On 2 February 2007, on board the "Monte Rosa" - which is expected in Hamburg on Sunday, 11 February - Captain  Niels Callsen celebrated a unique anniversary: 50 years with Hamburg  Süd. This makes him the longest-serving employee in the shipping  group's history. On the occasion of the anniversary, the Executive
 Board of Hamburg Süd expressed their thanks for his many years' of  untiring devotion and paid tribute to him as "a very committed,  reliable and extremely enthusiastic seaman of 'the old school', who
 always kept his calm in even the most difficult situations and is  invariably a good superior thanks to his feeling for interpersonal  relations."
 This unique career began on 2 February 1957, when the  fifteen-year-old Niels Callsen signed on as a deck boy with the  "Ravensberg" and his first voyage took him to the Mediterranean for  the Levante-Linie. Just a few weeks later, in the course of a  14-month round voyage aboard the "Ravensberg", he got to know Hamburg
 Süd's core trade from Europe to South America. He subsequently sailed  on a variety of shipping group vessels, from tankers to freighters,  running the whole gamut of nautical training and advancing to the
 rank of captain.
 His first command as captain came in December 1975 on the "Polar  Columbia". Numerous tours of duty on various reefer vessels and  reefer container ships were followed by many years in the service of
 the Columbus Line between the USA and Australia/New Zealand,  particularly on the "Columbus Victoria" and "Columbus Australia".
 Captain Niels Callsen is currently on the move with the "Monte Rosa"  in "well-known waters", the service between Europe and South America  East Coast. In the past 50 years, he has been deployed on more than
 40 different shipping group vessels around the globe.