Oldendorff Centenary Book - Flipbook - Page 186
At 1,600 tdw the ss DIETRICH
OLDENDORFF (2) was the smallest
ship bought in the early Fifties and
only a fraction smaller than the
TETE OLDENDORFF purchased in
1956. Several vessels exceeded
3,000 tdw and could trade worldwide.
The smaller size tramp steamer
increasingly encountered a new
type of competitor in the North and
Baltic Seas: the shortsea motorship. The post-war (West) German
coastline had shrunk. Sailships had
lost out to rail and road in the short
haul distribution trades. Shortsea
shipping began searching for new
markets and average ship sizes
grew in the process. Deadweight
capacities reached some 800
tonnes as early as in the Fifties.
With their measurement kept below
the 500 GRT mark the modern ships
needed smaller crews than the
veteran steamers of identical cargo
intake and gradually crowded them
out of their established markets
in the North and Baltic Seas. For
almost a century the traditional
tramp steamers characterised
by their thin black funnels had
faithfully carried cargoes of coal,
grain, and timber from the North
Sea into the Baltic, or vice versa, but
neared the end of their useful lives,
not least because of their coalhungry engines and large crews.
The 1950s witnessed a complete
structural change of the European
shortsea trade.
Lübeck, Untertrave. Far right: company headquarters until 1967
182
