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   10 February 2010
From Cape Times   20 January 2010
 
While Bright Dream is of little value - the scrap price is currently deflated as many owners flooded scrapyards with obsolete vessels during the economic meltdown - the fuel aboard might make a mess of the magnificent Wild Coast if she were to ground.  This is unlikely as reports indicated that she was at anchor.

Another ro-ro with an equally anomalous name was in port over the week-end. The former ro-ro ferry Winner 6 (ex Equine) refueled at B Berth from the UniCal bunker tanker Southern Valour and was scheduled to sail for a breaker's yard in India. 

At this time of the year in a previous era, refrigerated ships would have been berthed from B to D Berth, loading fruit for Europe.  Gone are the queues of fruitships in the roadstead or at lay-up berths waiting to load, as the fulcrum of fruit shipment has moved to the container terminal where northbound and eastbound containerships load refrigerated containers by the hundred.

Looking well-found was the 62-metre Lida, a former near-sea trader, but now equipped to harvest obsolete undersea communication cables.  She is typical of many European-built coasters over the years, and, as containerisation rendered them obsolete, a number came onto the South African coastal trade which at that stage remained the domain of the general cargo coaster.

I watched Lida sail a few years ago, with barges on her foredeck.  This time, she was at A Berth that saw vibrant days as the departure point for the Southampton-bound Union-Castle mailships.  Many readers can associate with those sailing days when, for those on the ship, a fortnight of sheer holiday and excitement lay ahead.  (Towards the end of that unique mail service, the steaming time was cut to eleven and a half days.)

Those on the quayside harboured other emotions as sons, daughters and friends departed for the UK, some emigrating, others heading for a carefree jaunt around Britain or Europe.

Once the mailship had passed through the harbour entrance, the thronging crowds dispersed quickly, some dashing to Sea Point to watch the vessel pass Robben Island before altering course to the north. The more tearful folks went home to ponder the implications of an empty nest.

Since the mailships enjoyed priority, the harbour stopped other movements from mid-afternoon until after the liner had left when there was often another ship sailing or arriving, often to berth at A berth.  When I had pedaled to the docks on mailship day, I used to hang around to see what happened thereafter, and often struck it lucky for that was when even more fascinating ships moved! 

On one occasion, I recall Robin Locksley, one of the familiar Robin Line vessels, coming alongside A Berth immediately the mailship had sailed.  Officially known as Seas Shipping, the company began in 1920 as a feeder operation along the American coast for Farrell Lines.  A fall-out among shareholders saw Robin and Farrell part ways in 1933 and, when Robin Line entered the US-South Africa trade in 1935, the companies became bitter rivals, a scenario that continued after World War 2.

With air travel in its infancy, the war-built Robin ships had been refitted with plush accommodation for 12 passengers as the company executives promoted ocean passenger travel in their freighters at every opportunity.

In its heyday, the fleet operated twelve steamers whose nomenclature reflected - albeit vaguely in some instances - the Robin Hood story.  Moore-McCormack bought the company in the 1950s and later replaced the Robin ships with their own vessels.

Although I enjoyed the hype of the mailships and might take a photo or two of a modern cruiseliner, I find the world of freighters and containerships more fascinating. 

During my week-end dockland stroll, I saw the epitome of this interest.  Inward in ballast from Port Gentil (Gabon), African Challenger called for bunkers en route to Tuticorin on the south-eastern coast of India.  She had berthed in the wee hours of Sunday morning and I was pleasantly surprised when she drew away from the Landing Wall within ten minutes of the tugs' arrival shortly before lunchtime.

Probably on charter to carry rice to West Africa, she is an old lady, with obvious signs of working cargo overside but typical of those very ordinary five-hatch handysize bulkers that bring our grain, that call to refuel, and that carry a myriad of minerals from Richards Bay, Durban and Saldanha.   

Such ships, their larger cousins that move coal, ore or grain, the containerships, and the many types of tanker form the backbone of shipping, and indeed, of the world's economy.

But my dockland stroll went sour.  I walked past the Clock Tower, that icon of the Waterfront.  Despite assurances in March from Waterfront officials that its use as a kitchen would cease in October last year, its culinary role continues. 

