Bremen, the run for Murmansk

Norddeutscher Lloyd wanted ships that could cross in five days, so that two of them could keep up a weekly service that had always needed three. They were Bremen and Europa. Bremen was built in her namesake city by Deschimag and launched on 16 August 1928 by President Hindenburg, one day after Europa at Hamburg.

On 16 July 1929 she left Bremerhaven under Commodore Leopold Ziegenbein. She reached New York in 4 days, 17 hours and 42 minutes, at an average of 27.83 knots, and the westbound Blue Riband that Mauretania had held for twenty years was hers. On the way back she took the eastbound record too.

Between her funnels she carried a catapult and a small seaplane. Hours before she arrived, the plane was launched with the mail, so that the letters reached land before the ship did.

On 22 August 1939 she sailed for New York for the last time. Ordered home as the war came, she landed her passengers, was held for days by American inspections, and left empty on 30 August. At sea her crew painted her grey and blacked out her windows. On 6 September she reached Murmansk, in the Soviet Union; in December she ran for home, and a British submarine that sighted her on the way did not fire.

She never sailed again. On 16 March 1941 fire broke out aboard at her quay and gutted her. A young member of the crew was blamed; the sources do not agree on his name or his age, and it has never been settled that he acted alone. What was left was cut up for steel, and in 1946 the remains of the hull were blown up on a sandbank in the Weser.