A life among ships

"We used to recognize the shipping company by the ship's funnel," says Braeuer, rhapsodizing about his Bremen childhood. His passion for ports and harbors continues to this day.

Today, the 58-year-old is an inspector at a Bremen warehouse company. His training, however, was as a professional cooper - a job he sums up as being "the merchant’s right-hand man."

"We had to check the crates of goods that were shipped from overseas."

Checking imported goods

Samples were routinely taken from the raw materials, such as cotton, coffee or tobacco, which arrived in containers. They were then compared with the samples from the trades merchant who had brought the originals back from his visits to suppliers overseas.

If the cotton was delivered wet, dirty or mixed with a lot of leaves, the cooper would let the branch office know. The merchant would lodge a complaint overseas, and if no satisfactory agreement could be reached, then the case would go to the commodities exchange, which acted as a neutral court.

A childhood on the docks

Joachim Braeuer grew up in the Walle neighborhood of Bremen, near the port. "For us kids, the port was the ultimate playground," he recalls. The old piers, the grain traffic facility (which was built back when Bremen was still Europe's biggest grain trans-shipment center) and the submarine bunker - a relic of less pleasant times - made an excellent place for a game of hide-and-seek.

And of course, guessing which ships belonged to which company was a favorite pastime. The red Hansa Cross was always a sure sign that a ship from the German steamboat company Hansa was coming ashore. But you could only know whether you had guessed right when the boats came near enough to read their names. "The Hansa ships had the ending '-fels' on their names, like Uhenfels. The Lloyd ships had the ending '-stein,' like Birkenstein," Braeuer explains.

Choice of career

Braeuer knew that when he finished school he would look for a job in the harbor, because all his friends were doing the same. The job of cooper that he trained for no longer exists in the same form. Today, one trains to become a "shipping goods controller" instead.

Not only the name of the job has become more modern. Life in the port has undergone some basic changes, too. People and ships are getting fewer and fewer; high docking fees mean ships often spend just a few hours in the port before leaving again.

"It used to be that goods were delivered by the sackful," he says. Many workers with handcarts were needed to load and unload sacks onto the ships. In the 1970s, forklifts increasingly replaced handcarts; then came containers. Forklifts and cranes weighing many tons have replaced physical labor.

"Small, manageable city"

While Joachim Braeuer has spent his whole life working with ships, he is in fact a true landlubber. He took his first long cruise, to Norway, just a year ago. But he loves his hometown of Bremen more than anyplace else.

"It's not a hectic city; it's small and manageable," he says. Besides, it's the best place to pursue his hobby - cycling. "When I need a break, I hop on my bike and ride to the dike. Then I can ride for hours."