Museum Tickets - Cap San Diego

Meet the Cap San Diego

Our ship entered service in 1962 after roughly eleven months of construction. It was the last of six identical general cargo freighters that operated on a regular route between Europe and South America. Southbound cargo included machinery, technical equipment and chemical products. From South America came mainly green coffee, cocoa, beef and fruit in refrigerated holds, plus edible oils in heated tanks. The "Cap San Diego" never carried bananas, incidentally.

The ship was commissioned by the Hamburg Süd shipping company, which at the time belonged to the Dr. Oetker group. All vessels in this series - known as a "class" - were named after geographical capes beginning with "Kap San..." (or "Capo San..."). Our ship takes its name from the western tip of Tierra del Fuego, Cape San Diego.

The "Cap San Diego" was built at the Deutsche Werft shipyard in Hamburg-Finkenwerder (where the Airbus plant stands today). She and her CAP SAN sister ships were highly advanced for their era: before containers, goods were loaded loose in crates, sacks or barrels. The ship is therefore equipped with large cargo holds, masts with cargo booms and two slewing cranes. All technical systems could be operated with ease, which made the CAP SAN ships a sought-after workplace for crews and dock workers alike.

The freighter could carry up to 10,000 tonnes of cargo - a load that took around seven days to handle in break-bulk operations. Today the same quantity moves in containers in eight hours at most. It is little surprise, then, that the "Cap San Diego" became unprofitable within just a few years of entering service as container shipping took hold. After the ship was sold in the early 1980s, it faced scrapping in Asia in 1986. At the very last moment, the "Cap San Diego" was saved through the efforts of the city of Hamburg, and today she lies as a true "daughter of Hamburg" at the Überseebrücke pier, in front of the Elbphilharmonie.