The general cargo ship Maas (1958-1992). The 1:100 scale model was produced by the Christel Stührmann workshop in Hamburg.
This shipyard model of the general cargo ship „Maas“ is part of a generous permanent loan that Mareike Janssen made to our museum in 2019. The loan consists of a series of large-scale models of ships from the Hamburg shipping company Friedrich A. Detjen. The models (some of which we have already posted in recent months) are all first-class representations of the ships and were made by some of the most renowned model-making workshops in northern Germany. They were built at the same time as the original ships to give the company an idea of what the ship would look like when completed. Afterwards, the models were displayed in the company’s business premises for advertising purposes. Such models are called shipyard models or construction models. The production of such models has been a tradition since the 17th century, and companies still order them either from the shipyards or from model-making workshops when a new ship is being built. The loan from Mareike Janssen provides a good overview of the variety of merchant ship types that sailed the seas in the first half of the 20th century. The models are currently on display on deck 9 of the museum.
The „Maas“ was built in 1958 at the shipyard Flensburger Schiffsbau-Gesellschaft in Flensburg and was launched in 1959. She was operated by a subsidiary of the Friedrich A. Detjen shipping company until 1973. The early 1970s were turbulent times for shipping. The oil crisis of 1973 caused major problems for world trade and international logistics, and for conventional merchant shipping, advancing containerization already posed considerable competition. As early as 1972, the „Maas“ no longer sailed under the German flag but under the Liberian flag, and her new home port was Monrovia. A year later she was sold to the Luen Yick Shipping Co. based in Mogadishu, Somalia. She was renamed „Baltic Sea“ and sailed under this name until 1976, when she was acquired by the China Ocean Shipping Co. in Beijing and renamed „Lin Yin“. Her home port from 1979 was Guangzhou. Until the end of her career in 1992, the ship now sailed under the Chinese flag.
The 1:100 scale model was produced by the Chr. Stührmann workshop in Hamburg.