Albert Ballin

Who was Albert Ballin?

Albert Ballin was a German shipping magnate, who was the general director of the Hamburg-Amerikanische Packetfahrt-Actien-Gesellschaft or Hamburg-America Line, at times the world's largest shipping company. Albert Ballin is popularly known as the father of modern cruise ship travel. He invented the concept of the cruise ship.

The SS Auguste Viktoria, named after the German Empress Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, is the first modern cruise ship in the world. She sailed on May 10, 1889 from Hamburg to New York via Southampton. Two years later, she went on the world's first Mediterranean cruise.

In 1901, Ballin built the Emigration Halls on the Hamburg island of Veddel to accommodate the many thousands of people from all over Europe who arrived at the Port of Hamburg every week to emigrate to North and South America on his company's ships. The island is now the BallinStadt Museum.

In 1913, HAPAG owns three of the world's biggest cruise liners but they were all seized by the U.S. and British governments as part of the war reparations. HAPAG's biggest ship, the SS Imperator, was the German Titanic. The Imperator became the British Cunard's RMS Berengaria in 1919.