This is a disgraceful dereliction of their duty to preserve this unique building, and is equal to the appalling apathy displayed by Iziko Museums who have left two unique ships - SAS Somerset, the last of her class anywhere, and Alwyn Vintcent, the last South African steam tug - to rot away.  Shame, indeed!
SHIPS REKINDLE MANY MEMORIES OF TIMES GONE BY
but V&A Waterfront continue to desecrate iconic Clock Tower
20 Jan 2010
13 Jan 2010
From Cape Times   13 January 2010
TOP: The former Belgian ferry Equine in Cape Town as Winner 6, en route to Indian breakers.
SHIPS REKINDLE MANY MEMORIES
OF TIMES GONE BY
but V&A Waterfront continue to desecrate iconic Clock Tower
With fog shrouding the Atlantic seaboard on Monday morning, the salvage tug Smit Amandla put to sea, heading for Mbashe Point where an obsolete car carrier Bright Dream - a misnomer indeed - had broken down en route to the breakers.   The tug should be there by now and, if all goes well, will probably tow the ship to East London or Durban.
 
Togo's soccer players, sadly, became victims of another African conflict.  Until 1914, the tiny elongated country along the Gulf of Guinea was a German protectorate and then was split between British and French control, the latter imparting its language and the names of some of its footballers.

A snippet in a new booklet, TOL, A Short History of Transocean Liners, that came my way last week referred briefly to an interesting story surrounding the 1938-built German freighter Togo that took her name from the West African country. The German crew did not relish the prospect of internment should war break out, and, with French guns trained on the ship when loading in Duoala (in French Cameroon), cargowork was expedited so that she managed to sail only hours before war was declared - without her clearance papers and pilotless - for Boma at the mouth of the Congo River. 

Breaking the British blockade of the North Sea, she arrived safely in Hamburg in December 1939.  Although heavily armed and camouflaged, Togo became a singularly unsuccessful commerce raider, as repeated aerial and naval attacks - a bomb went right through her without exploding - as well as British gunnery from coastal batteries prevented her from breaking out into the Atlantic on her first sortie in 1943, forcing her to return to Germany.  Later, she became a floating radar station in the Baltic Sea.

The Norwegians took her as a war prize and she sailed under two owners before her original owners bought her, refitted her and she returned to Deutsche Ost-Afrika Linien's southern African service.

She was a most handsome vessel with teak fronting to her bridge and, like all her DOAL consorts, was always well maintained.

Remarkably, she plied the DOAL service for a further 12 years before she was sold to operate again for various owners until she was wrecked on the Mexican coast, nearly 50 years after her construction.

In reporting the arrival of the fine freighter Transvaal, the first German ship to call at a South African port after the war, the Cape Times of 13 December 1951 captured a poignant moment - the meeting between the ship's third mate, and his mother who had immigrated to South Africa and had not seen her son for years. 

Lest war historians rush to find it, I should point out that the 70-page booklet - written by that highly respected shipping and affable figure, Hans Busse - focuses not on the war, but on the post-war success of a cluster of companies within the fold of the Von Rantzau family.

South African Lines (SAL), founded in 1945 by a Greek shipowner Eugene Eugenides, began a joint South Africa-Europe service with DOAL in 1951, forging close links with the German company that led initially to the formation of the local agency Transocean Liners (TOL), and ultimately, to a buy out of SAL by Globus Reederei, subsequently bought by Safmarine in 1973.

Besides providing agency services for DOAL and SAL, Transocean looked after Lykes Lines, the US company whose war-built C3 and Victory ships traded from the US Gulf to South Africa, and TOL extended its agency operations to include French and other interests. 

Mrs Liselotte von Rantzau-Essberger, the energetic chairman of the group from 1959, visited South Africa often, and despite brush-offs by leading politicians, developed the South African business to the point where she registered a local company, Cape Continent Shipping Company.  The DOAL freighter Karroo was transferred to the new company and registered in Cape Town, while four smart new ships, Stellenbosch, Swellendam, Palabora and Tabora, were registered under the new company in 1968.

Stellenbosch and Swellendam each had a 180-ton derrick that was most useful in shipping the range of heavylift cargoes - electrical switchgear, powerstation boilers, mining equipment and refinery components - that were being imported as part of a large-scale government spending spree.

Containerisation changed the company's interests to focus on the container service to Europe.  DAL Kalahari should arrive in Cape Town over the week-end.

With 47 years in the business, and an interest in shipping that stretches back to the day he, then a real kortbroek, shook hands with the master of the DOAL liner Transvaal in 1951, Hans Busse has packed much into this valuable, attractively-designed record of Transocean Liners and its associated companies. 

