Brian Ingpen hosts a weekly column in the Cape Times, called Port Pourri, where he shares with his readers the news about happenings in the Western Cape ports. He lives with his ear to the ground and his insights into the port vibes make for excellent reading. On this site, he shares his column and adds some photos as a bonus for an insider's view on the port life.
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From Cape Times 9 June 2010
From Cape Times 19 May 2010
19 May 2010
STRIKERS REVEL, BUT CAN THE COUNTRY AFFORD THEIR HUGE PAY INCREASE OR THE RIPPLE EFFECTS OF THE STRIKE?
So some of the nation's dock workers are striking! Ships have moved, but operations have been impeded by the absence of so many people across the labour spectrum.
Since our dancing strikers were not around during several other notable strikes in other parts of the world, they are unaware of the profound impact each of those strikes had upon shipping operations thereafter. Indeed, some strikes changed shipping irrevocably.
When the chairman of British & Commonwealth heard only hours before the intended launching of Pendennis Castle in December 1957 that the Harland & Wolff shipyard workers were refusing to launch the ship because of a pay grievance, the angry Lord Rotherwick told the Harland & Wolff chairman that B&C would never again order ships from the Belfast yard. He stuck to his word and four subsequent orders for mailships - Windsor Castle, Transvaal Castle, Southampton Castle and Good Hope Castle - went to English or Scottish yards. Harland & Wolff was ignored when B&C ordered two Union-Castle reefer ships, 29 Clan ships and other vessels.
Although P&O had already ordered Canberra from Harland & Wolff at the time of the Pendennis Castle debacle, and Royal Mail had ordered three medium-sized passengerships, Canberra was the last major Belfast-built passengership. Today, the former great shipyard gets sporadic - and subsidised - orders for warships, vessels associated with the offshore oil industry and has repair facilities.
Some believe that the subsequent unemployment in Belfast contributed to the sectarian violence of the 1960s and 1970s.
In the early 1970s, I wandered along Clydeside with the daughter of the late owner of a once-prominent shipbuilding company. Lest you wonder at this ramble, I hasten to add that she was a delightful lady of 70 summers, and my dear wife rambled along as well.
"What ship is that?" I enquired as we approached a half-built vessel on one of the large slipways. "An Israeli tanker," she replied in her Scottish lilt. "The yard went on strike a while ago, and when the contracted date passed, the Israelis told them to keep their tanker, and ordered one from Japan instead."
As British shipowners turned to European and Asian shipyards where prices were lower and, in the absence of strikes, delivery dates were usually honoured, many of the famous yards along those British estuaries fell silent, the gates closed, and the workforce headed for the dole.
A major catalyst for change in British shipping was the seamen's strike that began in May 1966. As British-registered ships returned to UK ports, crews walked off over grievances about pay and working hours. Photographs of the time showed dozens of great liners and freighters idle in British ports - Good Hope Castle, Reina del Mar and Edinburgh Castle lay triple-banked in Southampton.
The ensuing disruption of trade aggravated the already weak British balance of payments that, in turn, led to a run on sterling, and nearly toppled Harold Wilson's government.
The unions cared little about the disruption to the travel plans of thousands of people, and, as air travel was gaining popularity, the strike tipped many ardent ocean travelers towards the airlines much earlier than might have been the case had the strike not have happened.
The seamen got their increased wages, saddling shipowners with higher portage bills. Passenger fares and freight rates escalated, and the strike - coupled to other tumultuous changes in the shipping world such as containerisation, fuel price hikes and automated enginerooms - altered the face of shipping.
To reduce their wage bill, several owners opted for Asian crews and moved their ships to flags of convenience. This effectively reduced the number of jobs available for British seafarers, and began a general decline in British shipping. As passenger fares rose, airlines quickly captured the market, and even this ship-junkie chose to fly to Europe rather than travel in Edinburgh Castle on her last northbound voyage. The fare for a passage in an inner two-berth cabin was higher than what the airlines were offering at the time.
These ventures into recent history carry an important message. The dancing strikers may get their 15 percent increase which in the eyes of many, is exorbitant in an adverse financial climate, but the groundswell generated by their actions could wash up further than they anticipate, not least in greatly increased port and rail tariffs.
