"I was wondering what to do next" - Captain Karsten Metzner
Karsten Metzner has been sailing for Hapag-Lloyd as a captain since 2010. Right before taking the new “Singapore Express” into service, the Berlin native talks about his beginnings on the “Sierra Express”, a life-changing chance encounter and an insolent monkey.
Seddin, near Potsdam, is a good place to get away from the rest of the world. The forests of a nature reserve in Brandenburg are right outside your front door, and the idyllic Lake Seddin is just around the corner. When he’s not at sea for Hapag-Lloyd, Captain Karsten Metzner lives here with his family and their mixed-breed dog, Bolle, in a cosy little house.
“In a few days, I’ll take command of the ‘Singapore Express’ for sea trials as well as a gas test voyage in Singapore. The christening will also be held there after that,” the 50-year-old happily notes. He has already attended the christening ceremonies of the “Rio de Janeiro Express” and, in October 2023, the “Berlin Express”. “Sailing on the new Hamburg Express class vessels is amazingly smooth, and it’s great to be at the helm of such a state-of-the-art ship,” Metzner says. “We often only realise how extraordinary our workplace is at christenings, when guests come on board and marvel at how huge everything is.”
Job interview almost blown, then up on the “Sierra Express”
Metzner started his training in 1992. “I was in year 12 at school,” he says, “and of the pile of information flyers from the careers advice centre, only the one on seafaring was still there. ‘I want to do that’, I said to my parents, who knew as little about seafaring as I did.” But the interview was a disaster, he continues, explaining: “I didn’t realise that the buses in the Free Port area of Hamburg only ran at shift-changing times, so I arrived far too late,” he says. “I was so flustered that I couldn’t even remember how a diesel engine works.” Nevertheless, the HR manager saw potential in the then 17-year-old, who received his acceptance letter two weeks later.´
After spending 10 weeks learning metalworking in the training workshop of the shipbuilding company Blohm+Voss, Metzner boarded the rather old “Sierra Express” for a voyage to the Caribbean. “It could carry 1,300 TEU and was just 200 metres long, which is rather small by today’s standards,” he says.
Even after 20-plus years, he can still list the ports they called at. “Ponce in Puerto Rico, Rio Haina in the Dominican Republic, Kingston in Jamaica, and Bridgetown on Barbados, where we were the only cargo ship among countless cruise ships,” he says. “Then came ports in Guatemala, Venezuela and Honduras as well as Puerto Limón in Costa Rica, where the sloths were hanging around the city park. It was unforgettable!”
Despite the fond memories, tears don’t come to his eyes when he thinks of the “old” seafaring. “To be honest, I find it better today,” he says. “In addition to the safety standards, it’s also the style of leadership and the way we live and work together on board. Everyone treats each other much more as equals!”
After his apprenticeship as a ship mechanic, his path gradually led him from the engine room to the bridge following studies at the maritime academy in Hamburg. There, he earned the so-called “double patent”, meaning certificates to be both a captain and a chief engineer. He continues to be fascinated by life at sea.
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