Shipowners

Compagnie Maritime Belge (Lloyd Royal) Antwerp

Congo, and then the world

Founded

1895

Based at

Antwerp

The largest Belgian shipping company began as a British one. On 24 January 1895 the Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo was founded in Antwerp at the request of Leopold II and with British money: the company was in effect a branch of Elder Dempster's African Steam Ship Co of Liverpool. On 6 February 1895 the first Léopoldville sailed from Antwerp for the Congo Free State. The line was Belgian in name and British in capital; only after the Congo became a Belgian colony in 1908 did a patriotic movement begin to make it genuinely Belgian.

For thirty-five years the company sailed to the Congo and nowhere else: passengers, cargo and mail, with the famous -ville liners named after the colonial towns – Léopoldville, Albertville, Elisabethville, Thysville. In 1930 it absorbed the failing Lloyd Royal Belge. The name became Compagnie Maritime Belge (Lloyd Royal), and for the first time there were services to North and South America and the Far East. With the takeover came the Lloyd's -ier fleet: the Persier, the Indier, the Macedonier, the Olympier.

The war cost the company most of its fleet. On Christmas Eve 1944, with the Léopoldville, it lost the ship that had begun it all in 1895 – the fourth of that name, full of American infantry bound for Cherbourg. The fleet was rebuilt quickly after the war. In 1960 CMB in turn took over Armement Deppe.

Ships in this database (19)

• M/V ALEX VAN OPSTAL
• S/S ALBERTVILLE
• M/V PIRIAPOLIS
• S/S MACEDONIER · 4 lost
• S/S OLYMPIER · 8 lost
• S/S KASONGO · 6 lost
• S/S INDIER · 42 lost
• M/V MOKAMBO · 2 June 1941 · 1 May 1943
• S/S MERCIER · 7 lost
• S/S GANDIA · 65 lost
• S/S BELGIAN FIGHTER · 5 lost
• S/S EMILE FRANCQUI · 56 lost
• S/S JEAN JADOT · 15 lost
• M/V MOANDA · 29 lost
• S/S LEOPOLDVILLE · 770 lost
• S/S PERSIER · 20 lost
• M/V COPACABANA
• S/S ELISABETHVILLE · 5 lost
• S/S THYSVILLE · 3 lost · list 1 · list 2

Lloyd Royal Belge Antwerp

Founded to keep Belgium fed

Founded

1916

Until

1930

Based at

Antwerp

Lloyd Royal Belge was not born of commercial ambition but of hunger. In the spring of 1916 the British government forbade its own ships to carry cargo between neutral ports. That left the grain relief of the Commission for Relief in Belgium – Herbert Hoover's programme, which moved American grain through Rotterdam into occupied Belgium – without shipping.

The answer was a fleet of its own. On 26 June 1916 three shipping firms merged into Lloyd Royal Belge: the Antwerpsche Zeevaart Maatschappij, the Scheepvaartmaatschappij Gylsen and the S.A. de Commerce et de Navigation, all three controlled by the shipowners A. Brys and H. Gylsen. The head office was in Antwerp on paper, but Antwerp was occupied; the company worked through the war from exile and only moved into its own offices in the city on 7 April 1919.

The Lloyd named its ships in -ier. Four of them sail through this database: the Persier, the Indier, the Macedonier and the Olympier. The company did not last fifteen years: the Depression broke it, and in 1930 it was taken over by the Compagnie Belge Maritime du Congo. Its name stayed inside its successor's for decades afterwards.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.

Armement Deppe Antwerp

The oldest of them all

Founded

1863

Until

1984

Based at

Antwerp

Armement Deppe is the oldest company in this database. It was founded in 1863 in Antwerp by Adolph Deppe, in the second half of the nineteenth century, when the port threw up a whole series of large shipping firms. Later it also traded under the name Compagnie Nationale Belge de Transports Maritimes.

Deppe specialised in the run to Central and South America, and in 1906 set up the Compagnie Royale Belgo-Argentine for it. Its ships carried Belgian province and city names, which shows plainly in this database: the Brabant, the Limbourg, the Luxembourg, the Hainaut, the Gand, the Bruxelles. Eight Deppe ships stand here, and every one of them cost lives.

The company survived the war, but not as an independent one: in 1960 CMB took it over, and on 1 January 1984 it was merged entirely into NV CMB SA. That ended a hundred and twenty years of Antwerp shipowning.

Ships in this database (8)

• S/S LUXEMBOURG · 5 lost
• M/V LIMBOURG · 22 lost
• S/S GAND · 1 lost
• M/V BRABANT · 21 lost
• S/S BRUXELLES · 1 lost
• S/S HAINAUT · 1 lost
• S/S ELISABETH VAN BELGIE · 1 lost
• S/S ROUMANIE · 42 lost

Société Maritime Anversoise Antwerp

A Belgian flag for American ships

Founded

1940

Based at

Antwerp

The Société Maritime Anversoise was not a shipping firm that grew but a legal construction, and an American one. President Roosevelt's Neutrality Acts barred American ships from the war zone. To get round that, the SMA was set up in Antwerp in 1940, sixty per cent Belgian and forty per cent owned by United States Lines. American ships passed to the new company, took a Belgian name and a Belgian flag, and carried on.

