Early in November 1971 Frank Dahl joined the 423 GRT coaster GERDA FREESE, owned by Captain Heinz Freese The full scantling ship of 620 tdw had been completed in 1956 by Stader Schiffswerft. Frank Dahl left Heinz Freese in the summer of 1980 to join Drochtersen-based Captain Gerhard Ahlers who had sold his second MAGULA to Heinz Freese in 1979. The latter traded the ship as his second GERDA FREESE (440 GRT / 905 tdw / built 1971, C. Pape, Bremen-Roennebeck). On 28 November 1978 Captain Ulf Ahrens, the son of Gerhard, had taken delivery of the newbuilding SEA MERLAN, a Rhine-going coaster of 499 GRT / 1550 tdw and 62 TEU container intake, completed by Bayerische Schiffbau GmbH vorm. Anton Schellenberger for account of a company by the name of MS ‘MERLAN’ Ulf Ahrens KG. The same Bavarian shipbuilders delivered the slightly modified repeat ship SEA MAGULA to Gerhard Ahrens KG Reederei MS ‘Magula’ on June 30, 1980. The ship’s name which stands for members of the Ahrens family (wife Magdalene, Gerhard and son Ulf Ahrens) was given the SEA prefix since like the SEA MERLAN the newbuilding had been fixed for a period time charter with Freight Express Seacon Ltd. The contract was to run for 19 years.

Disaster struck shortly before commissioning the second Erlenbach newbuilding when Captain Ulf Ahrens on board the SEA MERLAN, on a voyage from the UK to northern Spain with a cargo of tunings, lost his life by inhaling poisonous gas while inspecting the cargo.

Despite this stroke of fate Captain Gerhard Ahrens continued his business which his only son Ulf was to have taken over. He knew Frank Dahl from the time he sold his old MAGULA; and he engaged him as the new mate. Frank Dahl felt very much at home on the ship, the more so as his wife Birgit accompanied him on board for about six years. It was his aim ultimately to own a ship and, not unlike many Dutch skippers, to make it a home for himself and his family. He discussed this vision with his shipmaster and owner, Gerhard Ahlers, who had come to appreciate his mate as a good and reliable man, perfectly capable of taking command of a ship. Frank Dahl accepted Ahrens’ offer to purchase some shares of the Stade-based company of Gerhard Ahrens KG Reederei MS ‘Magula’, and from 1984, Gerhard Ahrens and Frank Dahl jointly managed the company and the ship. As time went on, Frank Dahl increased his shareholding, and on Gerhard Ahrens’ untimely death in the spring of 1987, Dahl became a general partner in the two companies owning the SEA MERLAN and the SEA MAGULA.

Frank Dahl, the master mariner and by now a ship owner, had become familiar with the Rhine-sea trade, and to an extent also the inland waterways trade. Conventional ships such as the SEA MERLAN and the SEA MAGULA were of limited value for inland waterways on account of their draft and height. His first newbuilding and his third ship was to be a vessel which could navigate on virtually all canals in the Rhine/Ruhr district and serve even the smallest of inland terminals. It would thereby have the edge on the fairly massive competition in the Rhine-sea trades. Dahl discussed his ideas with the designers at Bayerische Schiffbaugesellschaft who introduced him to Schottel GmbH & Co. of Spay on the river Rhine, manufacturers of maritime propulsion units. The latter suggested using two water-jet propulsions aft and a third one fore to improve manoeuvrability and decrease draft. However, the ORADE, as in the case of the MERLAN the Latin name of a fish, had severe technical problems which became apparent during the first and subsequent two additional trial trips. The first German rudderless ship with its Schottel pump-jet propulsion neither achieved course stability nor the intended speed of eleven knots. The shipyard added a conventional skeg after the second trial trip which helped.

