The Heavy-lift vessel Kandelfels (1954-1986). Her original yard model was built by the Hamburg modelling workshop of Christel Stührmannin a scale of 1:100. It is displayed in our exhibition on the history of modern maritime logistics, on deck 6 of the museum.
The ship with the construction number 781 of the AG „Weser shipyard in Bremerhaven was launched on May 22, 1954. She was the heavy-lift vessel Kandelfels: the third ship to be named like that by the shipping company D.D.G. „Hansa“ in Bremen. She also was one of the last units built for that company with conventional heavy-lift cargo gear before the new Stülcken gear became a revolution in the shipping of heavy cargo. The Kandelfels was a 7113 GRT ship, 156 m long and 18,6 m wide with a draft of 8 m.
In June 1961, a special incident occurred on board. A lion that was to be shipped from Rotterdam to a zoo in Karachi broke free and wandered the decks for four days. The crew finally managed to force it into a corridor and lock it up there. In the port of Genoa, police armed with machine guns then guarded the unloading of the ship before a new cage was brought on board. The press wrote that four brave seamen lured the lion into its new cage with good words and a large meat bait. No further incidents occurred.
The Kandelfels‘ 165-tonne cargo boom was not freestanding on the deck, but close to the bridge superstructure. With this type of ship, the shipping company was able to increase their offer of regularly scheduled trips as well as ad more specially chartered voyages to their services. One such special voyage took the Kandelfels to Spitsbergen, an archipelago off the North Coast of Norway, in 1971. That pioneering voyage took her through unexplored territory within the permanently frozen ocean. She was to deliver a complete drilling rig for a French oil company. In 1976, the 156-meter, 7113 GRT vessel was sold to Silver Coast Second Cia. Naviera, Panama, but was chartered back by the Hansa Line under the name Silver Coast. In 1980, she was renamed Athens Star and sailed for the shipping company Athens Star Cia. Naviera S.A., Piraeus. When she was laid up in Piraeus in 1984, her 30 years of service finally ended. In 1986, the ship was transferred to İzmir in Turkey for scrapping.