Innehållsförteckning för August 2023 från Ships Monthly

ISLE OF MAN The Isle of Man Steam Packet’s new ferry Manxman ended her delivery voyage on 24 June when she arrived in Southampton, and on 2 July she reached Douglas, the Manx capital, which she will serve, for the first time. She was officially welcomed to the island at a ceremony in Douglas on 9 July. She departed her builder’s in South Korea at the end of May, and made the long journey to the UK, which included six port calls as she journeyed via the Suez Canal, Malta and the Med. She underwent final outfitting at Southampton, which included the installation of the last items of equipment, along with artwork commissioned by Island-based artists. The new £78 million diesel-electric hybrid ferry, which was purpose-designed and-built for Isle of…

RESCUE SERVICES In the space of just over a fortnight in June the RNLI deployed two new 13m Shannon lifeboats, one on the east coast at Whitby, and the other in the west at New Quay, a small seaside town in Ceredigion. The new lifeboat for Whitby, Lois-Ivan, arrived on 11 June, and the boat for New Quay, Roy Barker V, reached her station two weeks later, on 25 June, both having undertaken training passages from the RNLI College in Poole, and both receiving huge welcomes from people in the towns they are to serve. The new Whitby Shannon is one of several ‘Launch a Memory’ lifeboats, which have the names of thousands of donors within the numbers on the hull. The New Quay boat is the fifth to be…

CRUISE NEWS With the pandemic over, the cruise industry is once again seeing record bookings, and Alaska has returned as a major destination for North American travellers. Before the 2023 Alaska season ends in late October, British Columbia’s Port of Vancouver expects to host a total of 331 cruise ship calls, representing an increase of approximately eight per cent compared to 2022, while a record 1.2 to 1.3 million passengers will arrive and depart, an increase of nearly ten per cent. Although many regular callers, such as Norwegian Cruise Line’s 2019-built Norwegian Encore, will be seen, new visitors to the Canadian port this year include Brilliance of the Seas, Silver Whisper, Hanseatic Nature, Fridtjof Nansen, Seabourn Venture and Scenic Eclipse II.…

P&O FERRIES P&O Ferries’ new 47,394gt Dover-Calais route vessel P&O Pioneer made a low-key service debut on 19 June, setting off across the English Channel on a freight run soon after 0300. Full passenger and car operations began with her next circuit, which left the Kent port at 0955, returning from Calais at 1335, before there was a further trip from Dover at 1510. The China-built double-ender, and sistership P&O Liberte, which is due to enter service during November, represent a £230 million investment by P&O. A hybrid power system with electric motors powered by four Wärtsilä diesel engines for a service speed of 17.6 knots is expected to achieve a 40 per cent reduction in fuel use over other vessels in the Dover fleet. P&O Pioneer carries up to…

AMERICAN QUEEN American Queen Voyages is withdrawing from Great Lakes cruising in order to focus on its core river business. In recent years the company has used a pair of coastal cruise ships on its Great Lakes cruises, Ocean Navigator and Ocean Voyager. These ships have had an interesting and chequered past, having been completed in 2007 and 2001 by Atlantic Marine at Jacksonville as Cape Cod Light and Cape May Light respectively for American Classic Voyages. The late delivery of Cape Cod Light was due to the collapse of ACV. Subsequently, the ships have had a variety of owners and a variety of roles. At one stage they were both expected to become floating retirement homes at Port Canaveral, but that never happened. They have also served as accommodation…

UNCRUISE While sailing in Glacier Bay, Alaska on 5 June, UnCruise Adventures’ 1992-built Wilderness Discoverer suffered an engine room fire, disabling the ship. All 51 passengers and 17 of the 27 crew members were taken aboard Princess Cruises’ Sapphire Princess. There were no reports of any injuries. The fire was extinguished and the ship was moved to the Vigor shipyard at Ketchikan for repairs. The source of the fire was found to be the port main engine wet exhaust mufflers. Heat damage was limited to a small area, but there was more widespread smoke damage. Wilderness Discoverer was built by Blount Marine Corporation in Rhode Island as Mayan Prince for its American Canadian Caribbean Line, but was later sold to Glacier Bay Cruise Line; she spent five years laid up…

