1866-1869 

DFDS founded  

 
On the initiative of the financier, bank director, titular Councillor of State C.F. Tietgen, DFDS was founded on 11 December with the merger of the shipping lines A/S Det almindelige Danske Dampskibs-Selskab, Dampskibsselskabet H.P. Prior, and Dampskibsselskabet Koch & Henderson.

Domestic routes and services to ports were established in the Baltic, Norway, Great Britain, Iceland, The Faeroe Islands, and Belgium. C.F. Tietgen became chairman of the board of directors, H.P. Prior director of domestic traffic, and C.P.A Koch director of international traffic.

C.F. Tietgen
The man who took the initiative, and who founded DFDS, the Danish financier Carl Frederik Tietgen, was born in Odense in 1829. After completing school he was apprenticed to a merchant. At an early age he demonstrated the abilities that became dominant in his life: quickness of perception and an astonishing memory. When he was twenty he went to Manchester, the financial and mercantile capital of that time. In 1855 he became a merchant in Copenhagen.

Operations began on 1 January 1867 with 19 ships, based on route traffic, with Copenhagen as the main starting point.

At the time of the founding of DFDS, the domestic and foreign routes were of virtually equal importance to the Company.