The Mississippi Shipping Company also known as Delta Line, was a passenger and cargo steamship company founded in 1919 in New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1961, the company officially changed its name to Delta Line. The Mississippi Shipping Company serviced ports in the Gulf of Mexico and along the east coast of South America. Initially formed to support coffee merchants and Brazilian produce to New Orleans and up the Mississippi River, the company competed with New York City-based shipping lines.
Delta Line failed to modernize and upgrade to container ships in the 1970s, unlike many of its competitors. In 1982, the company, by then owned by the Holiday Inn Corporation, sold its operations to Crowley Maritime, the largest U.S. barge and tugboat operator at the time. Crowley began modernizing the fleet on the route but sold the shipping line to United States Lines in 1985. United States Lines incorporated some of the ships into its routes but went bankrupt in 1986.
At its peak in 1949, the Mississippi-Delta Line owned 14 ships with a total of 98,000 gross register tons. Delta Line also ventured into passenger cruises, although further details are unclear. During World War II, the Mississippi Shipping Company played a significant role in charter shipping with the Maritime Commission and War Shipping Administration. During the war, the company operated Victory ships, Liberty ships, and several Empire ships.
Vancouver, Tacoma, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Manzanillo, Balboa, Panama Canal, Cartagena, Puerto Cabello, La Guaira, Rio de Janeiro, Santos, Paranagua/Rio Grande (optional), Buenos Aires, Strait of Magellan, Valparaiso, Callao, Guayaquil, Buenaventura, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Vancouver, Tacoma. Seansonal port:Curaçao, Aruba, Recife, Montevideo, Antofagasta and Corinto.
Angol, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Liberia and Congo.[2]
Del ships
The three "Del" cruise ships, designed by naval architect George G. Sharp of New York, Type C3-class ship hull with a custom design. Built at Ingalls Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi at $7,000,000 each. Completed in 1946 and 1947, the three had new commercial radar. Delta Line (Mississippi) had two departures per month from Gulf of Mexico ports to the Caribbean and South America. Passenger cruise service ended in 1967 and the ships were converted to cargo. In 1975 the three were scrapped in Indonesia.[3][4]