RFA RFA Stirling Castle has started training for her new role, described as the future of minehunting. The RFA’s latest addition has become a forward operating base for the latest mine warfare systems, only a few months after undergoing military conversion from a commercial oil rig support vessel. The vessel will retain her blue and white livery for now as the small crew get to grips with ship handling and the safe operation of legacy systems and some of the specific equipment fitted since she arrived at Plymouth in January, such as additional training on Dynamic Positioning Systems and seabed operations. When fully operational, the ship will host a variety of portable, autonomous minehunting systems that includes the joint French-UK Maritime Mine Counter Measures (MMCM) system, the Combined Influence Sweep…

FUTURE FUELS Danish operator Maersk and MAN Energy Solutions have entered into a partnership which will see the engines of 11 sisterships retrofitted to operate on methanol fuel. The powerplants of the 15,000TEU capacity H class container ships will be converted from MAN’s 8G95ME-C9.5 type engines to 8G95ME-LGIM10.5 type engines. This is the same engine as that to be fitted in Maersk’s landmark 16,000TEU capacity Equinox class vessels, which are due to be delivered by Hyundai Heavy Industries from next year. The 11 ships earmarked for conversion were also products of the same Korean yard, entering service between 2017 and 2019. One of the class, Maersk Honam, hit the headlines in 2018, when she suffered a huge fire in the Arabian Sea which caused extensive damage, but she was eventually…

PORT NEWS With China issuing new import quotas for refiners, there are hopes that the country’s oil demand will bounce back. For the North Sea terminal at Hound Point this resulted in two Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), Serifos and Dilam, arriving in quick succession in June. Serifos is the first VLCC to dock in 2023, compared to the two or three a month prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when there were regular departures for China or Korea. Having passed through the Suez canal from Ain Sukhna, Egypt, she was bunkered in the estuary by the chemical tanker Nivar (2004/2,815gt), with the tug Hopetoun standing by. The last VLCC to dock at Hound Point was Fida, in December 2022, which loaded for Skagen, Denmark. Prior to Fida, four…

DREDGER Dredging specialist Boskalis and Royal IHC have signed a Letter of Intent (LOI) for the construction of a methanol-ready 31,000m3 capacity trailing suction hopper dredger (TSHD) for delivery to Boskalis by mid-2026. The vessel, to be built at the Royal IHC yard in Krimpen aan den IJssel, The Netherlands, will be fitted with two trailing suction pipes, a large capacity pump and diesel-electric propulsion, the latter to be prepared for the use of methanol as a fuel once supplies of green methanol become available.…

ICEBREAKER Canadian shipbuilder Seaspan expects to deliver a new Polar Icebreaker to the Canadian Coast Guard by 2030 under Canada’s National Shipbuilding Strategy. Designed to protect the country’s Arctic sovereignty while supporting science and research programmes, the new 158m by 28m ship will have a top speed of over 18 knots, an operational range of 30,000 nautical miles and a hull strong enough to break through very thick multi-year ice using 40MW of installed power. When commissioned, the 27,876-tonne displacement ship will replace the Canadian Coast Guard’s 1969-built icebreaker CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent.…

ICEBREAKER Helsinki, Finland-headquartered Aker Arctic has completed its design for a new methanol-ready icebreaker to be built for the Swedish Maritime Administration (SMA). The Aker ARC 130 S ship, to employ a triple-azimuthing propulsion system, will use main engines that will initially burn Hydrotreated Vegetable Oil (HVO) but also have the ability to later burn green methanol when the fossil-free fuel becomes readily available. The new vessel will also feature an optimised hull form that will be capable of creating channels of variable widths up to 32m wide. A builder for the new icebreaker is to be selected before the end of this year, with delivery planned for 2026, while a sistership, expected to be ordered later, will be delivered in the following year. WATERFRONT • www.shipsmonthly.com • The Granary,…

