wikipedia the free encyclopedia jump to navigation search this article may be expanded with text translated from the corresponding article in german . january 2011 click show for important translation instructions . view a machine translated version of the german article . google s machine translation is a useful starting point for translations but translators must revise errors as necessary and confirm that the translation is accurate rather than simply copy pasting machine translated text into the english wikipedia . do not translate text that appears unreliable or low quality . if possible verify the text with references provided in the foreign language article . after translating translated de deutsche afrika linien john t. essberger group of companies must be added to the talk page to ensure copyright compliance . for more guidance see wikipedia translation . the deutsche afrika linien gmbh & co. john t. essberger gmbh & co. dal jte is a german shipping company based in hamburg . 1 it has a workforce of 1200 1300 world wide and an annual turnover of about 350 million . the headquarters of palmaille in hamburg altona is situated on the elbe river and consists of an 18th century palace and several modern buildings . the company operates container and general cargo services between europe the canary islands eastern and southern africa and indian ocean ports . gas and chemical tankers are operated under the name essberger tankers . in addition the group offers logistics and insurance services as well as the travel agency hammonia travel . it was founded in hamburg in 1924 as the essberger tankschiffreederei by the john theodor essberger 1886 1959 . essberger was british born but had become a naturalised german citizen before 1914 . he commanded torpedo boats during the first world war and was named leader of german shipping during the third reich . in 1942 essberger took over the woermann linie and deutsche ost afrika linie from the cigarette manufacturer philipp f rchtegott reemtsma . 2 after the war the fleet was dispossessed . however essberger soon built up a new fleet and became once again one of the largest private shipowners in west germany . after essberger s death in 1959 the company was taken over by his daughter liselotte von rantzau essberger 1918 1993 . just before the oil crisis of 1973 the company placed an order for two new large tankers . the new ships were launched in 1975 at geltinger bay and later sold at a considerable loss . in the 1980s liselotte s sons dr. eberhart von rantzau and heinrich von rantzau took charge of the company . following a close partnership with safmarine for many decades deutsche afrika linien and safmarine decided to form a long term alliance called the safmarine dal joint venture safdal in 1997 to represent their commercial interests in the southern africa europe container service saecs . since then the business has expanded slowly but steadily and has expanded into chemical tanker transport . today the fleet of dal john t. essberger has 34 dry cargo ships and tankers . references edit company overview of dal deutsche afrika linien gmbh & co. kg . investing.businessweek.com . bloomberg businessweek . retrieved november 19 2014 . welcome to deutsche afrika linien john t. essberger . rantzau.de . retrieved november 19 2014 . retrieved from https en.wikipedia.org w index.php title deutsche afrika linien john t. essberger group of companies & oldid 634477123 categories shipping companies of germanyhidden categories articles to be expanded from january 2011all articles to be expandedarticles needing translation from german wikipedia navigation menu personal tools not logged intalkcontributionscreate accountlog in namespaces article talk variants views read edit view history more search navigation main pagecontentsfeatured contentcurrent eventsrandom articledonate to wikipediawikipedia store interaction helpabout wikipediacommunity portalrecent changescontact page tools what links hererelated changesupload filespecial pagespermanent linkpage informationwikidata itemcite this page print export create a bookdownload as pdfprintable version in other projects wikimedia commons languages deutsch edit links this page was last modified on 19 november 2014 at 03 10 . text is available under the creative commons attribution sharealike license ; additional terms may apply . by using this site you agree to the terms of use and privacy policy . wikipedia is a registered trademark of the wikimedia foundation inc. a non profit organization . privacy policy about wikipedia disclaimers contact wikipedia developers cookie statement mobile view