Already many exporters in the north-east have turned to Maputo as the outlet for their citrus and minerals cargoes, and even for vehicles, an escalating trend that could dent cargo volumes at some South African ports, with possible job losses.
Facing substantial losses, shipping lines are weighing up their options as vessels are delayed, and cargoes (especially time-sensitive fruit, vehicle parts, and other just-in-time cargoes) cannot be delivered timeously. Ultimately, we shall all pay for this strike as shipping surcharges will be imposed.
When these new costs are added to the proposed 300 percent increase in the levy imposed on ships calling at our ports by the South African Maritime Safety Authority, local ports will not be attractive to bunker ships or to owners who are comparing the cost of maintenance work on their vessels in South African ports with ports elsewhere.
Every ship that goes elsewhere represents a significant loss of potential earnings to repair companies, bunker suppliers, chandlers and to the ports themselves - with the possibility of job cutbacks.
By ignoring the broader picture and shipping history, our dancing strikers may have shot themselves in both feet. And the economy bleeds.
STRIKERS REVEL....
TOP: Cutty Sark in Cape Town.
TOP: HMS Colossus in Simon’s Town shortly after World War 2.
LEFT: Comliebank sailing from Cape Town in about 1935. She was built in 1929 by Harland & Wolff for Bank Line and after a 35-year career, was scrapped in Japan.
From Cape Times 26 May 2010
26 May 2010
All were withdrawn in the late 1930s for modification and re-engining that doubled their power as Union-Castle sought to reduce the passage time between Southampton and Cape Town.
Stirling Castle and Athlone Castle were real wonder ships of the day, and again hundreds of Capetonians ventured to the harbour to see these fine vessels.
"Why this voyage into the dim past ?" you rightly ask. While thus far May has not delivered its customary wild storms, the month can also be remembered for the arrival of Arundel Castle (1921) and Athlone Castle (1935), and more importantly, folks in the Clock Tower building would have witnessed those memorable events, which brings me to today's good news.
Thanks to the badgering of a British maritime historian amidst local lethargy, the V&A Waterfront has moved to rid the iconic Clock Tower of the kitchen of a nearby restaurant. I understand that the V&A appointed an external consultant to undertake a thorough audit of the building and its use. The consultant concluded that, while the current use of the Clock Tower is not a breach of heritage legislation as no unauthorised structural changes have taken place, "the use of the downstairs space as a kitchen is deemed to be inappropriate for a building of such heritage significance." (Why, one wonders, was permission granted in the first place?)
Apparently the consultant found only surface damage to the flooring that can be restored as soon as the kitchen brigade leaves the building. Legal complications surrounding the lease may delay the return of the Clock Tower to a more appropriate function
The skeptic within me whispers that such a promise was made nearly two years ago, but this time, I believe that the V&A management will act on the consultant's report. If they do, an exciting opportunity will be unleashed to re-establish the building to focus on the absorbing and colourful history of the harbour.
Geographically and thematically, the Clock Tower is most compatible with the delightful Chevonnes Battery Museum that, to my shame, I only discovered last year. The Clock Tower should be kept well away from Iziko Museums that oversees the lifeless and uninspiring South African National Maritime Museum and that grossly neglects two historic ships - the world's last boom defence vessel, SAS Somerset, and South Africa's last working steam tug, Alwyn Vintcent - that are rotting away and gathering guano in the marina near the aquarium.
As the silent witness to maiden voyages, last voyages, movements of large liners or snoek skuitjies, and the vibrant bustle of dockland life for 127 years, the Clock Tower deserves better than that!
- The drilling ship Discoverer Luanda is taking stores and water via Smit's Pentow Salvor. If the weather deteriorates, she may move to False Bay to undergo various tests before heading for Angola. She has a dynamic positioning system that automatically fixes her in a specified position while she is capable of drilling in very deep water.
- At the Waterfront last week was Jan Blancken, one of two self-propelled barges built in China for the Dutch company Van Ordt. The second barge, Jan Leeghwater, took bunkers at the Landing Wall on Monday.
- Engineering folks gathered at the DCD Dorbyl premises next to the Sturrock Dry Dock last Friday for the opening of the company's well-equipped Training Centre for Excellence. Interestingly, the Cape Town ship repair industry used to bring welders from Thailand to alleviate a local skills shortage, a problem that the new facility will address as trainees are put through a course designed specifically for the company's needs. Among its operations is rig maintenance that will be focussed at A berth, across the harbour from the new training centre.