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Established in Iceland but now based in Rotterdam, Samskip has risen to become one of Europe’s largest multimodal operators, with a fleet of over 20 vessels. The name ‘Samskip’ is seen on a growing number of small container vessels trading in European waters and is linked to an old Icelandic company, Samband Line, which was formed by the Union of Icelandic Cooperatives (Samband íslenskra samvinnufélaga) at Reykjavik shortly after the end of World War II. The Line’s first ship was the 1,690grt Hvassafell, completed by Italy’s Soc Anon Ansaldo, Cantiere Nav Cerusa, Genoa-Voltri in 1946. She was later followed by a number of other vessels, including the 1,381grt Arnarfel in 1949, the 972grt Jökulfel in 1951, and the 642grt Dísarfell in 1953, the ship names denoting geographical features in Iceland,…

ANNIVERSARY Argentina’s historic frigate President Sarmiento is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year, having been commissioned in 1898 following her completion by the Laird Brothers shipyard at Birkenhead in 1897. Designed as Argentina’s first specifically built cadet training ship, the 85.5m by 13.32m three-masted vessel made 39 voyages around the world before being converted into a floating museum at Buenos Aires in 1964, where she remains today as a National Historical Monument, berthed in the City’s Puerto Madero dock complex.…

Energy density of fuels In examining the variety of alternative fuels being proposed for the maritime industry, shipowners and ship designers have to look at the cost of such fuels, as well as their individual characteristics. Marine fuel oil has historically been sold in metric tonnes, but such a measurement is no longer accurate when fuels such as LNG, methanol, ammonia and hydrogen are being considered, largely because of their different volumetric energy density (energy content per unit of volume). A low energy density will require more fuel storage space on a ship and thus impact its cargo- or passenger-carrying capabilities. Energy density also must be figured into fuel cost accounting. As an example, one tonne of LNG, currently the main alternative marine fuel, releases more energy during combustion than…

STENA LINE One of the most versatile ferries in the Stena Line fleet, Stena Nordica (2000/24,206gt) made a spring return to British waters after her overhaul in Poland, and started by sailing between Cairnryan and Belfast. This was while the Irish Sea North Channel route’s regular 30,285gt vessels, Stena Superfast VII (2001) and Stena Superfast VIII (2002), were overhauled in turn by Cammell Laird at Birkenhead. Both had their Stena Plus areas upgraded, and new rooms for passengers travelling with pets were also provided. Stena Nordica next moved to the North Sea to relieve Stena Transit (2011/33,690gt) on crossings from the Hook of Holland to the Humber Estuary’s Killingholme Terminal. Then it was back to the Irish Sea for time on the Birkenhead Twelve Quays-Belfast link while E-Flexer Stena Estrid…

VIKING CRUISES The latest addition to the fast-growing Viking Ocean cruising fleet, Viking Saturn, was named in New York on 6 June by Anne Ziff, chairman of the Metropolitan Opera, using a sword from the Met’s production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore to cut the ribbon and release the bottle of Norwegian Aquavit. Viking Saturn is the tenth and final ship of the original batch, and the last of the 930-passenger-capacity vessels. With an impressive growth rate, Viking Cruises has a fleet of ocean ships, which started with the delivery of Viking Star in 2015. Nine of the ships continue to operate for Viking, while the former Viking Sun, the fourth in the series and now named Zhao Shang Yi Dun is operating in China for the China Merchants Viking Cruises…

VANTAGE TRAVEL Following a troubled few weeks, Vantage Travel finally filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on 29 June, with a pending sale of the business to Singapore-based United Travel Pte Ltd for US$1 million, combined with some financially preferential treatment for Vantage passengers with existing bookings. Vantage Travel’s debts of about US$150 million include almost US$7 million due to Sunstone ships for the charter of Ocean Explorer and Ocean Odyssey. Founded in 1983, the company suffered badly in the pandemic and failed to claw its way back to profitability, and in late May the ships were laid up in Caen, France. Another Sunstone X-BOW ship in the same series, Ocean Albatros, was delivered to her charterer, Danish-based Albatros Expeditions, in May. She carries 189 passengers and 100 crew members, and…

NIGERIAN NAVY The Nigerian Navy has signed a deal with the Dearsan Shipyard for the modernisation of its veteran flagship, NNS Aradu (F89). The work will be carried out at Tuzla in Istanbul and is expected to take 24 months. Details about the scope and cost of the overhaul were not revealed, other than to say that systems, equipment and devices that are out of use due to age and obsolescence will be repaired or renewed with equivalent modern systems, and the frigate will be modernised. The 3,500-tonne MEKO 360 H1 class frigate, the first ever German-built MEKO, was commissioned in 1982 but has been inactive since 2017 due to lack of resources. At the same formal contract ceremony, Nigeria also ordered a 57m Tuzla class Patrol Boat from the…

