General Cargo Ship Henriette Wilhelmine Schulte. Her original 1:100 yard model, built by the Workshop of Christel Stührmann, is currently in the depot of the museum. Why so? Because the yard model of her sister, Ilse Schulte is on display on deck 6, in our section dedicated to the history of modern maritime logistics.
The general cargo ship Henriette Wilhelmine Schulte was the older of two sisters that the Flender Werke AG Shipyard built for the Shipping company Schulte & Bruns in the second half of the 1950s. The company had been founded in Papenburg in 1882 and had a quite complex existence until the crisis of the 1970s had them file for bankruptcy in 1977. The skyrocketing oil prices, and the fact that the company had a strict policy against the use of flags of convenience made it impossible for them to withstand the turbulences of that era. The family names that composed the company are nevertheless sill important in the Northern German shipping industry today.
This ships were beautiful examples of what a fine cargo ship was in the late 1950s: with a capacity for 12920 DWT, 149 m of length, 20 m wide and a MAN two-stroke eight-cylinder engine with 5340 hp for 14 knots of top speed. The only trouble she had for non-German speakers was her somewhat lengthy and complicated name. Our colleagues at the „Freunde Der Seefahrt“ Maritime museum in Emden tell an undated anecdote about a pilot that announced the ship at a lock with the radio message (we quote) „This is the „Henriet Wilhe… this goddamn German Schulte ship!“ Be it as it may, the fact is that the ship was usually called simply „HWS“. That, until her company had to sell her in 1973. The buyers were the Yick Fung Shipping & Enterprises Co. Ltd., Mogadishu, Somalia, that renamed her Irish Sea. In 1975 she was sold again and renamed Hong Qi 106 by her new owners, the China Ocean Shipping Co. (COSCO from 1983 on), Canton, China. In 1984 she became the propriety of the Government of The Republic of China, Bureau of Maritime Transport Administration – Guangzhou Branch. There is no information that we know of on her further fate. In the addendum to the Lloyd’s Register 1992/93 she was deleted, because it was deemed questionable that she still existed.
Her original 1:100 yard model, built by the Workshop of Christel Stührmann, is currently in the depot of the museum. Why so? Because the yard model of her sister, Ilse Schulte is on display on deck 6, in our section dedicated to the history of modern maritime logistics.