Construction work to reconfigure A Berth as an offshore vessel repair centre is underway and DCD Dorbyl management hope to have the facility ready by October.
However, ready to derail such noble initiatives are those who would strike at the drop of a hat or cause other forms of industrial sabotage. Labour leaders and their dancing cohorts must understand that potential clients compare South African facilities and service with those elsewhere. Whispers of strikes will divert owners to other yards, including the seemingly successful operation at Walvis Bay, depriving the Western Cape of millions of dollars, and aspirant local workers of jobs.
Pride South Seas arrives on Monday for a refit.
CLOCK TOWER SAVED !
Clock Tower saved !
I wish I had been around when the four-funneled Arundel Castle was a regular caller in the Victoria Basin. Public interest in this ship - the last four-funneller ever built and the first new mailship for 11 years - was such that her maiden voyage arrival in Cape Town on 9 May 1921 drew thousands of people. Those who couldn't get to the harbour early that morning, wandered down to South Arm 4 at lunchtime or after work to see the great liner. No razor wire then!
Although she was smaller than some of the cruiseliners that in the season, squeeze into Number Two Jetty at the Waterfront these days, the mailship would have made an impressive sight, passing through the narrow entrance, with smoke billowing from two of her four funnels.
Her sistership, Windsor Castle, arrived to similar acclaim the following year, and both liners were booked out for months ahead as passengers clamoured to travel in them.
Four years later, crowds again flocked to watch a maiden voyage arrival as Carnarvon Castle, Union-Castle's first motorship, arrived in Cape Town. Within four years, another pair of two-funnelled mailships, Winchester Castle and Warwick Castle, were on the run.
TOP: Warwick Castle with the tug JW Sauer. In the lat 1930s, she was refitted and emerged with almost double her power and one funnel. She was sunk in the Mediterranean during World War 2
Some of the Harnekar family would return to India occasionally in a British India liner, probably Amra or Karanja that used Durban as her African terminal port.
When she went to visit her sister who was married to a Royal Naval petty officer, my dear Sunday School teacher traveled to Singapore in Royal Interocean Line's Ruys, and, on arrival, sent a post card of the ship with most attractive stamps, each bearing a ship.
In our street, several families traveled regularly in ships; three people worked in Union-Castle's busy Adderley Street passenger office and as a perk, had free coastal voyages and every six years, a complimentary trip to Britain; a neighbour was a director of a forwarding company and went to the UK every second year in an Ellerman or Bullard King liner; near-neighbours and their tribe of children had arrived from Holland in one of the Dutch immigrant ships, and as my pal's father was involved in seaborne mail, he was usually at work in the wee hours each Thursday when the mailship arrived with the British mail and periodicals.
Others in our neighbourhood had been to South America in Empress of England or Empress of Britain, or later, in Reina del Mar, those cruises where folks were packed aboard like sardines, yet had the time of their lives.
A relative had returned to South Africa from Europe in Europa, one of the two Lloyd Triestino sisterships on a round-Africa service.
At that time, another relative was the only person I knew who had traveled in a Shaw Savill ship, although in the sixties, friends sailed for England in Southern Cross, another in Northern Star, and two others went to Australia in Ocean Monarch, formerly the 1957-built Empress of England.
Of the Shaw Savill ships, the two-funnelled Dominion Monarch was the most well-known, for she had over 500 passengers accommodated only in first class and engineering buffs will find her interesting as she was the only quadruple-screw ship on the South African trade, and the largest and most powerful motorship at the time.
Since Shaw Savill focused mainly on the UK-Australasian trade, all of their ships had substantial refrigerated cargo space to carry meat cargoes to Britain. Back in 1882, the steamer Albion, operated by a sister company, Albion Steamships, that was absorbed into Shaw Savill carried the first cargo of nearly 5000 frozen mutton carcasses from Port Chalmers, New Zealand, to London.
Thereafter, meat and wool became the base cargoes for the growing Shaw Savill fleet whose ships were designed to accommodate these cargoes. The volume of refrigerated space in Majestic, the last conventional freighter built for Shaw Savill, was five times that of the first of the company's ships with reefer space
Because of the need to move meat to Britain quickly, most of the ships had superior speed, and even in many of their pre-war ships, 17 or 18 knots was the norm. Later reefer ships in the fleet topped 19 knots.