After the delivery of the ORADE on the 2nd April 1991, four months after the contractual deadline, the Taeglicher Hafenbericht trade journal wrote: ‘During the trial trips the first screw-less coaster propelled only by three Schottel pump-jets (two aft, one fore) had created considerable problems for its builders. The ship with its new propulsion had poor manoeuvring qualities leading to course deflections. Following several conversions in way of the aft part ultimately leading to the installation of a skeg with trimming flaps, trial trips conducted on the 26th March 1991 from Rotterdam produced satisfactory manoeuvring qualities and owner Frank Dahl eventually took delivery of the ship after Easter (1991).

Speaking to Taeglicher Hafenbericht, ship owner Dahl emphasised that the basic idea of a rudder-less ship had a promising future, particularly considering that the SEA ORADE at a draft of 2.50 metres had a cargo intake of 1180 tonnes (plus 30 tonnes of stores and bunkers). The advantage, according to Dahl, was that his SEA ORADE can take relatively large cargoes since she can manoeuvre forwards just as well as backwards and does not have to turn about. The SEA ORADE was en route from Duisburg to Gelsenkirchen on the 12th April 1991 under the command of her owner and made fast at the loading port at about 20:00hrs as the largest sea-going ship so far. At Gelsenkirchen, the ship will take the maximum amount of cargo to a draft of 2.50 metres and will top up at Duisburg whence she will sail, with a full cargo, to Millwall near London.

Dahl considers the seagoing performance of his ship to be ‘good’. There had been no problems on a stormy trip with at force eight. During the trial trip, the fully controllable ship did 10.5 knots ahead and nine knots astern. The owner quoted the total deadweight capacity of the newbuilding as 1702 tonnes at 3.17m draft. He added that for further newbuildings he intended, jointly with the shipyard further to increase the efficiency of the jet propulsion.

Eventually, this never came to pass. “All in all, this ship cost ten years of my life”, as Dahl says today. “Schottel utterly failed to keep their over-confident promises; they totally exaggerated propulsion efficiency.” The shipyard, being liable under a guarantee, was in an unenviable situation and took Schottelwerft to court more than once. At the end of the day both the shipbuilders and the ship owner had suffered considerable financial losses due to the installation of an immature propulsion. Finally in 1998 the Schottel units were replaced by a conventional twin-screw propulsion with a rudder.

Frank Dahl terminated his co-operation with British charterers Seacon in 1997/98 when prolongation negotiations did not result in economic rates. He did not commit his three ships, the MERLAN, MAGULA and ORADE (now without the SEA prefix) to period employment but instead instructed his house brokers, Wagenborg Scheepvaart BV of Delfzijl who had already attended to the Ahlers family, to seek employment for his ships on the spot market. Frank Dahl never looked back since results from the spot market almost always exceed those from time charter contracts. He had since become the sole owner of the MERLAN which he re-named DENIKA after his children Dennis and Annika.

In the same year 1997, on the 15th May, Frank Dahl took delivery of his second newbuilding, the GRANEBORG. Unusually, the ship was named and taken delivery of, in Delfzijl, after completion of loading a full cargo of salt for Kokkola in Finland. The GRANEBORG had been completed by Bodewes Scheepswerf ‘Volharding’ Foxhol BV of Winschoterdiep in Northern Holland as the thirteenth unit of a series of 4100 tdw cargo ships The ship cost Deutschmark 12.7 million. Of that sum, investors including Captain Dahl had put up Deutschmark 6.05 million. Once taken over and to facilitate financing arrangements, the vessel entered into a two-year time charter with Wagenborg at a daily rate of Deutschmark 6600 net. Time charterers Wagenborg insisted on a name starting on G and ending on BORG and including a stretch of water. The Grane reservoir is located in the northern Harz mountains in Germany. The ship, owned by Reederei Frank Dahl MS ‘Graneborg’ GmbH like the three others has been registered at Stade. Frank Dahl would have preferred his home town Cuxhaven to be the homeport for the ship, but somehow the local ship register was unable to complete the registration formalities within the desired short period of time.