US NAVY The US Navy’s Military Sealift Command Fleet Ocean Tugs replacement programme has achieved a notable milestone with the launch of the first-of-class. The future USNS Navajo (T-ATS 6) entered the water via floating dry-dock at the Bollinger Shipyard in Houma, Louisiana on 24 May. The former Gulf Island Fabrication shipyard is under contract to build four more vessels: Cherokee Nation (T-ATS 7), Saginaw Ojibwe Anishinabek (T-ATS 8), Lenni Lenape (T-ATS 9), and Muscogee Creek Nation (T-ATS 10). A further five vessels are to be built by Austal USA. Based on Wärtsilä’s VS 4612 anchor-handling tug supply (AHTS) design, the Navajo class will provide ocean-going tug, salvage and rescue capabilities. They will replace three Powhatan class T-ATF 166 tugs and two Safeguard class T-ARS 50 class rescue and salvage…

CONTAINER SHIPS As part of the modernisation of its fleet, German container carrier Hapag-Lloyd has sold three container ships to Turkish breakers. The vessels in question were inherited by the Hamburg-based owner following its acquisition of CP Ships in 2005. Built for the North Atlantic service to Montreal, in which Canada Maritime and OOCL partnered, the 2,992TEU capacity pair, Mississauga Express and Ottawa Express, were delivered as Canmar Honour and Canmar Pride in 1998, while the 2,330TEU capacity Milan Express was delivered two years earlier as OOCL Canada. More recently, the vessels have acted as intra-European feeders, as larger vessels were placed on the transatlantic trades. Hapag-Lloyd currently has a number of vessels under construction, havingtakendelivery of its largest ship to date, Berlin Express, in June. She is the first…

CONTAINER SHIPS Singapore-based Asiatic Lloyd Maritime, part of the Atlantic Lloyd group headquartered in Hamburg, has taken delivery of the 255m by 42.8m ALS Ceres as the first in a series of six 7,100 TEU container ships it is having built by China’s Dalian Shipbuilding Industry Co. The 81,000dwt vessels, all designed by Shanghai Merchant Ship Design and Research Institute (SDARI), feature an energy-efficient hull design coupled with a fuel-efficient MAN B&W 6G80ME-C10.5 Tier III main engine to give an extremely low fuel consumption rate while producing a maximum speed of 20 knots and a service speed of 14 knots. The ships also carry the ABS Ammonia Fuel Ready Level 1C and Methanol Fuel Ready Level 1C Class notations, meaning they are ready for future conversion to ammonia or methanol…

CONTAINER SHIPS Japan’s Ocean Network Express (ONE) has taken delivery of the 24,136TEU capacity One Innovation from compatriot builder Japan Marine United Corporation (JMUC) as its first Megamax container vessel (over 24,000TEU) and also the lead ship in a series of six 399.95m by 61.40m newbuilds that will be delivered over the next 18 months. Currently ranked as the flagship of the ONE fleet, the Liberian-registered One Innovation makes use of an energy-saving bow windshield device as well as an exhaust gas cleaning system and an optimised hull form to save fuel and reduce emissions. It also incorporates ‘brittle crack arrest technology’ using extra-thick, high-strength steel plates to improve the safety of the large hull without sacrificing loading efficiency. With the delivery of the 223,200dwt ship, the Singapore-based company’s fleet…

PRESERVED SHIPS National Historic Ships UK (NHS-UK) has appointed six historic vessels to act as its Flagships of the Year for 2023 and ‘fly the flag’ for maritime heritage. The flagships are: ◼ Swan, a former Shetland fishing vessel converted to a sail training; ◼ Lady of the Lake, a Victorian steamer believed to be the oldest working passenger vessel in the world; ◼ The Chieftain, a former Barmouth lifeboat which now offers public boat trips from Whitstable; ◼ HMS Caroline, the last remaining survivor of the Battle of Jutland, now a museum ship in Belfast; ◼ LV21, a 40m steel-hulled lightship which now operates as an art, culture and performance space moored at Gravesend; and ◼ Marjorie R, a former West Yorkshire coal barge converted into a floating bookshop…

