MS St. Louis

St. Louis in the port of Hamburg[1]
History
Germany
Name	St. Louis
Owner	Hamburg America Line
Port of registry	Hamburg
Builder	Bremer Vulkan, Bremen, Germany
Laid down	June 16, 1925
Launched	August 2, 1928
Maiden voyage	March 28, 1929
Identification	code letters RHDV (until 1933) call sign DIFG (by 1934)
Fate	Scrapped in 1952
General characteristics
Type	ocean liner
Tonnage	16,732 GRT; 9,637 NRT
Length	574 ft (175 m) overall 543.8 ft (165.8 m) registered
Beam	72 ft (22 m)
Depth	42.1 ft (12.8 m)
Decks	5
Installed power	2 × two-stroke diesel engines; total 3,060 NHP
Propulsion	2 × screws
Speed	16 knots (30 km/h; 18 mph)
Capacity	973 passengers: 270 cabin class, 287 tourist class, 416 third class
Sensors and processing systems	by 1930: wireless direction finding by 1934: gyrocompass

MS St. Louis was a diesel-powered ocean liner built by the Bremer Vulkan shipyards in Bremen for Hamburg America Line (HAPAG). She was named after the city of St. Louis, Missouri. She was the sister ship of Milwaukee. St. Louis regularly sailed the trans-Atlantic route from Hamburg to Halifax, Nova Scotia, and New York City, and made cruises to the Canary Islands, Madeira, Spain; and Morocco. St. Louis was built for both transatlantic liner service and for leisure cruises.^[2]

In 1939, during the build-up to World War II, the St. Louis carried more than 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany intending to escape antisemitic persecution. The refugees first tried to disembark in Cuba but were denied permission to land. After Cuba, the captain, Gustav Schröder, went to the United States and Canada, trying to find a nation to take the Jews in, but both nations refused. He finally returned the ship to Europe, where various countries, including the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands and France, accepted some refugees. Many were later caught in Nazi roundups of Jews in the occupied countries of Belgium, France and the Netherlands, and some historians have estimated that approximately a quarter of them were killed in death camps during the Holocaust.^[3] These events, also known as the "Voyage of the Damned", have inspired film, opera, and fiction.