GRANEBORG kept her name even after the expiry of the time charter since she remained under the wings of Wagenborg. What was originally planned to be a repeat ship eventually saw the light of day as a newbuilding more than twice as big. It was again Bodewes Volharding who at the end of 1998 completed, as the second unit of the V-series comprising a total of 21 ships, the VEERSEBORG, a 8700 tdw multi-purpose cargovessel. The ship owes ist name to the small river Veerse, which flows into the river Wuemme near Rotenburg in northern Germany.

The devastating Schottel experience notwithstanding, Captain Frank Dahl had not entirely abandoned the idea of outstandingly efficient Rhine and river-going freighters. Jointly with consulting engineers formerly with Bayerische Schiffbaugesellschaft in Erlenbach and the Volharding group of Dutch shipyards he developed a new type of ship. Volharding had acquired the Pattje shipyard at Waterhuizen which looked for newbuilding orders for smaller ships. The new type resembled the ORADE but had twin-screw propulsion and a rudder.

Pattje booked the orders for the REMORA and the MARLIN under yard numbers 438 and 439 but for economic reasons sub-contracted the construction of the hulls to Daewoo Mangalia Heavy Industries SA in Mangalia, Romania. Both hulls were towed to the Pattje yard at Waterhuizen for completion, as a twin tow. Delivery of the completed ships took place on

the 7th September 2000, followed by repeat ship DANIO in May 2001. Also bearing fish names, the trio’s vital statistics are: l.o.a. 80.9 metres, draft 3.20 metres, and cargo intake 1805 tonnes which corresponds to the ORADE. Wagenborg who are the exclusive brokers for all four ships of even size can now go for contracts which were out of reach for the ORADE as a single ship. In fact, with their excellent manoeuvring qualities

and capable of serving even the smallest terminals on the rivers Rhine and Ruhr these ships owned by Frank Dahl have no serious competitors.

Mrs Ellen Jacobs-Ahrendt, the spouse of Roland Jacobs, a director of Parenco, being long-standing clients of Wagenborg in the field of timber shipments, was the sponsor at the naming ceremony for the REMORA. Mrs Anneke van der Molen-Brijder, head of the Koninklijke Wagenborg secretariat, assumed the same function for the MARLIN. The owner’s speech took the form of a poem written by himself which unfortunately escapes translation.

The VOSSBORG, the second 8700-tonner, was launched at the Foxhol yard of Bodewes Volharding at 11:11 hrs on the 11th November 2000, sponsored by Mrs Edith Teufl, spouse of the managing director of the financing house, Finex-Finanzforum AG of Munich. Of course, Voss is a river, a rivulet to be honest, near Berlin. VOSSBORG, the ninth ship of the V class, as well as the Dahl-owned VEERSEBORG has joined the Wagenborg V-ships earnings pool.

Her cargo space capacity is 545,000 cubic feet at 6120 GT. The ships have a nominal container intake of 552 TEU and the high ice class of E3, but at a speed of 15 knots they are not sufficiently fast for the container trade. VOSSBORG and VEERSEBORG fly the German flag and are deployed in the timber and bulk trades.

Frank Dahl took delivery of a third ship of this type, named the VOLMEBORG instead of VICTORIABORG as originally planned at the end of 2001. The Volme is a river close to the Luxembourg border. At the request of Finex-Finanzforum AG the ship was christened the FINEX.

Early in 2001 the Dahl fleet increased by two units. Mibau Baustoffhandel (Heidelberger Zement AG are among its shareholders) and building materials trader Hans-Juergen Hartmann of Cadenberge near Cuxhaven appointed Reederei Frank Dahl as managers for their self-discharging bulker KARI ARNHILD, built in Norway in 1994 and named after the two sponsors, the spouses of the managing director of the shipyard and of the then ship owner, Kristian Jebsen, respectively. The second vessel under Frank Dahl management, the STONES, followed in May 2001.