Most were pressed into carrying refrigerated food cargoes to Britain during World War 2, and in the hell-run to Malta in August 1942, known as Operation Pedestal when 14 ships set out, nine were sunk, including Shaw Savill's Waimarama and Wairangi, both laden with drums of fuel besides refrigerated cargo. Of the five ships that arrived in Malta, four were refrigerated ships that in peacetime were on the South African trade (Port Chalmers, Melbourne Star, Brisbane Star and Rochester Castle).
Like most British liner companies, Shaw Savill was swallowed up by larger concerns and disappeared entirely during the rationalisation associated with contanerisation that also killed the local man's association with ships.
- Holland-Amerika's passengership Westerdam is due to berth at the Eastern Mole. Although she will bear no vuvuzelas when she arrives, I am sure that, once her soccer-loving passengers have ventured ashore here, some will discover the reincarnation of the old snoek-horn, much to the consternation of their fellow-passengers.
- Discoverer Luanda, the drillship that has been off Melkbosstrand for a while, will move today to a position 25-30 nautical miles off Cape Town to carry out various tests. She will return to her current position on Friday morning where she will remain until mid-July.
IN FORMER YEARS,
MOST PEOPLE HAD CONTACT WITH SHIPS
9 June 2010
2 June 2010
From Cape Times 2 June 2010
PETER MELLIAR'S PASSING
LEAVES A GAP IN DOCKLAND'S PHOTOGRAPHIC FRATERNITY
The docks will be a different, sadder place. Peter Melliar, that long-time ship photographer, shipping buff and genuine Mr Nice-Guy, has passed on after a battle with cancer.
His interest in shipping and ship photography began in his kortbroek years before World War 2 when he ventured to sea in his father's yacht. Indeed, his photographic record and his collection of shipping cuttings reflect more than 70 years of local maritime history.
Running the family's engineering works that often had work to do aboard ships gave him latitude to be on the bullnose whenever new or interesting ships arrived, and the two Suez closures were pure ecstasy for Peter whose photographic bills must have been enormous during those times when ships moved continually.
With a keen mind that retained a veritable maritime encyclopaedia, Peter could remember minute details relating to ships and shared his knowledge readily, yet humbly, unlike those irritating rivet-counters who trumpet their knowledge from the masthead.
He photographed ships from the banks of the Nieuw Waterweg and from other Dutch vantage points. He also made a few trips to Singapore, hiring bumboats from which to photograph the lines of ships in the anchorages.. He told me of the occasion in Singapore when, unnoticed, a Coke can fell overboard from the gunwale of the bumboat, bringing a police launch alongside within minutes.
"You have polluted the harbour!" barked the policeman, who told him in no uncertain terms that he would be fined heavily for such an offence. Pleading ignorance of the Coke can's fate while he had been immersed in his photography and pointing out his own recent arrival in the Lion City, Peter was relieved when the police ordered the boatman to recover other pieces of flotsam to absolve the "crime". However, since he was paying by the hour for the boat, the launch crew's search for flotsam was to Peter's account.
Wind permitting, most pilots obliged when Peter politely requested that the tugs should stay off a ship he wished to photograph, or that the pilot himself should disembark from a departing vessel on the opposite side of the ship so that Peter's picture would not include the pilot launch.
His blood pressure would rise with sudden intrusions into his viewfinder by tugs or other craft, obscuring the main subject of his picture, and he was not amused when palls of smoke from the old harbour tug TS McEwen ruined many photographs, including some of the final departure of Carnarvon Castle in June 1962.
While his massive photographic collection is a most important record of our maritime history, it will not be the only memory of this thorough gentleman. Henceforth, fewer of us will frequent the bullnose to photograph passing ships, but we will carry cameos of Peter's passion for shipping, his watchfulness over the whales at his beloved Walker Bay, his thoughtfulness, his kindness, his loyalty, and most of all, his intense devotion to his family.
A wonderful man has passed our way and we have been blessed by our meeting.
