Oldendorff Centenary Book - Flipbook - Page 184
The Allies did not take long to ditch
the plan whereby Germany was to
be converted to a purely agricultural
country. To restore commerce and
industry meant the restitution of
a functioning commercial system
including ocean shipping as an
integral part of foreign trade.
What the Allies envisaged was a
country with modest manufacturing
facilities, decidedly below pre-war
levels. That equated to a small
and modest merchant fleet. A
provincial government came into
being in Schleswig-Holstein, and the
German Shipowners’ Association
informed its members in a circular
letter in 1947 of those ships, mainly
tugs and barges, which the Allies
intended to return to Germans as
managing owners. The association
further announced the Allies’
permission for German owners to
contract newbuildings, to come into
force in 1948. A decree issued by the
Control Commission for Germany
dated 26 September 1948 listed the
maximum permissible parameters
applying to newbuildings for
German account, i.e. 1,500 GRT,
12 knots maximum speed, derrick
lifting capacity 3 tonnes, steam
propulsion, and bunker capacities
limiting the sailing range to 2,000
nautical miles. Whilst this severely
handicapped German shipping as
a whole, trampship owner Egon
Oldendorff found he could live with
that since ordinary trampers more
or less answered that description.
Egon Oldendorff ordered,
from Lübecker MaschinenbauGesellschaft, one ship of the
so-called Potsdam series dubbed
after the headquarters of the
Control Commission. It was the
company’s second newbuilding
and like the first she was named
IRENE OLDENDORFF. She was
the first post-war Oldendorff
newbuilding with 1,494 GRT but
not the first post-war addition
to the fleet. Indeed, just before
Christmas of 1949 the company
had purchased two steamers from
Folkebanken of Copenhagen which
had had to repossess the ships from
their financially troubled previous
owners about one year after they
took delivery of the ships. The two
bargains began their new lives as the
BIRTE OLDENDORFF (3,150 tdw) and
the DORTHE OLDENDORFF (3,360 tdw).
Fleet expansion continued unabated,
even though second-hand tonnage
was scarce. The world merchant
fleet had suffered considerable
losses, and at the same time worldwide reconstruction and the Korean
War (1950/53), to the delight of shipowners, produced a veritable boom
in terms of cargo flows and freight
rate levels. This in turn pushed up
the prices for newbuildings and for
second-hand ships. Shipyard orderbooks kept filling. From this time
onwards Egon Oldendorff adopted a
two-pronged expansion strategy by
ordering modern newbuildings and
also through purchases of bargainpriced ships on the second-hand
market. To an extent this policy is
being pursued to date. At that time
German owners were buyers, not
sellers. Having found the right type
of foreign-registered ship at the
right price the German buyer had
to apply to the Federal Government
for an import licence and, slightly
more difficult, for the necessary
foreign exchange. Egon Oldendorff
would point out that his ships were
working the international tramp
markets and thus contributed to
German foreign exchange earnings.
Another hurdle to be overcome but
outside the buyers’ influence was
the export licence of the sellers’
country of registry, the outcome of
the procedure often resembling a
lottery. Great Britain, having recently
taken many German ships, was the
most promising market for secondhand tonnage in those days, as were
the Scandinavian countries which
sold older vessels in return for modern
German ships allocated to them
through reparation proceedings.
180
To restore
commerce and
industry meant
the restitution
of a functioning
commercial system
including ocean
shipping as an
integral part of
foreign trade.