All three SMA ships in this database were Hog Islanders, built in 1920 at the enormous wartime yard at Hog Island near Philadelphia. In February 1940 they changed hands:

• American Traveler → Ville d’Arlon
• American Importer → Ville de Gand
• American Farmer → Ville de Liège

The reprieve was short. The Ville de Gand was lost in August 1940, the Ville d’Arlon in December – with all hands – and the Ville de Liège in April 1941. All three within eight months, all three to a U-boat. At the end of the war the Ville d’Anvers was the only SMA ship still afloat.

Ships in this database (3)

• S/S VILLE DE GAND · 14 lost
• S/S VILLE D'ARLON · 56 lost
• S/S VILLE DE LIEGE · 40 lost

Agence Maritime Internationale Antwerp

The agent that became an owner

Founded

1919

Based at

Antwerp

The Agence Maritime Internationale was founded in Antwerp on 3 March 1919 and took over the business of the Walford shipping agency. It began, then, as an agent – the house that clears, charters and mans ships on someone else's account – and that same year was entrusted with the management of the Belgian Congo company. But it also sailed under its own name.

One AMI ship stands in this database: the Kabalo, built at Birkenhead in 1917, 5,186 tons, under Captain Vogels. She was torpedoed in the Atlantic in October 1940. The survivors came ashore in the Azores – picked up by the submarine that had sunk them – and were repatriated from Lisbon: some of the Belgians to occupied Belgium, the Congolese firemen to the Congo.

Ships in this database (1)

• S/S KABALO · 1 lost

Purfina, Armement de Gand Ghent

Romanian oil, Ghent tankers

Founded

1920

Based at

Ghent

The parent house came out of the settlement of the First World War. Four Romanian oil companies had been confiscated from their German owners after 1918 and came up for sale cheaply. To buy them, the Compagnie Financière Belge des Pétroles was founded in Antwerp on 25 February 1920 by Auguste Diagre, Hector Carlier, his brother Fernand and Aloys Van de Vyvere, with the Bank of Antwerp behind them. Three of the four Romanian firms were merged into Concordia, which by 1921 was producing 128,500 tons – eleven per cent of the entire Romanian crude output. The name Petrofina was not invented but grew: it was the house’s telegraphic address, and it stuck.

Crude oil has to come ashore somewhere, and for that a second company was founded in May 1920 together with the American Pure Oil: Purfina, to sell in Belgium and the Netherlands. In 1923 Petrofina bought out its co-owner – Purfina became a wholly owned subsidiary – and took over a small refinery at Ertvelde near Ghent. From then on Ghent was the home port, and from 1924 Purfina sailed tankers of its own.

That is why this owner stands here under its own name rather than the parent’s. In the papers the President Francqui is registered to the Société Anonyme Purfina Armement de Gand – as it is written in the declaration the first officer swore in London on 3 May 1943, and as it explains why a tanker with an Antwerp group behind her had Ghent as her home port. In England the company was represented by C.T. Bowring & Co. of London.

Tanker work was the most dangerous there was in wartime, and the fleet paid for it: of the group’s five tankers, one survived the war. The Purfina herself struck a mine in the roads of Le Havre on 3 June 1940. The President Sergent was torpedoed on 18 November 1942, with twenty-one dead. Six weeks later, at the end of December 1942, it was the President Francqui’s turn, north of the Azores.

Ships in this database (1)

• M/T PRESIDENT FRANCQUI · 5 lost

Belgian Gulf Oil Co Antwerp

An American oil company under the Belgian flag

Based at

Antwerp

The Belgian Gulf Oil Co SA of Antwerp was the Belgian subsidiary of the American Gulf Oil. It owned four tankers under the Belgian flag, and in 1940 that flag turned out to weigh more than the American parent.

On 7 June 1940 the Belgian government requisitioned the tanker Lubrafol through its consul in New York. The company acknowledged the requisition and ran the ship for about four more months on its own account under licence. At the end of October 1940 the government notified Gulf Oil that all four Belgian Gulf tankers would be taken over and chartered to the British Ministry of Shipping. Gulf Oil did not simply accept this; the matter went before an American court as Government of the Kingdom of Belgium v. Lubrafol.

The ship herself was torpedoed off the coast of Florida on 9 May 1942, with 67,000 barrels of fuel oil aboard.

Ships in this database (1)

• M/T LUBRAFOL · 13 lost

The Belgian State London

The owner with no office

Founded

1940

Until

1945

Based at

London

After 17 May 1940 the Belgian State was in a sense the owner of the whole fleet. But it also owned ships outright, and those can be told by their names: in 1941 and 1942 the British government transferred newly built standard ships of the Empire type to Belgium, and they were renamed beginning with Belgian. Management went to the Compagnie Maritime Belge.

