The story
Founded by Adolph Etienne Godeffroy, Carl Woermann, Ernst Merck, Ferdinand Laeisz, Godeffroy family and Gustav Adolph Vorwerk on May 27, 1847, in Hamburg.1
Ports served
In the early years, the Hamburg America Line exclusively connected European ports with North American ports, such as Hoboken or New Orleans. With time, however, the company established lines to all continents. The company built a large ocean liner terminal at Cuxhaven, Germany, in 1900. Connected directly to Hamburg by a dedicated railway line and station, the HAPAG Terminal at Cuxhaven served as the major departure point for German and European immigrants to North America until 1969 when ocean liner travel ceased. Today it serves as a museum and cruise ship terminal.
Jewish emigration to North America
Following pogroms in the Russian Empire, the majority of Jews within the Pale of Settlement left for the United States. Between 1880 and 1924 roughly 2–3 million Jews emigrated from Eastern Europe to North America, making it the largest migration in history, most of them using the Hamburg America Line.
Atlas Service
The Atlas Service sailed from United States to Jamaica, Haiti, Colombia, Central America. The service was described as a way to "escape the rigors of Northern winters" through taking a Caribbean cruise and was promoted to tourists. The ships Altai, Sarnia, Sibiria, Alleghany, Alene, Adirondack, Valdivia, and Graecia provided this service in 1906.
Notable journeys
In 1858, its liner Austria sank, killing 449 people. In 1891, the cruise of the Augusta Victoria in the Mediterranean and the Near East from 22 January to 22 March, with 241 passengers including Albert Ballin and wife, is often stated to have been the first passenger cruise. Christian Wilhelm Allers published an illustrated account of it as "Bakschisch". In 1897, its steamer Arcadia was wrecked on the rocks off Newfoundland. In 1900, 1901 and 1903 its liner Deutschland won the Blue Riband taking the prize from the Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. In 1906 Prinzessin Victoria Luise ran aground off the coast of Jamaica. No people died by the grounding; however, the ship's captain committed suicide after getting all the passengers safely off the ship. In 1912, its liner SS Amerika was the first ship to warn Titanic of icebergs.
HAPAG's general director, Albert Ballin, believed that safety, size, comfort and luxury would always win out over speed. Thus he conceived the three largest liners yet to be built, named Imperator, Vaterland and Bismarck.
From Wikipedia’s article on Hamburg America Line, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4