SS Bremen

Bremen was built for Norddeutscher Lloyd by the new German shipbuilding company Deutsche Schiff- und Maschinenbau, and launched at Bremen on 16 August 1928 by President Paul von Hindenburg — one day after her sister Europa went down the ways at Hamburg. Her hull used 7,000 tons of high-strength steel, saving some 800 tons of structural weight, and she was the first commercial ship designed with the Taylor bulbous bow. With her low, streamlined profile, she and Europa were regarded as the most advanced high-speed steam turbine liners of their day.

Her machinery, designed by Professor Gustav Bauer, was on an industrial scale: twenty oil-fired water-tube boilers with 227 burners in four airtight boiler rooms, pressurised so that they could only be entered through airlocks, feeding four geared turbines capable of roughly 135,000 shaft horsepower on four 17-ton bronze propellers. Aboard were four diesel generators, some 420 electric motors, 21,000 lamps and twenty elevators. Her designed cruising speed of 27.5 knots allowed a five-day crossing — letting NDL run a regular weekly service with two ships where three were normally needed.

Between her two funnels sat a catapult carrying a small seaplane, as on Europa. It was launched several hours before arrival and flown to the seaplane base at Blexen, putting the mail ashore well ahead of the ship — a faster postal service riding on a liner's back. All of this machinery made heavy demands on her people: the speed and the standard of comfort aboard meant each of the two sisters needed an engineering crew of some 170 men, and her fuel oil went into the boilers at 33 tons an hour, around 800 tons a day.

Europa suffered a serious fire while fitting out, so Bremen made her maiden crossing alone, leaving Bremerhaven for New York on 16 July 1929 under Commodore Leopold Ziegenbein. She arrived four days, 17 hours and 42 minutes later, taking the westbound Blue Riband from the twenty-year champion Mauretania at an average of 27.83 knots. On the return she took the eastbound record too, at 27.91 knots — the first liner to break two records on her first two passages.

That maiden voyage also carried the first ship-launched airmail. Twenty miles east of Fire Island, a Heinkel HE 12 floatplane flown by Baron Jobst von Studnitz was catapulted off with 11,000 pieces of mail in six bags, delivering them to New York many hours before the ship docked. On the eastbound run the plane went up near Cherbourg with 18,000 letters for Bremerhaven. Bremen lost the westbound Riband to her sister Europa in 1930 and the eastbound to Italy's Rex in 1932, having sparked an international competition in large, fast liners as national symbols of prestige.

As Nazism took hold in Germany, Bremen's New York pier became a site of anti-Nazi protest. On 26 July 1935 a group later dubbed 'The Bremen Six' boarded her just before sailing, tore the swastika flag from the jackstaff and threw it into the Hudson. Magistrate Louis B. Brodsky freed five of the six and justified their actions: under Germany's dual-flag law the old black-white-red tricolour was equally a national flag, so US authorities could say no symbol of Germany had been harmed. Weeks later, on 15 September 1935, Germany changed its flag law. One of the six, Bill Bailey, went on to fight in the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

The flag law had itself been an instrument of the takeover: on coming to power the Nazis had made the imperial black-white-red tricolour a co-national flag in place of the Weimar Republic's black-red-gold, and in September 1935 they stripped it of that status lest reactionaries make use of it. Bremen sailed on. She began a South America cruise on 11 February 1939 and became the first ship of her size to traverse the Panama Canal. On 22 August 1939 she began her last voyage to New York, with almost 190 transatlantic crossings behind her in ten years of service.

On 26 August 1939, with the invasion of Poland imminent, the Kriegsmarine ordered all German merchant ships home. Bremen was two days from New York; her captain continued in to land his 1,770 passengers. US Customs held her for days with an unusually detailed inspection — draining the swimming pool, checking the shaft tunnels — while her crew bought paint and blackout paper on furlough in the city.

She left New York without passengers on 30 August and worked up past 28 knots. Ordered to Murmansk on 1 September, her crew painting her grey underway and covering the portholes, she used bad weather and speed to evade Royal Navy cruisers and arrived on 6 September. On 10 December she made a dash for Bremerhaven. The British submarine HMS Salmon sighted and challenged her, but Lieutenant Commander E. O. Bickford held fire, believing she was not a legal target — a decision that likely delayed the start of unrestricted submarine warfare. She spent the war as a barracks ship, with plans to use her as a transport in Operation Sea Lion, the intended invasion of Britain.

On 16 March 1941, at her dock in Bremerhaven, Bremen was set alight by a fourteen-year-old crew member, Walter Schmidt, and completely gutted. A lengthy investigation found the arson was revenge against an officer who had punished him — not an act of war. Schmidt was guillotined for it, at fifteen among the youngest people judicially executed by the regime. From 1942 the ship was dismantled to the waterline so her steel could feed munitions production; in 1946 her remains were towed up the Weser, beached off Blexen and blown apart, though parts of the double hull remained as late as 2012.

The city she was named for has not let go of her. A 2004 stamp showed her before the Manhattan skyline; Radio Bremen produced an hour-long feature the same year with interviews of her former stewards and elevator attendants; the Übersee Museum Bremen keeps a 1:100 model in its stairwell. Largest of all is Bremen IV, Junior — a 39-foot, 10-ton working model built between 1949 and 1962 by two enthusiasts, crewed by two people inside, which toured the world, holds the Guinness World Record for largest seaworthy model ship, and now resides at Technik Museum Speyer.