- Off Melkbos is the double-hulled, dynamically-positioning drillship Discoverer Luanda that can operate in water depths up to 3667 metres. She will sail at the end of the week for sea trials prior to her departure for operations in Angolan waters. In view of the current pollution calamity in the US Gulf and the massive fall-out for BP and others involved, my bet is that oil majors will focus more on places like Angola, rather than risk huge litigation in the US should something go wrong.
- By the time this column reaches the breakfast tables, the rig Pride South Seas may have berthed. As was the case with her previous visits to the port, repair work will provide the local engineering sector with welcome revenue.
- Scheduled to berth either yesterday or this morning depending on the weather is the remaining section of the floating drydock that broke in two off the Mozambique coast a few weeks ago.
- Apart from having my car tyres slashed by the tank traps at the harbour entrance last Friday, despite the boom being up, the evening was not a happy one. At the time of that expensive incident, I was en route to the yacht club to attend a rather poignant function that resembled a wake. After 63 years of operating and crewing its ships from Cape Town, Safmarine has moved its technical support office and its crewing department to Singapore where those functions will be taken over by the huge Maersk office. The move might make financial sense, but one wonders whether a financial decision is always the correct decision.
- I have kept the good news for last. Current holder of the contract to operate the standby salvage tug, Smit Amandla Marine, has been awarded the new contract for at least three years. Given the company's local track record that has its origins in the Saftug operation in 1976, its pool of expertise and experience, as well as the equipment at its disposal, the maritime community will welcome the contract going to Smit. Part of the good news is that the tug's officers and crew as well as the shoreside support teams will keep their jobs, and there may be space for others.
Of serious concern is the indifference that the department of transport displayed towards this important contract that expired nearly two years ago.
TOP: Smoke from TS McEwen or any other tug was an anathema to the usually sanguine Peter Melliar who preferred to take his photographs without harbour craft or yachts intruding on the picture.
TOP: Discoverer Luanda
Photograph : Transocean
PETER MELLIAR'S PASSING
16 June 2010
TOP: Gothic sailing from Cape Town in a south-easter. Her usual route on the Shaw Savill service from the UK to New Zealand was via Panama, but occasionally came via the Cape on he return passage to load additional fruit cargo.
TOP: An “Empire food ship”, Waiwera had a capacity for over 150000 mutton carcasses that she transported to the UK from New Zealand. She was torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic in 1942.
TOP: Shaw Savill’s Dominion Monarch was one of the most remarkable motorships, especially as she had quadruple screw.
IN FORMER YEARS,
MOST PEOPLE HAD CONTACT WITH SHIPS
I heard my first vuvuzela in the early 1950s. It was a snoek-horn, blown by a fishmonger from the back of his horse-drawn cart as he peddled his fish to the Mowbray housewives. He made plenty of sales, despite his wares having been in the sun for a few hours.
My mother preferred buying our fish from a Madeiran fishmonger called Ferreira who ran a tiny shop in Little Mowbray. If I recall correctly, he had come to Cape Town aboard one of the Portuguese passenger ships that called at Angolan ports, and then at most of the ports from Cape Town to Beira.
A few doors down from Ferreira's shop was the Lawson & Kirk drycleaning depot, operated by a lady whose husband was an engineer in one of the old steam tugs, and around the corner was Mr Harnekar's shop where those friendly folk packed sugar from huge sacks into brown paper bags, turned the corners by flipping the full bag, without spilling any sugar. Having hung around South Arm 1 when the Smith's coasters were in port, I had seen such sackloads of sugar being discharged from Durban.
From Cape Times 16 June 2010
When folks became excited about dozens of cruiseliners heading this way, crammed with soccer fans and providing umpteen bunks for the vuvuzela brigade, I was sceptical as most soccer fans are from the younger set who could not afford the fares, or spare the time to travel by sea .
However, I waxed lyrical when Holland-Amerika announced that their magnificent Noordam and Westerdam would be here for the World Cup, only to learn later that a paucity of interest sent Noordam cruising elsewhere, and that Westerdam would be the only cruiseliner here during the soccer celebrations. Perhaps the prospect of a shipload of vuvuzelas-blowing passengers was too daunting for cruiseliner operators.
Originally, Westerdam was scheduled to follow the soccer spectacle to Port Elizabeth and Durban. However, it transpires that she is heading for a short lay-up in Walvis Bay before returning here to embark passengers for her northbound voyage.
