April 16, 2012
Only four days after what would be his last public appearance, Danish shipping magnate Arnold Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller died in Copenhagen at the age of 98. He had been a longtime leader at A.P Møller – Mærsk Group (known simply as Maersk), the shipping and logistics company that his father Arnold Peter Møller helped form in 1904, Over the decades, Arnold Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller firmly established himself as a major figure in the worldwide maritime industry.
Møller was born in the district of Hellerup, which is just north of Copenhagen, on July 13, 1913. He became a partner at Maersk in 1940. When the German occupation of Demark began at about the same time, Møller went into exile in the United States. (His mother Chastine Estelle Roberta Møller, who was of both Irish and German descent, had been born in the United States.)
Møller oversaw his family’s business from New York during the next few years. He took charge of the company’s ships, which had managed to evade being seized by Germany, and handed those vessels over to the Allies for military use. Møller returned to Denmark in 1947, a couple of years after the end of the war.
Following his father’s death in 1965, Møller became chief executive officer and chairman of Maersk. During his many years at the helm, he played a pivotal role in transforming the company into not only the biggest corporation in Denmark but also the world’s largest shipowner. Møller stepped down as CEO in 1993 but remained chairman until retiring at the age of 90 in 2003. Møller continued to control a major portion of the company’s shares until his death, however.
A little over a year after Møller’s passing, a company ship named in his honor first went into service. This vessel, which is officially designated as Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller, was the first ship of Maersk Line’s Triple-E class of container vessels. At the time of her debut, this vessel – measuring about 1,309 feet (399 meters) in length – was the longest container ship in operation.
Photo Credit: Maersk Line (licensed he Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en)
For more information on Arnold Mærsk Mc-Kinney Møller, please check out https://www.marinelog.com/news/mrsk-mc-kinney-mller-dies-at-98/
Additional information on the shipping and logistics company A.P Møller – Mærsk Group (Maersk) is available at https://www.maersk.com/about/our-history/the-founding-family
Transportation History 
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