After sailing the oceans for the past 35 years – the last 16 in the colours of Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines – Balmoral remains a firm favourite with British cruise lovers. During this year Balmoral has been undertaking itineraries from North Shields on the Tyne and out of Rosyth in Scotland, moving south in the autumn for a succession of trips from Southampton, which include a 34-night transatlantic crossing to sample American and Canadian waterways. Balmoral will go into the New Year period with a 14-day Northern Lights at Christmas trip, and early 2024 will see her spend time running out of North Shields from March to June. Then comes a spell in Scotland based at Leith, near Edinburgh, in July with a return to Newcastle for the autumn. Long…

The Irish Ferries fleet in the English Channel has been expanding over the last couple of years as the company takes on the established operators running out of Dover. Having entered the market in 2001, the company now operates three ships between Dover and Calais: Isle of Inishmore (1997), Isle of Innisfree (1991) and Isle of Inisheer (2000). On the Irish Sea the company operates its two largest ships, W.B. Yeats (2018) and Ulysses (2001), as well as the fast craft Dublin Swift.…

JUNE’S MYSTERY The mystery ship is Melmore Head of the Ulster Steamship Co. She was built by Workman Clarke (yard no.327) at Belfast as Innishowen Head. She was launched as Melmore Head on 14 September 1918, and was employed on UK-Canada voyages. On 28 December 1942, as part of convoy ONS 154, she was sunk by U225 north of the Azores. The photo was probably taken when she was in Belfast. Seamus Murphy, Dundalk Melmore Head was operated by Ulster SS Company, also known as Head Line, whose ships were named after prominent Irish Headlands. She was built in 1918. The 5,273gt vessel had been originally ordered as Inishowen Head but was completed as Melmore Head. When she was hit by two torpedoes from U225, she had 49 crew on…

FREEDOM, FORTUNE AND FRIENDSHIP PLUS P&O PIONEER • Profile of P&O’s revolutionary new vessel, which recently made her Channel debut and represents a new era in ferry operations, being the largest double-ender in the world. THREE DECADES OF CRUISE SHIPS • A look at cruise ships over more than 30 years, as smaller ships are replaced by today’s mega cruise ships. CRUISERS FOR THE US NAVY • Profile of the Belknap class cruisers, nine of which were built for the US Navy in the 1960s, all having very different careers, lasting well into the 1990s. SIDEWALL HOVERCRAFT • Looking back at the sidewall hovercraft, quieter cousin of the larger hovercraft; it had a narrow catamaran hull, and was fully developed during the 1960s. ON SALE 25 AUGUST 2023…

FREIGHT FERRY DFDS have moved their unaccompanied freight route to Calais from DFDS’ Sheerness Terminal to the Essex port of Tilbury 2, on the Essex side of the River Thames. The operator’s 2000-built ferry Botnia Seaways (11,530gt) made her maiden port call at Tilbury 2 on 29 June as she started the service. She will offer one daily sailing in each direction six days a week. The relocation comes as a result of feedback from customers and demand for a more accessible route into the UK. The existing service between Sheerness and Calais ceased at the end of June. DFDS, in partnership with the Port of Sheerness, launched an unaccompanied freight service at the port in June 2021, and volumes have grown over the past two years.…

RO-RO FERRY Mexico’s Baja Ferries has taken delivery of the 29,004gt ro-ro California Star (ex-Eurocargo Sicilia) from Italy’s Grimaldi Group following modifications to the 13-year-old vessel by the Viktor Lenac yard in Croatia. The 193m by 26m ship, completed by Denmark’s Odense Steel Shipyard in 2009, is now operating between the Baja California port of Pichilingue and Topolobampo on Mexico’s Pacific coast (see SM, Jan).…

