The Danish shipowner who traded round the world

From the 1960s to the 1980s Denmark had the largest fleet of coasters in the world. Coasters are primarily intended to trade on short voyages, but this was not the case with many Danish coaster owners, whose smaller ships of up to 3,000dwt regularly made long voyages, and often went worldwide.

One such shipowner was A.E. Sørensen (AES), a company founded in 1918 in Svendborg, Denmark by A.E. Sørensen. The founder passed away in 1974, after which AES was controlled by his widow and three children, but by then it was the biggest shipowner in Denmark outside Copenhagen, specialising in trading operations to remote corners of the world.

THE FLEET

AES began its trading operations with sailing ships, and only owned one steamship, which was sold in 1952. Between 1940 and 1976 a total of 27 new and five second-hand motor ships were delivered. All the ships had names ending with ‘S’ for, , and . The latter ship was the first vessel mentioned in Lloyd’s Register of Ships. Up to 1971 the core fleet consisted of six 540dwt singledeckers (Husumer type) and four ‘tweeendeck sisterships of 900dwt.