page_title: Alfred Ehrenreich
section_title: Factory ship
hierarchical_section_title: Alfred Ehrenreich / Factory ship
caption_attribution_description: English: Photographed prior to her World War I Naval service. U.S. Navy photo NH 102049
context_page_description: Alfred Ehrenreich had been fascinated by sharks from an early age. He helped to start a business in America that caught and processed them in large numbers on a commercial basis. He believed they were a limitless resource from which oils, chemicals, fertilizers, food and leather could be obtained. He later made attempts to expand the business to Europe, Africa and Australia.
context_section_description: The ship chosen for conversion was Istar, a 300 ft luxury yacht, built in 1897 for New York property millionaire Robert Goelet, and originally named Nahma.  After Goelet’s death the yacht stayed in family hands, but in WWI it was used by the US Navy.  During the prohibition years in America it became a rum-runner, after which Prince and Princess Andrew of Russia proposed to take it on a world cruise with paying guests.  However, this failed to materialise and the vessel came into the ownership of two Englishmen, ex-Royal Naval Commander Charles Lester Kerr and ex-army Major Robin Thynne, both of whom became directors of Marine Products.  They sold the yacht to the company in exchange for 250,000 ordinary shares.  Ehrenreich sold his British and Colonial patent rights to the company using this same arrangement.  Ehrenreich and Thynne were joint managing directors and Kerr the overseas director.  He was with Ehrenreich in New Zealand and Australia in 1927 when the two had a disagreement.  Kerr returned to England where he found it necessary to sue (unsuccessfully) for loss of earnings.
  The Istar's conversion to a factory ship was managed by Rudolf Hauschka, who had been with Ehrenreich during the shark fishing pilot scheme in Carnarvon.  Care was taken with the design so as not to upset the ship’s stability: tanning drums, tanks, and incinerators were erected on the quarterdeck; the oil extraction and drying plant for fins and meat was amidships; the main deck was reserved for the handling of the catch and ten motor boats used for catching the sharks were also accommodated.  The Istar could process thirty tons of sharks a per-day with sufficient storage for a hundred days work.
  Due to inadequate funding, and resistance from some sectors of the leather trade, Hauschka advised Ehrenreich to abandon his plans.  Istar was laid up in the East India Docks, London, for about a year while the company tried to negotiate a solution.  Ehrenreich and Hauschka visited Corsica where they were offered land based facilities.  The eventual outcome was that Istar was leased to a French syndicate for £200 per month plus a percentage of the profits, and the ship left London for Madagascar in 1929.  In about June or July of that year, during bad weather conditions, Istar ran aground and remained so for two to three weeks.  The ship was refloated and was taken to Durban, South Africa in a poor condition.  The ship had been insured and efforts were made to restart the business in Durban but this failed, leading to bankruptcy proceeding against Marine Products in London.  Istar was sold for scrap and scuttled off the coast of Durban on 28 March 1931.
  Rudolf Hauschka had left Ehrenreich to work with Dr. Ita Wegman in her clinic in Switzerland.  She was a friend of Hauschka and visited him on the Istar when she attended the Anthroposophical World Conference in London 1928.  Ehrenreich’s fellow director, Major Robin Thynne, became a patient of Dr Wegman before his death in 1936 and it is possible that Ehrenreich also sought treatment in her clinic.
caption: Nahma/Istar
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