BRITTANY FERRIES Passenger carryings on Brittany Ferries services are slowly returning to pre-pandemic levels, but it is a different story with freight, as the slump in volumes post-Brexit have worsened so far into 2023. By the beginning of June passenger bookings through to October totalled more than 1.1 million, a 17.67 per cent increase on last year’s summer figures. Another problem has been a drop in the number of French passengers travelling following a new demand for everyone to have a passport, whereas personal identity cards were accepted in the past. Brittany Ferries CEO Christophe Mathieu said: ‘While we are not quite where we want to be, careful management means we are still in a healthy position in our 50th anniversary year.’ Today, there are nine major vessels ranging from…

CONDOR FERRIES The purchase by Condor Ferries of New Zealand inter-island service vessel Straitsman (2005/13,906gt) is being looked at by a Channel Islands Scrutiny Committee. Condor said it could not use the Guernsey Investment Fund, set up in 2018 with £25 million of taxpayers’ money, because of a time factor. Chief executive John Napton explained that finance through the Fund would not have given the company scope to secure the vessel when they were competing with several other bidders. FJORD LINE The Norwegian operator’s 31,687gt vessels Stavangerfjord (2013) and Bergensfjord (2014) are back in service, crossing between Norway and Denmark after having their LNG-powered engines upgraded to dual-fuel capability using LNG and marine gas oil. Stavangerfjord returned to service on 26 May, before Bergensfjord followed her back on 16 June.…

SELECTUM BLU The Turkish operator Selectum Blu has cancelled sailings for the immediate future on the 720-passenger Blue Sapphire, formerly Saga’s Saga Sapphire. Selectum Blu is part of the Turkish tour operator Anex Tour, and was set up primarily to attract passengers from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and, to a lesser extent, Turkey, and took delivery of Saga Sapphire during the pandemic, having agreed the purchase some time before. The ship has, in recent months, been operating short cruises from Turkish ports, but with the current situation in Ukraine impacting demand, passenger numbers have been below expectations. In an effort to generate more passengers the company has recently made an English version of its website available to open a new market.…

ROYAL NAVY The realisation of autonomous mine-hunting operations moved a step closer following the success of a series of demanding open water assurance trials by the prototype Uncrewed Surface Vessel (USV), Royal Navy Motor Boat (RNMB) Apollo. The tests were conducted as part of the Anglo-French Maritime Mine Counter Measures (MMCM) programme, which is developing autonomous capability for both the Royal Navy and the Marine Nationale. The USV demonstrated that remotely controlled uncrewed vessels can be operated by a team at a shore-based control station, completing a series of tasks while retaining awareness of its course and position utilising line of sight communications systems. It does so via a combination of sensors, including radar, LIDAR (light detection and ranging) and infra-red cameras, with the vessel’s position continuously relayed to the…

SPANISH NAVY The Spanish Navy is to equip its flagship, SPS Juan Carlos I (L61), with a medium-voltage electrical propulsion system based on dual ABB Azipod propulsors. The new system will be retrofitted by the ship’s builder Navantia, with the €30 million project due to be completed by 2025. The helicopter carrier uses a diesel-electric powerplant of twin diesels and a gas turbine to power a pair of azimuthal pods. However, the current Schottel-Siemens system has a troubled history, which has led to the ship breaking down on several occasions. In 2020 the Armada Española commissioned a study to look for a permanent solution. The new azimuthing thrusters arrangement will have one propeller per pod, instead of the current two. The pods will be exchanged without any significant hull modification.…

CONTAINER SHIPS Chinese shipbuilder Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corp(CSSC), expects to deliver the 13,000TEU LNG-powered container ship CMA CGM Bahia to French operator CMA CGM before the end of this year for the company’s South American service. The new vessel, the first of a series of six, measures 336m by 51m and has an LNG fuel capacity of 14,000m3 carried in a GTT Mark III type containment system. The main engine features an Intelligent Controlled Exhaust Gas Recirculation (ICER) system that can reduce ‘methane slip’ by 50 per cent in gas mode while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Methane slip occurs when a small portion of the LNG is compressed into cylinder crevices during the combustion process, but fails to completely burn and escapes with the exhaust…

