By - John Rolfe

Ocean-going ships with below-deck cellular storage space for up to 120 containers, plus miscellaneous conventional cargo, will enter service between the Continent and the Great Lakes this spring.

Hamburg American Line of Hamburg and North German Lloyd Line of Bremen, which offer joint sailings in most parts of the world, will introduce three combination container conventional cargo ships to the lakes in April.

The three 17-knot vessels are converted general cargo freighters and will displace three of the nine ships used by the companies during the St. Lawrence Seaway navigation season to provide a weekly sailing from Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton and major U. S. lake ports.

They will be the first ships of their kind to pick up and discharge containers at lake ports. They are about 500 feet long and 8,497 gross tons.

Full-scale container ships, with their entire below-deck storage space devoted to cellular chambers for standard-size shipping containers (generally either 20 or 40 feet in length), are not expected to call at lake ports. Their physical dimensions and draft are generally too great to permit passage through the Seaway locks,

Container services from most lake ports have been provided by conventional cargo ships on an ad hoc basis. The three combination ships, named the BUNTENSTEIN, BURGENSTEIN and RENDSBURG, are equipped with their own lifting gear, capable of handling 20 to 50-ton loads.

Regular conference tariffs, discounts and container minimum charges will apply to the new service. The first port of call on the Continent is Hamburg, with Bremen, Rotterdam and Antwerp following in that order. In addition to the Canadian lake ports the ships will call at Montreal, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee.

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Reproduced for the Web with the permission of the Toronto Marine Historical Society.