Built by the J.J.Sietas shipyard in Hamburg-Neuenfelde, the 28,000 tdw bulk carrier performed two trial trips early in May 2001, with the hull yet to be coated and the shipboard self-discharging plant incomplete. The ship, moored at the Ueberseebruecke landing stage in Hamburg, was named on the 11th May 2002, the main day of the traditional Hamburg Port Festival celebrated for the 812th time in that year. She was shortly thereafter handed over to a shipowning partnership whose shareholders are Heidelberger Zement AG and Mibau Baustoffhandel GmbH owned by Hans-Juergen Hartmann. The ship’s name which is pronounced STO-NES has a rather unique origin. Hans-Juergen Hartmann wanted the name to have something to do with stones, like all Jebsen-owned bulkers whose names end on NES and of which several are employed by Mibau. Originally the ship was to be named STONENES but that proved to be awkward to pronounce. The ship which cost some Deutschmark 60 million to build was equipped with a 3000 tonnes per hour self-discharging plant supplied by Swedish manufacturers BMH Marine, part of the Babcock group of companies. The plant which includes a conveyor belt of 80 metres length enables the ship to discharge cargo at terminals without shore-based handling equipment, 24 hours a day and quite without assistance from ashore. Cargo is normally loaded via high-capacity chutes. Thus, self-discharging bulk carriers, by virtue of high cargo handling rates at both ends, complete more round voyages in a year than conventional bulkers. The STONES and the KARI ARNHILD, since re-named SPLITTNES, are mainly deployed carrying stone chippings and gravel from Norwegian quarries owned by the Heidelberger Zement AG group to more than twenty discharge terminals, also owned by the group, in Great Britain and in the northern France / Poland range. Including the STONES, Mibau employs nine self-discharging bulk carriers. Managing partner Hans-Juergen Hartmann is determined to exploit to the hilt the transportation economies achieved through substantial investments: “Deutsche Bahn AG offers land transport at subsidised rates. Efficient self-discharging bulk carriers beat any other transport mode, hands down.” When the KARI ARNHILD was doing voyage repairs at a Bremerhaven repair yard she was given the Hartmann livery, complete with a blue hull and the Hartmann funnel mark, and was re-named SPLITTNES. She was also registered at her new homeport, Cuxhaven. In November 2001 Frank Dahl was appointed as manager for the Hartmann-owned dredger SEEKIES.

Reederei Frank Dahl is exclusively engaged in the carriage of dry bulk commodities, timber and new bulk. The venture into self-discharging bulkers meant an expansion of the fleet which in turn required a strengthening of the administrative side. Frank Dahl had gradually occupied with masses of files, drawings and the like every available cubic foot of space including side rooms, the basement and even the sauna when his wife Birgit ruled that enough was enough. So, early in the year 2000 the company moved to modern premises in Stoertebecker-Passage close to the Cuxhaven main railway station. The new office had to be expanded already in the summer of 2001. Frank Dahl’s mother works as his secretary, and the other members of the team are one female staff manager and three superintendents.

Ship owner and master mariner Frank Dahl, aged only 47, has thought ahead to make sure that his company may not be left without a fully functional management should something unforeseen happen. Therefore, he established, on the 15th May 2002, the new company Reedereikontor Cuxhaven GmbH & Co. KG (RKC), and he appointed Michael Jaeger and Olaf Wulff, both formerly active master mariners, as equal partners and joint managing directors. Both come from seafaring families. Olaf Wulff’s (born 1961) father can look back at 38 years on board of Henry Stahl ships, whereas the father of Michael Jaeger (born 1972), himself a master mariner, owns the mv CHRISTA-KERSTIN – GT 1939 / 1928. Olaf Wulff (born 1961) and Michael Jaeger (born 1972) have been working for Frank Dahl as superintendents. RKC will be responsible for the further expansion of the company, but Frank Dahl reserves the right also in future to commission ships under his own name. The new arrangements have the blessing of the house banks and the issuing houses involved in financing the fleet, as also of Koninklijke Wagenborg of Delfzijl.

Planning for fleet expansion is in an advanced state.

top |