The industrial revolution and the rapidly rising demand for raw materials proved this type of traffic handling on the Danube as increasingly inadequate, and therefore in 1813 the Austrian government started using steamboats, which had been very successful on other rivers, on the Danube as well. However, these attempts were not very successful in the beginning. Andrews und Prichard, two Englishmen who founded the First Danube Steamship Company (Erste Donau-Dampfschiffahrts-Gesellschaft, DDSG) in 1829, were able to meet the government’s expectations with the steamship “Franz I” and started travelling the route between Vienna and Budapest as early as in 1830.
As of this time, the history of Danube navigation is more or less identical with the history of the DDSG. The company rapidly became very successful and launched a new route from Vienna upstream to Linz with the steamship MARIA ANNA as early as in 1837, after the Württemberg (Kingdom of Bavaria) steamship navigation company, founded in 1835, had also started operations along the upper Danube downstream from Ulm with the steamship LUDWIG. The development of the company was furthered, above all, by the foresight and commitment of the Hungarian Count Szechenyi. Thanks to his efforts, the fleet of ships was constantly enlarged and, as decided already in 1834, a steamship was introduced to travel the route along the lower Danube downstream from the Iron Gate. At the same time, the construction of the first deep-sea vessel of the DDSG, MARIA DOROTHEA, was started in Triest that was to guarantee waterway travel between Galatz and Constantinople. The rapid enlargement of the DDSG’s fleet – by 1839 the company already owned seven sea-going ships, ten river-going vessels and three barges – made it necessary for the company to build its own shipyard in Budapest in 1835, and in 1852, a large coal basin in the Fünfkirchen (Pecs) area was acquired and extraction started in order to supply the fleet with coal. In order to transport coal to the Danube economically, the construction of a railway line from Pecs to Mohacs was started at the same time.
Meanwhile, the route network had been extended to cover all of the navigable Danube between Regensburg and the Danube delta as well as the tributaries Sava and Tisa. Some smaller navigation companies, which had become established in Bavaria and Hungary, were acquired by the DDSG, which thus became the world’s largest inland navigation company with 201 steamers and more than 750 towed vehicles around 1880. The increasing significance of Danube navigation led to the establishment of further national navigation companies. Thus, the royal Hungarian River- and Sea-shipping Public Limited Company (königlich-ungarische Fluß- und Seeschiffahrts-Gesellschaft, MFTR) was founded under the leadership of the Hungarian government in 1895, and in 1913, the Bayerischer Lloyd (BL) company seated in Regensburg was established in Freistaat of Bavaria, which also had fleets in use throughout the entire Danube area. Additionally, a number of regional shipping companies existed, but these were not any real competition for the large companies. The DDSG was still regarded as the most important shipping company on the Danube.
In this context, it is interesting to look in more detail at some shipping forms used at the time, which have long since become outdated as regards their technology and are now only known from contemporary illustrations.
A certain form of shipping referred to as tow-chain navigation, which was practised along the Danube for about only three decades has to be mentioned. Between 1870 and 1901, a total number of eleven rope-pulled and chain-pulled vessels were used for navigation on the individual sections between Regensburg and Bratislava. However, technical problems, the special currents of the Danube and the development of increasingly powerful tugboats soon led to the discontinuation of this type of traction.
Rear-wheel-driven steamers, of which the DDSG owned four units, was another form of traction that failed to gain lasting acceptance. Due to their low depth, they were used mainly on canal routes and were employed only for a relatively short period of twenty years at the maximum.
While chain-pulled and rear-wheel-driven vessels were used exclusively for freight transport, the so-called symmetric vessels prevailed for passenger transport for a relatively long period of time. These vessels were paddle steamers with bow and tail rudders, which serviced mainly regional traffic and stopped at numerous ports, and did not have to engage in turning manoeuvres that often proved to be very time-consuming. The DDSG owned a total of sixteen units of these ships, which were constructed between 1852 and 1900. The last ship of this type was used until 1944.
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