This page will detail any frequently-asked questions about the Kaiserhafen and give some insights into its origin and creation.
What is the Kaiserhafen?
The Kaiserhafen aims to present articles and bibliography on martime history in a free-to-access, accurately-researched and visually-rich manner with a primary focus on German maritime history, but also other nautical history from the rest of the world too. Articles are focussed on the ships themselves, the important people around them and the shipping companies that built them. Information on many things featured here is generally limited online, or out of reach to most. Here, many stories are given light that are usually not found elsewhere. This site additionally serves as an archive to share high-quality, interesting images that are usually rare, and hard to locate.
What inspired the Kaiserhafen?
The Kaiserhafen initially started from the small want of the steamship: SS Kronprinz Wilhelm to be recognised more within the maritime community. Finding out about this ship’s colossal history and achievements only led to more research into countless more ships and people, and the realisation that they deserved to have their stories told and celebrated too. This idea initially started off as a small wiki in the summer of 2024, but the project continued to grow so a fully-fledged website was needed instead.
The biggest site inspiration by far is ssmaritime.com, created by Maritime Historian and Author: Dr. Reuben Goossens. This website is a phenomenal archive and passion project than one could genuinely get lost for days in its over 1’435 ship histories. Another extremely important influence includes the love letter of a site that is michelangelo-raffaello.com, dedicated to the two gorgeous Italian twin superliners: Michelangelo and Raffaello and created by a committed group of enthusiasts giving those sadly forgotten ships a worthy tribute. A final heavy inspiration was the wiki dedicated to likely the best representative of an ocean liner in history: rmsQMwiki. This site, created by youtubers: Alex the Historian and HenryHallFan is the highest level of research and detail any account of an ocean liner could be given online, and was a big inspiration for the layout and design of The Kaiserhafen.
What are the sources behind the Kaiserhafen?
The information presented on The Kaiserhafen stem from many pieces of literature: both new and old. No claim is made of ownership of any source that is referenced. Generally, the foundation of this site is built on books, particularly on those in the German language with an especial favourite being the works of Arnold Kludas. The Author is a non-native speaker and only semi-fluent, so mistranslations or misinterpretations are absolutely possible and the deepest condolences are offered if true. If you have those same sources and know something is flat-out incorrect, please contact as seen below:
Photo Copyrights
Care and attention has been taken to source all photos used on this website digitally or from publications properly. If the source is online, they are marked with a [i] icon and clicking on them will take you to their specific source. If not, they come from a book or otherwise and clicking on the photo itself and reading its description will describe where it came from. All copyrights belong to their respective owners and no claim is made of ownership.
The Author’s Collection
Many photographs, postcards and items featured on this website are part of the Author’s privately-owned collection. Following the good examples set by ssmaritime.com and michelangelo-raffaello.com, all images from this source are 100% free and encouraged to be used. When sharing any of those images, a simple credit and link to this website is all that is required. Remember, Not all images on this site are from this private collection – you can tell if they are if they have been labelled with (Author’s Collection) as their caption or in their description when you click on a photo.
Contact
You can access the contact form here:
(Author’s Collection)
The Kaiserhafen 