SS Deutschland (1923)

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SS Deutschland


SS Deutschland

Career Weimar Republic Merchant Marine War Ensign of Germany 1938-1945
Nationality German,
Port Hamburg,
Owner: Hamburg-Amerika Line.
Service: Hamburg to New York
Ordered: 1921
Builder: Blohm & Voss, Kommandit Ges auf Aktien, Hamburg.
Launched: April 28st, 1923
Maiden voyage: March 27th, 1924
Fate: Sunk in a British air attack in 1945.
General characteristics
Tonnage: 21,046 gross tons
Length: 645 feet overall
Beam: 72.25 feet
Depth 41.9 feet.
Decks 4.
Propulsion: 8 steam turbines, Twin screw
Speed: 20 knots
Paintwork Black hull , red boot-topping, upper works white, funnels buff with red, white and black tops.
Complement: 976 passengers, 422 officers and crew.

SS Deutschland [1] was a 21,046 gross registered ton (GRT) German HAPAG ocean liner sunk in a British air attack in 1945, with great loss of life.

One of a group of four that included the Albert Ballin, SS Hamburg, and SS New York, the Deutschland was launched on 28 April 1923. She began her maiden voyage on 27 March 1924, to Southampton and then New York City. The ship had tremendous problems with vibration, becoming known as the "Cocktail Shaker"; she was re-engined in 1929, with service speed reduced to 19 knots.

In 1940, she became an accommodation ship for the German navy at Gdynia. In 1945, on seven Baltic voyages, she carried 70,000 soldiers and refugees from the German eastern territories to the west.


In April 1945, she possibly began conversion to a hospital ship. The story goes that an attempt was made to paint the vessel white, but there was only sufficient paint available to paint her funnels white, and to paint a Red Cross on one side of one of her funnels. On May 3, 1945, she capsized and sank in the Bay of Lübeck off Neustadt by the same British air attack that sank SS Cap Arcona and Thielbek.

In 1948, her wreck was raised and scrapped.

  • Roy Nesbit - Cap Arcona: atrocity or accident? - Aeroplane Monthly, June 1984.
  • Williams, David, Wartime Disasters at Sea, Patrick Stephens Ltd., Nr Yeovil, Somerset, UK, 1997, pp.236-37.

  1. ^ Sometimes called Deutschland IV to distinguish from others of the name


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