Swiss captains retire from Lake paddle steamers
20th March 2021
On 11 October 2020 Captain Hans-Peter Mosiman made his last trip aboard his beloved Unterwalden before retiring.
He was the last of a group of eight captains on Lake Lucerne to retire including Alois Kaufmann, Kurt Streit, Jorg Andrist, Beat Kallenbach, Leo Schneble, Peter Husler, and Kuno Stein who all joined the company in the late 1960s/early 1970s just as paddle steamers were being phased out. All wanted them to remain.
Unterwalden was withdrawn in 1976 and replaced by a motor ship which took her name but pressure from within from these young men did much to turn the tide.
Unterwalden was not scrapped and instead lay idle until by 1985 she had been fully restored and returned to service with her replacement renamed Europa. She was fully restored again 25 years later in 2010.
Between 1984 and 1990 all of this group became captains. They then not only commanded the paddle steamers each summer for almost 30 years but were also closely involved in their rebuilds as all five were given new lives in the Lucerne Shipyard.
With Captain Mosiman’s departure all these captains, who did so much for paddle steamers in Switzerland over half a century, have now gone into retirement.
