It is the evening of January 9, 1976. At Blohm + Voss in the Port of Hamburg, the shipyard workers on the second shift are already looking forward to the upcoming weekend. They are working on the new construction of the "Anders Maersk", a 209 meter long container ship. The freighter is scheduled to leave for a test drive in eight days, and the six-metre high steel tank in the engine room is now to be tested under pressure for the last time. Around 50 men - workers, engineers and craftsmen - were on board when the catastrophe struck:at exactly 6:13 p.m. the steam boiler in the ship's engine room exploded. With a pressure of almost 50 bar - about 25 times the pressure of a car tire - more than 300 degrees hot steam shoots out of the burst boiler. Twelve men are killed instantly, 29 suffer severe scalding, are hit by flying debris or are thrown against the walls by the blast.
Huge blast and searing steam
After the accident, the engine room of the ship is badly damaged.One of the survivors is Hans Dieter Marggraf. When the accident happened, the floor layer was spreading adhesive on the iron floor of the corridor to the engine room. Two days after the accident, he described the moment of the explosion to the "Hamburger Morgenpost":"There was a resounding bang. The engine room door was torn from its hinges by a powerful pressure wave. Large pieces of iron whirled through the corridor like projectiles huge fist ripped away. Then came searing hot air. I couldn't breathe." With severe bruises, he is able to escape from the unfortunate ship. Afterwards, he can't remember exactly how:"It was pitch black. Colleagues were screaming everywhere," Marggraf recalls.
27 people die
Hamburg mourns the victims:After the accident, the flags are flown at half-mast.The fire brigade and emergency doctors are just four minutes after the explosion at the scene of the accident on the Elbe island of Steinwerder. Ambulances take the injured to the surrounding hospitals in Altona and St. Georg and to the nearby port hospital via the Old Elbe Tunnel, the fastest route. A station there was closed a year and a half earlier and is now being reopened specifically for the victims of the explosion. But for many of the seriously injured, there is no longer any hope. Three workers died shortly after they were admitted, and twelve more succumbed to their serious injuries in the days that followed. A total of 27 workers died in the accident.
Cause not yet clearly clarified
After its delivery, the "Anders Maersk" sailed the seas under different names until 2009.Just a few days after the catastrophe, questions were raised. How did the catastrophe come about? Were the safety regulations too lax, as IG Metall criticized? The investigations into the cause of the accident are proving difficult because both the responsible safety engineer and the experts involved died in the explosion. Experts suspect that diesel oil dripped into the hot boiler. A gas-air mixture then ignited in the boiler tubes. However, the cause cannot be clearly clarified. At the end of February 1978, the Hamburg public prosecutor's office discontinued preliminary proceedings against the shipyard management for negligent manslaughter; they could not determine that the shipyard was at fault.
The "Anders Maersk" is completed quickly after the accident. With a new engine and a six-month delay, Blohm + Voss delivered the container ship to its owner, the Danish shipping company Maersk-Line, in August 1976.