Service from Gulf of Mexico and east coast of South America;
originally established by coffee merchants to ship Brazilian produce
directly to the Mississippi Valley through New Orleans, bypassing New
York. Officially the Mississippi Shipping Company until 1962, but was
already known unofficially as the Delta Line long before that. The
line's management failed to buy container vessels in the 1970s, lost so
much money that its owners (by then the Holiday Inn Corporation) sold
out to Crowley Maritime, the largest US barge and tug operator, in 1982.
Crowley tried to modernize the fleet, but decided to cut its losses by
selling Delta to United States Lines in 1985, which subsumed Delta's
ships into its own fleet before going bankrupt in 1986. Flag green with
a yellow Greek letter delta (a triangle). In 1949, Delta owned 14 ships,
with a total of 98,000 grt. |