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In 1847, Hamburg merchants founded the Hamburg-Amerikanische Paketfahrt-Actien- Gesellschaft, HAPAG for short, later also called the Hamburg-America Line, using sailing ships to provide line service, primarily for emigrants to America. In 1854 the stockholders decided to acquire large modern steamers to offer regular service from Hamburg to New York every two weeks.
The first of these ships, the Harmmonia, displacing 2026 tons and measuring 85 meters at the waterline, was launched on 5 May 1855, and her sister ship Borussia followed two months later. They were built by the Scottish shipyards of Caird & Co. In Greenock on the Clyde, which provided almost all the HAPAG steamers. Harmmonia and Borussia were iron screw steamers which, powered by 1400-HP oscillating steam engines, had a top speed of eleven knots. They had accommodations for 54 first-class and 146 second-class passengers, plus 310 emigrants in steerage.
The Silesia, built in 1869, and the Vandalia of 1871, belonged to the second Hammonia class of the HAPAG, with which, as of 1867, German steamers of more than 3000 tons first came into service. The HAPAG ships of the 1860s no longer had the clipper bows of the sailing ships, and the number of sail-carrying masts was reduced to two.