• Empire Selwyn (Doxford, Sunderland, 1941) → Belgian Soldier, transferred in 1942
• Empire Ballantyne (Harland & Wolff, Govan, 1941) → Belgian Airman, transferred on 14 February 1942
• Empire Lapwing – herself already twice renamed, built in 1921 at Harriman, Pennsylvania → Belgian Fighter, transferred on 15 February 1942

All three were lost: the Belgian Soldier in August 1942, the Belgian Fighter in October 1942 off Cape Town, the Belgian Airman not until April 1945, a month before the end, off the coast of North Carolina.

Ships in this database (2)

• S/S BELGIAN SOLDIER · 21 lost
• M/V BELGIAN AIRMAN · 1 lost

Armement Hermans

Seven of the ten

Of the ten ships Armement Hermans owned, seven were lost, seventy per cent. Four of them went in the first winter of the war in British coastal waters: the Quenast in a storm, the Rosa on a mine off the Tyne, the Meuse near the Haisborough Banks – a raft was found with her frozen dead on it – and the Charles on the coast at Whitby.

After the lecture given by Paul E.R. Scarcériaux to the Belgian Academy of Marine, 16 October 1951.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.

Armement Cockerill Hoboken

Two ships the occupier took

Based at

Hoboken

Armement Cockerill lost two of its five ships, and both under the occupier’s flag: the Diamant and the Turquoise had been captured and were lost while in German service. At the Cockerill yard the occupier also seized the hulls lying there under construction; two of them, the Fusilier and the Florida, went down as German ships.

After the lecture given by Paul E.R. Scarcériaux to the Belgian Academy of Marine, 16 October 1951.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.

Armement Goossens

Two of the three

Armement Goossens had three ships and lost two. The Suzon was torpedoed on 1 October 1939, in the first month of the war; the Vae Victis was mined near the Aldeburgh buoy on 20 April 1942.

After the lecture given by Paul E.R. Scarcériaux to the Belgian Academy of Marine, 16 October 1951.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.

Armement Anversois Antwerp

The last ship out of Antwerp

Based at

Antwerp

The Brabo of the Armement Anversois was the last ship to leave the port of Antwerp, on 14 May 1940. That she was not left intact to the enemy, Scarcériaux put down to the energy of chief engineer Van Bauwel. Almost two years later she sank all the same, after a collision entering Newcastle.

After the lecture given by Paul E.R. Scarcériaux to the Belgian Academy of Marine, 16 October 1951.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.

Firma Snauwaert

One ship, lost at Bayonne

The Snauwaert firm owned one ship. The Jacqueline was serving as an auxiliary at Bayonne in September 1944, where the Germans scuttled her.

After the lecture given by Paul E.R. Scarcériaux to the Belgian Academy of Marine, 16 October 1951.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.

Sonaco

Released, and used all the same

The Bizon of the Sonaco had been captured and was then released by the Hamburg prize court – yet she went on sailing in German service. On 8 April 1944 a British motor launch sank her in the Channel Islands.

After the lecture given by Paul E.R. Scarcériaux to the Belgian Academy of Marine, 16 October 1951.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.

Armement Verschueren

One ship, and heavy weather

The Armement Verschueren owned one ship. The Pallieter was lost in heavy weather off the Mersey on 1 February 1941, after her cargo shifted.

After the lecture given by Paul E.R. Scarcériaux to the Belgian Academy of Marine, 16 October 1951.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.

Plouvier Maritime

From coaster to Sperrbrecher

The Alca of Plouvier Maritime lay at Boel when the occupier requisitioned her. She was converted into Sperrbrecher 185 Hansburg, a ship meant to run ahead of convoys through minefields, and was lost in dry dock 5 at Wilhelmshaven in the air raid of 12 April 1945.

After the lecture given by Paul E.R. Scarcériaux to the Belgian Academy of Marine, 16 October 1951.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.

Armement Vloebergs

Under a foreign flag, in her own service

The Johan of the Armement Vloebergs had been sold under a right of repurchase and sailed under the Panamanian flag as Trinidad. Under that flag she landed secret agents in North Africa in 1940 and 1941. On 10 May 1940 she had slipped out of Dordrecht while the enemy held the railway bridge; on 5 September 1941 explosive charges from a submarine sank her in the Atlantic.

After the lecture given by Paul E.R. Scarcériaux to the Belgian Academy of Marine, 16 October 1951.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.

Lijn Oostende-Dover Ostend

The packets under the White Ensign

Based at

Ostend

The Ostend–Dover line lost two of its nine packets. The Prince Philippe had been evacuated unfinished from Hoboken to England on 13 May 1940 and sank on the night of 15 July 1941 after a collision in the Irish Sea; the Prince Leopold was mined near the Nab Tower on 29 July 1944. Both were in British service, under the White Ensign. Scarcériaux did not count these ships among his seventy-seven losses.

After the lecture given by Paul E.R. Scarcériaux to the Belgian Academy of Marine, 16 October 1951.

No ships in this database; the forerunner of one that does.