Ship welcoming station - "Welcome to Hamburg"

Right in front of the bridge there is the platform with huge loudspeakers, from which the ships are greeted. From the cabin (next to the exit to the terrace of the Ferry Station Schulau) each incoming and outgoing ship is greeted with the help of a computer system or Compact Cassettes. Over 150 national anthems and about 45 languages of  seafaring nations are saved on a hard disk.

In the meantime the Hamburg flag on the mast, which is 40 meters high, is dropped automatically from the cabin in order to greet the incoming and outgoing ships (the sailor calls this the dipping of the flag) and the international signal for "Have
a pleasant journey" is hoisted for a leaving ship. The ship should answer by dipping its flag.

The captain working at the ship welcoming station receives continuously the news about all movings on the Elbe from the nautical registration office of Hamburg, called SMD, and has therefore got good working conditions. Since the order of the incoming and outgoing ships can change from the SMD stations Hamburg-Finkenwerder and/or Stader-Sand onwards, he nevertheless has to use his eyes, he has to recognize the name of the approaching ship with the help of a magnifying glass in order to be able to choose the nationality and the right anthem.
The recent means of support is the current program “Google Earth” running on a computer. Here it is possible to see the actual ships positions on river Elbe. This system is also at disposal by SMD.

After playing the anthem the captain provides the guests of the Ferry Station with all kinds of information about the ship which has just been greeted with the help of loudspeakers; our more than 16.000 index cards and the daily harbour report being his main sources of information.
If a ship is not greeted from the loudspeakers but only by dipping the flag, it means that this ship is under 1.000 grosstons or that it will not leave the German coast. These ship may not be greeted acoustically. It is also forbidden to greet ships prior 8 o'clock in the morning or 8 o'clock in the evening and/or after sunset.

Would you like to identify one of the ships, determine its nationality or even its grosstons? If you make a bet with one of the persons sitting next to you and if you are wrong - the "Deutsche Gesellschaft zur Rettung Schiffbrüchiger"  will be pleased if you pay your donation. The collecting box in form of a lifeboat is in the captain’s cabin. Don't worry if you are wrong - even experts sometimes misjudge the grosstons of the ships.