(later Hansa, Sovietsky Sojus) Liner (2f/4m).
L/B/D:
602.2 × 78.7 (183.6m × 24m). Tons:
20,815 grt. Hull:
steel. Comp.:
1st 250; 2nd 340, 3rd 1,060. Mach.:
steam turbines, 2 screws; 16 kts. Built:
Blohm & Voss, Hamburg; 1923.
In 1913, the Hamburg-Amerika Linie (Hapag) was the largest merchant shipping fleet in the world, thanks in great part to the company's brilliant general director, Albert Ballin, the driving force behind such world-class transatlantic liners as Imperator (later the
Berengaria), Vaterland (
Leviathan), and Bismarck (
Majestic). Overwhelmed by the losses of the Great War, Ballin killed himself in 1919. When the company began building new ships for the transatlantic trade in 1923, the first pair were the sister ships Albert Ballin and Deutschland. (The slightly larger Hamburg and New York entered service in 1926 and 1927.) Albert Ballin made her maiden voyage from Hamburg to Southampton and New York in 1923. She underwent several modifications in the late 1920s. Tourist-class accommodations were added in 1928 (the second class was dropped altogether in 1930), and she was reengined in 1929 to achieve a speed of 19 knots. In 1934 she was lengthened to 6458 and her speed increased to 21.5 knots. The following year, Germany's newly installed Nazi government ordered her renamed on the grounds that Ballin was Jewish; in 1936 her first-class accommodations were changed to cabin class, tourist, and third class. Her last transatlantic voyage was completed in 1939, after which she served as an accommodation and training ship. Mined off Warnemünde on March 3, 1945, while taking part in the evacuation of Gdynia, she was taken over by the Soviet Union after the war and entered service with one funnel as the Sovietsky Sojus, sailing out of Vladivostok. Overhauled in 1971, she was scrapped in 1981.
Bonsor, North Atlantic Seaway. Braynard & Miller, Fifty Famous Liners.
