“Until the year 1885 the two big companies, the Lloyd and the Packetfahrt, scarcely had any mutually profitable dealings with each other; on the contrary, their relations were characterized by open enmity. It is true that the attempts at a rapprochement, which were made from time to time, did in some cases lead to the conclusion of an agreement concerning certain rates to which both companies bound themselves to adhere, but they never lasted more than a short time, and ultimately, far from causing an improvement of the existing state of things, they left matters worse than they had been before. I think I may congratulate myself on being the first to have brought about a better understanding between the two companies which, in the end, paved the way to the establishment of a lasting friendship which has grown closer and closer during the past twenty years.
“In 1886, shortly after I had joined the Hamburg-Amerika Linie, when I went to Bremen in order to find out what could be done to lessen or, if possible, to remove altogether the competition between both companies, the conduct of the firm’s business had passed from the hands of Consul Meier, who was getting on in years, into those of Director Lohmann. Mr. Lohmann was a man of unusual energy and possessed of a rare gift for organization. In the annals of international shipping his name will be for ever associated with the introduction into the North Atlantic route of fast steamers under the German flag. He had been fortunate enough to meet with a congenial mind on the technical side in the head of the firm of Messrs. John Elder and Co., the Glasgow shipbuilders. At their yard, starting in 1881, a series of fast steamers were built—the Elbe, the Werra, the Fulda, the Saale, the Trave, the Aller, and the Lahn—which opened up a new and memorable era in the progress of the means of communication between the Old World and the New. These boats proved of great benefit to the company financially, and they were also a considerable boon to the passengers owing to their speed and punctuality. I recollect talking to the chairman of a big British steamship company on board one of his steamers in New York harbour in 1888, when the s.s. Lahn, of the North German Lloyd, steamed in. My British colleague, filled with admiration, glanced at his watch, touched his hat by way of salutation, and said with honest enthusiasm: ‘Wonderful boats; they are really doing clockwork.’ He only expressed the sentiment felt by the travelling public generally; everybody appreciated their reliability and punctuality, and the excellence of their service.
“Director Lohmann died very suddenly on February 9th, 1892; he had just concluded an address at a general meeting of the company held at the ‘Haus Seefahrt’ when he dropped down dead. During the last few years of his life he had not been well advised technically, and failed to adopt the twin-screw principle, as had been done by the Hamburg company. Thus, when the two fast single-screw steamers, the Havel and the Spree, were built at Stettin in 1890, they were practically obsolete, because the travelling public by that time had come to prefer those of the twin-screw type, owing to the increased safety they afforded.
“In 1888 Consul Meier retired from the chairmanship of the Lloyd, to be succeeded—after the short reign of Mr. Reck—by Mr. George Plate. To Mr. Plate, if I am rightly informed, great credit is due for having secured the services of Director-General Dr. Heinrich Wiegand on the board of the company.
“What the Lloyd has achieved under the Wiegand régime far surpasses anything accomplished in the past.
“The Hamburg-Amerika Linie, meanwhile, had been alive to the needs of the times; and the consequence was a healthy competition between these two steamship companies—by far the biggest the world has ever seen—practically on all the seven seas. This competition, by intelligent compromise, was restricted within reasonable limits, the guiding spirits of the two concerns consciously adopting the policy implied by the strategic principle: ‘In approaching the enemy’s position we must divide our forces; in attacking him we must concentrate them.’
“It would not be correct to say that this atmosphere of friendship had never been clouded—it would, indeed, have been tedious had it been otherwise than it was. Up to now, however, Wiegand and I have always been able to maintain pleasant relations between our two concerns, and in the interests of both of them it is sincerely to be hoped that this spirit of mutual understanding will continue to animate them in the future.”
CHAPTER VII
The Technical Reorganization of the Hamburg-Amerika Linie
In another chapter of this book the big passenger boats of the Hamburg-Amerika Linie have been described as the outcome of Ballin’s imaginative brain. This they were indeed, and in many instances it is scarcely possible to say how far the credit for having built them is due to the naval architect, and how far it is due to Ballin. He was profoundly against employing one system throughout, and on accepting the views of one expert exclusively; and this aversion was so pronounced that he objected on principle to the nomination of any technical expert to the Board of his company. The company, he said, is surely going to last longer than a lifetime or two. Besides, it must try to solve the problem of perpetual youth, and therefore it cannot afford to run the risk of staking its fortune on the views held by one single man who is apt to ignore the progress of his science without noticing it. The same dislike of onesidedness induced him to encourage to the best of his capacity a healthy competition among the various shipyards, and to avail himself of the experiences gained not only by the German yards but by their British rivals also. At an early stage of his career close business relations were established between himself and Messrs. Harland and Wolff, of Belfast; and a personal friendship connected him with the owner of that firm, Mr. (now Lord) Pirrie. Acting upon the example set by the White Star Line, Ballin made an agreement with Messrs. Harland and Wolff as early as 1898, by which the latter bound themselves always to keep a slip at the disposal of the Packetfahrt. The reason which prompted Ballin to make this arrangement was, as he explained to the Board of Trustees, that the company’s orders for new construction and repairs had nowhere been carried out more satisfactorily and more cheaply than by the Belfast yard, where all the new vessels ordered were built under a special agreement, i.e. at cost price with a definitely fixed additional percentage representing the profits and certain expenditure incurred by the builders. This arrangement enabled the Packetfahrt to become acquainted with whatever was latest and best in British shipyard production, and, as it were, to acquire models which it could improve upon in German yards after they had been tested on actual service. Some of the best and most important types of vessels which the Packetfahrt has produced owe their origin to this system; and it is only fair to say that it exercised an entirely beneficial influence on the progress of the German shipbuilding industry, the prosperity of which is largely due to the fact that it has profited from the century-old experience gained by the British yards and by British ocean-shipping.