Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World

Chapter 2: The Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company

THE PAN-ATLANTIC STEAMSHIP COMPANY 1933–57 2A corporation founded in the Great Depression year of 1933, called the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company, can hardly lay claim to the kind of long and colorful maritime heritage that one associates with the likes of, say, Cunard or Holland America. With its operational headquarters in the quiet Gulf Coast port city of Mobile, Alabama, the new company’s objective was to provide scheduled steamship service—primarily cargo, but perhaps some incidental passenger traffic as well—between ports along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. Such coastwise steamship service, as it was called, represented a style of oceangoing transport that was quite popular, and reasonably profitable, in the decades leading up to World War II. The Early Years of Pan-Atlantic Pan-Atlantic, though, would never become much of a force in coastwise trade. The more prominent coastal steamship companies of the era—Clyde-Mallory, Merchant and Miners Steamship Company, the Savannah Line— could boast long histories and were especially known for the distinctive passenger tonnage they operated. As both a new carrier and one emphasizing cargo service, Pan-Atlantic would never rival its older and more glamorous competitors . But the company offered genuine liner service—that is to say, steamship arrivals and departures at selected port cities on a regular schedule. Before Pan-Atlantic was a year old, the company’s fleet consisted of four oceangoing cargo ships, all standard designs that were built under the auspices of the United States Shipping Board as part of the nation’s mobilization for World War I. Pan-Atlantic was formally chartered on July 24, 1933, and began operations between New Orleans and ports along the East Coast five weeks later on the first of September.1 Table 2.1 provides statistical information about the initial Pan-Atlantic fleet; all four vessels were powered by three-cylinder triple-expansion reciprocating steam engines. From the outset, Pan-Atlantic was a subsidiary of the larger Waterman Steamship Company. New Orleans–born John Barnet Waterman (1866– 1937) founded the company that bears his name in 1919 as a venture that would help promote maritime commerce via the port of Mobile, and Waterman Steamship would see steady growth in the era between the two table 2.1. Pan-Atlantic Fleet: 1935 Off. No. Name Hull dimensions GRT Place built (year) Notes 217373 Pan Royal 411 ⳯ 54 ⳯ 27 5,627 San Pedro, Calif. 1, 2 a) West (1918) Carnifax b) Exford 218731 Pan Atlantic 387 ⳯ 52 ⳯ 27 4,810 Staten Island, N.Y. 3, 4 a) Richmond (1919 ) Borough b) Willfaro d) XXI Aprile 218903 Pan American 387 ⳯ 52 ⳯ 27 4,810 Staten Island, N.Y. 4 a) Yaphank (1919) b) Willpolo 219683 Panama City 380 ⳯ 53 ⳯ 27 4,846 Tacoma, Wash. 2, 5 a) Ossa (1920) b) Exbrook d) Atlas Notes All vessel dimensions cited here and elsewhere are displayed in rounded feet. 1. Sank in the North Atlantic following collision with another freighter, February 9, 1943. 2. Acquired from Export Steamship Company, of New York, parent company of American Export Lines. 3. Sold to Italian interests and reflagged Italian, 1937. 4. Acquired from Williams Steamship Company of New York. 5. Sold 1937 and reflagged Panamanian. 14 : : : box boats world wars. Waterman began operations in 1919 with a cargo ship called Eastern Sun that it had been allocated by the United States Shipping Board. Built in Kobe, Japan, in 1918 and originally called Taifuku Maru No. 2, Waterman’s first vessel was dispatched from Mobile on a transatlantic voyage to Liverpool and Manchester, and the company began a period of steady growth. In 1926, for instance, Waterman organized a subsidiary, the Mobile, Miami and Gulf Steamship Company, while the following year saw the company establish a separate division to operate steamship service to and from Puerto Rico. The Waterman corporate family eventually included a shipyard and a stevedoring firm in Mobile, and the company even made a less than successful effort to establish a commercial airline to fly between New Orleans and San Juan.2 Like its Pan-Atlantic subsidiary, Waterman Steamship was also based in Mobile, Alabama, and from the mid-1930s onward, Waterman concentrated its efforts on international routes and service to and from Puerto Rico, as well as intercoastal operations between the East and West coasts. Pan-Atlantic was left to handle coastwise service—that is to say, operations covered by...