Oh that more shipping memories are recorded like this, that more kortbroekies can get closer to ships, and that more shipmasters would make time to meet them! 

  • The cruiseliner Silver Wind berths at the Waterfront this morning, and will sail this evening on one of three successive coastal cruises that include Richards Bay and Mossel Bay.  With its aluminium smelters and other heavy industries, the bulk port of Richards Bay might seem an unusual cruiseliner call, but within an hour of disembarking, passengers can be viewing the "big five" at one of the nearby game reserves.  One hopes that the Mossel Bay taxi drivers behave themselves when she calls.  A year or two ago, a cruiseliner master refused to call because the local mini-bus taxi folks had decided to blockade the port as they were not getting a slice of the tourist pie.  (To ferry passengers to the Garden Route and Oudtshoorn, luxury buses had been contracted, a more agreeable choice than the mini-bus taxis!)

TOP: The cruiseliner Silver Wind  that is scheduled to do three cruises along the South African coast before heading north.

LEFT: East German-built and Egyptian-operated Suez, attached in Cape Town.  Interesting is her name is Suez and her port of registry is Panama.



TOP: African Challenger sailing from Cape Town in ballast for India.
TOP: The bulker 45621-deadweight Sovi R arriving in Cape Town to discharge grain.
OF SHIPS OF ANOTHER ERA
OF SHIPS OF ANOTHER ERA
From Cape Times   27 January 2010
27 Jan 2010
When his ship arrived from Rostock last Saturday, the master of the smart Maltese-flagged bulker Sovi R must have wondered why five photographers were blazing away with their cameras.

It was all in the interests of a hobby that they have followed passionately for a collective 280 years.  Ships - from fancy cruiseliners to neglected trampships - are photographed by this group of enthusiasts of which I am one.

Among their collections are historic records of last sailings, of ships diverted from Suez during the two closures of that waterway, of maiden calls, regular callers, strange ships, and more.  As I wrote in a previous column, their collections form an important and irreplaceable record of Cape Town shipping.

A photograph not in their collections as it arrived via email last week moved seasoned seafarers to tears.  High and dry on a distant sandbank at the breaker's beach in India and listing to port was the familiar profile of the Smit salvage tug Wolraad Woltemade.

A cracked bedplate probably hastened the demise of this remarkable tug, and that haste caught most off-guard.  Had there been more time between the announcement of her withdrawal and her sale, a shipload of folks connected with her over the years, and those with a passion for ships may have been able to compile a plan to preserve her - or even to return her to service after what would have been a major repair and re-engining.

However, she has gone, and little can be done now to retrieve her from that Indian sandbank before hordes of acetylene-torch bearers cut her to pieces for the next batch of Tata cars.

Now the focus turns to the future of her sistership, Smit Amandla. The Durban-built tug is nearly 34 years old and she is still going!  I am told that her hull remains in good nick, and that she is good for at least another five years.

Some are planning ahead for the time when she might also be bound for an Indian sandbank.  "A museum ship!" they enthuse, a standpoint I support to the hilt.

However, realism should guide and heighten enthusiasm to get this one right.  When the old steam tug TS McEwen was withdrawn from service in the early 1970s, energetic folks from the Ship Society launched a well-researched campaign to preserve that old lady whose salvage and towing operations spanned 49 years.  Their plan centred on hauling her up a strengthened slipway at the General Botha, then at Granger Bay, and housing her in a specially-constructed shed.

Bean-counters had provided the figures, and, considering the public interest and the value of preserving not only the tug herself, but also her fine steam engines that had driven her along during wartime expeditions to tow in damaged ships or to refloat laden freighters, the battle was almost won. 

But that noble scheme to preserve her foundered.  No one, not even the tug's owners, was prepared to put up the money for the project, and neither was funding available for on-going maintenance when up on the hard, a most important consideration.

A few years later, she was towed out and scuttled off Robben Island, whence, in the twilight years of her service, this remarkable tug - with another Cape Town harbour tug - had pulled the Kuwaiti tanker Kazimah from Robben Island when a more modern German tug had failed.

The country had recognised neither her significance in our maritime heritage nor her potential to stimulate interest in shipping.  Other opportunities have also been discarded. I wrote last week of the sad tale of SAS Somerset and Alwyn Vintcent, a unique pair of ships, left to rot by Iziko Museums, a state-funded body charged with preserving our heritage, nogal!