TURBINE TRANSPORTERS China’s Jiangsu Zhenjiang Shipyard has been contracted to build two next-generation wind turbine transporting vessels for Holland’s Amasus Offshore, with the twin 167.6m by 26m ships to be delivered in the spring and summer of 2025. Designed to accommodate the increasing size and weight of the next generations of offshore wind turbine components while ensuring best-in-class cargo intake, the new vessels will be named Rotra Futura and Rotra Horizon. Both will feature a navigation bridge and accommodation block forward with a ro-ro ramp fitted at the stern. Each vessel will have three Liebherr cranes and a specialised gantry system that will allow the stowage and handling of windmill blades in three tiers. Propulsion will be provided by a hybrid system incorporating Wärtsilä main engines.…

SEA RESCUE The International Maritime Rescue Federation (IMRF) held its quadrennial World Maritime Rescue Conference (WMRC) in Rotterdam from 18 to 21 June 2023. WMRC is the world’s largest gathering of SAR organisations and is the main event at which industry and SAR professionals around the world can collaborate, share best practices and assess the latest developments in search and rescue. The event, which takes place every four years, included a live exercise, Congress sessions and workshops. The event began on Sunday 18 June with two rescue demonstrations, one in the morning and the other in the afternoon, with a parade of lifeboats in between. Central to the demonstrations was the 2007-built tug Multraship Protector (1767gt), which is one of several similar vessels used for safety operations along the coast…

Balmoral completed two Titanic-themed cruises in October 2012 to mark the centenary of the four-funnelled White Star liner’s loss after striking an iceberg in the North Atlantic on her maiden voyage. First came a fully booked five-night trip from Southampton via Liverpool to Belfast, where passengers including a group of Ships Monthly readers visited the newly opened Titanic Experience on a site close to the slipway where Titanic was built by Harland and Wolff. On view nearby, undergoing restoration, was the single-funnel twin-screw steam powered tender Nomadic, which was built in 1911 to serve Titanic and sisterships Majestic and Olympic during their calls at Cherbourg, where she was registered and flew the French flag. Nomadic, the last survivor of many of the vessels (including Titanic), designed by Thomas Andrews, is…

Still flying the ‘Red Duster’ and registered in Liverpool, the former Elder Dempster liner Apapa was a long way from home when Vic Young of New Zealand managed to photograph her in bright sunlight, anchored off Singapore in the early 1970s. Employed at the time by Hong Kong’s Shun Cheong Steam Navigation Co as Taipooshan (‘Great Precious Mountain’) on the passenger/cargo run between Hong Kong and Penang via Singapore, the British-built ship had only a few more years of service before being broken up at Kaohsiung, Taiwan in 1975. A 1948 product of Vickers-Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness, along with sistership Accra, the 11,651grt Apapa was completed as a diesel-powered twin-screw ship capable of 15.5 knots while accommodating 259 First class passengers and 24 Third class on her monthly sailings from Liverpool…

PART 2 In July 1935 the newly created Atlas Levante-Linie AG (Atlas) of Bremen joined with Deutsche Levante-Linie Hamburg (DLLH) to operate a combined service. Two new ships, named Cairo and Ankara, were ordered by Atlas and delivered in 1936-37 but did not survive World War II. CAIRO AND ANKARA Cairo was delivered by Krupps’ Germania yard at Kiel in December 1936. From November 1939, known as ‘Schiff 23’, she was employed as an icebreaker and then as a ‘Trade Protection Cruiser’ with the designation Handelsschützkreuzer 6 (HSK VI), being used as an escort vessel for coastal convoys in the Baltic Sea. It was planned that she would be used as a minelayer for ‘Operation Seelöwe (Sealion)’, the proposed invasion of Britain in 1940; she was therefore stationed in Cherbourg, and…

I read (Ferry News, SM, May) of yet further extended delivery dates for the two new Caledonian MacBrayne vessels, which are now desperately required for Scottish routes. These ferries are already over five years overdue and well over budget. When I was a young boy in the 1950s and 1960s I watched, from our house overlooking the ‘Tail of the Bank’ at Greenock on the Clyde, as newly completed vessels set off on their delivery voyages, many heading round the world. I can remember, in 1961, the nine ferries completed by Fairfield`s Govan Shipyard for service on the Bosphorus, Turkey setting off for their new home ports. I am not aware that any of these were delivered late, or over budget. A few pages on, I read the review of…