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Dansk Linjefart: Fra Selandia til Emma Maersk

This commissioned book sought to investigate how, in the century since the world’s first ocean-going motor ship, the Selandia, entered service, Denmark has become the leading nation involved in liner shipping – that is to say, scheduled trans-oceanic cargo-carrying shipping services. Selandia was designed and built in Copenhagen for a Danish owner, the East Asiatic Company, and fitted with Danish-designed and manufactured engines. The subsequent expansion of Denmark’s diesel-powered merchant fleet became increasingly advantageous during the inter-war era and enabled the country’s liner shipping companies better to survive the Great Depression than those elsewhere using far less efficient coal-fired steamships the fleets (such as those owned in Great Britain). In the post-war era, Denmark re-equipped with very modern diesel cargo liners and, a generation later, with highly effective container ships. Maersk Line, a Danish company operating Danish-designed (and often Danish built) container ships grew to become the world’s biggest operator of vessels of this type, benefiting from market deregulation and the outsourcing of manufacturing from Europe and the USA to South-East Asia and elsewhere. The research is partly a history of the technological development of cargo liners in Denmark and partly a business history of the major Danish liner companies commissioning and operating these vessels. It contextualises design developments in relation to wider political and economic shifts and consequent alterations in trade patterns. The research involved a number of interviews with retired and practicing naval architects in Denmark, as well as current and retired shipping company directors. It also involved substantial archival research in the Danish National Maritime Museum, in the Danish Business Archives and in various other libraries and archives in Denmark, the UK, Germany and elsewhere. Although the work was published only in October 2011, it has been reviewed by various Danish shipping industry journals and national newspapers in Denmark. The author was invited by the Skibsteknisk Selskab (Society of Naval Architects in Denmark) to deliver a keynote lecture in Copenhagen about the research on 16 January 2012.

In the period 2008-2011, I researched and wrote a manuscript exploring how Denmark had become the world's leading operator of liner services. The research spanned from the latter part of the nineteenth century, when the first Danish 'deep sea' steamship routes were established, until 2011. The work focused in particular on technological developments and on the business histories and operational contexts of the major shipping lines, DFDS, EAC and Maersk. The manuscript was published in Danish by Nautilus Forlag and was well received by reviewers. An updated English language edition is planned for 2014.