June 29, 1900 and had her maiden voyage on January 5, 1901. She was one of the most beautiful ships of the period. She was designed to look mostly like a yacht. She had 4,409 tons and was 407.5 ft long and 52.5 ft wide and had a service speed of 15 knots. She had 129 first class cabins, gymnasium, library and even a darkroom for photograph development!

On December 16, 1906 she was grounded off Jamaica. However, due to a storm and very strong winds she was pushed further to the rocks and the shore. She was filled with 16 ft of water and was declared a total loss on December 19, 1906.

Also a photograph of the same ship in Constantinople in 1905.

Moltke.jpg

Viktoria Luise.jpg

Viktoria Luise in Constantinople.jpg