Although the World Cup has been a bit of a damp squib for shipping buffs, the maiden call of Westerdam has given locals the chance to see this elegant liner.
Another vessel has attracted equal attention. "When seeing the lights blazing at night," wrote a reader from the Atlantic seaboard, "one of my up-country guests asked what had been built on Robben Island." My correspondent assured his guest that the lights were those of the drillship Discoverer Luanda in the lee of the island, her brightly illuminated drill tower clearing the low island topography and, from the reader's vantage point, appearing to be part of the island's skyline.
Not much has happened on the island, except that this supposed icon of South African history continues its downward spiral and its troubled ferry has been laid up for a few days at the height of the world cup tourist invasion.
But let's talk about the drillship. After crew changes this week, she will go to sea, possibly on Friday, for a few days of trials before returning to the lee of Robben Island for a further few weeks.
One of a new generation of state-of-the-art dynamic-positioning vessels being built for Transocean, Discoverer Luanda propelled by six thrusters enabling her to maintain an exact position in which she can operate in deep water and drill to a depth 12 times the height of Table Mountain!
Her protracted stay off the coast has been a bit of a bonanza to several companies who have rendered services. Carrying fuel, Smit's Pentow Salvor has made around 50 trips from the harbour to the drillship, and another service vessel will be chartered as a safety boat when she heads seaward.
Cape Town's major launch operator, Carrier Marine Services, has also enjoyed a good return from the drillship's presence as scores of crewmembers have been ferried out to the ship, and those going on leave have been landed at the harbour. For her sizeable crew, the launch company has also moved tons of stores to the ship, bringing it further revenue while the chandlers and local vegetable farmers have also profited.
Medical examinations for joining crewmembers, their accommodation and transport have also contributed to local earnings from her stay, as have some engineering companies who have had to assist with the final preparations prior to her sailing for the Angolan coast in mid-July.
Nils Warner whose World Shipping Agency has serviced the vessel was full of praise for the operators who have been involved throughout the ship's stay off Melkbos, and he tells me that the entire operation has gone very smoothly.
Discoverer Luanda is one of a growing number of drillships and rigs that have been serviced off the coast or in port, and each successful operation bodes well for similar calls in the future, with a number of service providers benefiting in the process.
Thanks to Somali pirates, virtually all rigs under tow and even self-propelled rigs moving between the east and the North Sea or North America have been diverted to the Cape route as owners will not risk one of these mega-billion-dollar vessels falling prey to those bands of thugs. Diverted vessels, as well as the usual flow of rigs to West Africa and the burgeoning Brazilian offshore sector have the potential to create even more opportunities for local contractors, if service delivery is within budget, within the required timeframe and of excellent quality.
But here is a word of caution. The catastrophe in the US Gulf after the loss of the rig Deepwater Horizon and some of her crew has caused considerable uncertainty in the offshore drilling sector as the US reviews policy relating to the offshore oil industry, translating into few contracts being awarded since that awful event. This leaves some rigs without work, and charter rates for these deepwater drilling rigs have dropped, prompting leading American brokers to caution that up to 15 deepwater rigs may become idle over the next six months in the US Gulf alone.
This could impact the entire offshore oil industry and associated operations, and rates for anchor handling vessels that were over $80000 a day not so long ago, could plummet.
Regular readers will recall that a floating drydock broke in half while under tow in the Mozambique Channel and the after part went ashore. The towing tug brought the forward part into Cape Town several days ago. Svitzer salvors succeeded in refloating the stranded half that, weather permitting, should arrive in Saldanha Bay over the week-end or early next week under tow by Smit Amandla. Some preparatory work will be done there before the drydock is repaired in Cape Town's Sturrock Dry Dock.
TOP: Westerdam arriving in Cape Town on 9 June. Her original World Cup cruising programme was cancelled and she spent her time in South African waters either in Cape Town or in Walvis Bay.
Photograph : Robert Pabst
TOP: The drillship Discoverer Luanda off Melkbosstrand.
Photograph : Transocean
LINERS NOT FLOCKING HERE FOR WORLD CUP
Drillship Discoverer Luanda an interesting fixture in Bay
LINERS NOT FLOCKING HERE FOR WORLD CUP