Oldendorff Centenary Book - Flipbook - Page 252
Howaldtswerke shipyard of Kiel,
keen to jump on the jumbo ship
bandwagon, began constructing a
large newbuilding dock of 426 metres
length and 88.4 metres width, with
the apron ten metres below mean
sea level, sufficient to build tankers
of inconceivable 600,000 tdw. Had
the shipyard built seven such giants it
would have recovered the investment
for the dock. The yard had booked
orders for such ultra-large tankers,
but none was finally to be built.
From the second half of the Sixties
onwards, and particularly during
the last quarter of 1972 tanker
owners inundated shipyards with
orders for ever larger ships. Yards
booked orders for 112 supertankers
during the last three months of 1972;
one quarter thereof went to German
builders. A.G. ‘Weser’ of Bremen
alone contracted the construction of
six 380,000 tonners. Experts were at
a loss to explain the sudden rush.
German owners had no part in the
run for large tankers, except the
German subsidiaries of Esso and
Shell who each operated two
253,000 and 317,000 tonners under
the German flag. At that stage the
fact dawned upon German business
circles that the transportation
of crude oil, that indispensable
commodity, was firmly controlled
by foreign shipowners and
industrial concerns. Tankers under
the German flag, by virtue of their
SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN
1976-1983
248