However, let the protagonists of the Save our Smit Amandla (SOSA) project take heart.  In Simon's Town dockyard lies a surviving Daphne-class submarine, one of three built in France about 40 years ago for the South African Navy.  I understand that the indomitable Rear-Admiral Angel Soderlund is leading the charge to preserve this vessel, and like the proposed TS McEwen project, she will be hauled onto the hard where walk-ways will be built so that excited youngsters and old salts alike can wander through her, soaking up the atmosphere of life aboard a submarine.  And it looks as though he and his team are succeeding in their quest.

A similar possibility exists for Smit Amandla when she is withdrawn from service, perhaps in five years' time.  Designed largely by South Africans for operations in local conditions, she and Wolraad Woltemade are special in the annals of South African maritime history.  They were the largest and most powerful tugs and Smit Amandla remains the fastest.

Thus, when Maggie Thatcher launched the campaign to drive the invading Argentine forces from the Falkland Islands, the Admiralty sought to commandeer the two tugs, then under Bermudan registry. An urgent telephonic discussion with Foreign Minister Pik Botha led Safmarine to switch them to the South African flag immediately so that the Brits could not demand their services.

Other anecdotes surrounding the tugs abound, but the accounts of their astonishing salvage work amidst frightening elements capture immediate interest, especially when seen against the equally rich heritage of the successes of earlier tugs. 

Since her history is the essence of an exciting and stimulating educational experience for all, Smit Amandla must not go to that Indian sandbank. Rather she could be a stationary training and museum ship.

So let's begin to plan now.
 
PHOTOGRAPH OF FAMILIAR TUG TURNS ATTENTION TO HER SISTERSHIP
TOP: Wolraad Woltemade in her heyday.
PHOTOGRAPH OF FAMILIAR TUG TURNS ATTENTION TO HER SISTERSHIP
TOP: Wolraad Woltemade on an Indian sandbank, awaiting the acetylene torches. 
Photograph supplied by Smit Marine
3 Feb 2010
From Cape Times   3 February 2010
TANKER TRADES ON THE RISE
Interesting Ships call at the Cape

A product of the Maritime Department at Simon's Town School, hard-working Ainsley Olivier from Strandfontein was bound to succeed.   With great enthusiasm, he completed the course at the school, studied further and went to sea early last year as a cadet in tankers belonging to the Swedish company Stena Bulk.

Since then, he has been to many ports, meticulously logging his experiences in his journal, taking as many photographs as his duties allow, and generally soaking up the atmosphere aboard these remarkable tankers.

After a spell of leave, he flew from Cape Town over the week-end to join the 183-metre Stena Perros, built last year and designed to carry about 60000 tons of crude oil or refined products.  She is ice-strengthened and a classic photograph of one of her consorts showed her ice-covered in some northern waterway.

Her twin-engine design is such that her fuel consumption is lower than most similarly-sized tankers, with the obvious benefits that will be noted with glee by the bean-counters.

Talking of tankers, I understand that a huge amount of oil has been in storage in idle tankers over the past twelve months.  At its peak last November, 154 million barrels of oil were in floating storage aboard more than 100 tankers, an unprecedented situation engendered largely by the low oil price and the availability of all those tankers that otherwise might have been laid up.

The oil in floating storage was bought when oil prices were low, and some of it is being marketed now amidst a much higher price.  Even taking into account the cost of chartering a tanker for storage for months, the speculators will make significant profits.

The use of tankers for floating storage took dozens of vessels out of service and helped to keep rates steady for those still trading, thus saving the tanker market from a huge decrease in rates in 2009.  The global downturn caused a drop in demand for seaborne oil - equivalent to tanker capacity of 17 million deadweight - and this was offset exactly by the demand for a similar amount of tanker capacity for floating storage of oil.  The party was spoilt a little as a number of new tankers came into service, thus increasing supply and depressing the rates, but the floating storage phenomenon saved the day.

I know a fellow who, having completed two years at General Botha in Gordon's Bay, joined Shell Tankers.  His first two tours of duty took him all over the world, but his third spell at sea was spent on a tanker moored in the Mekong River as a floating storage depot for fuel for the American forces in Vietnam!  A boring and most stressful assignment!

No wonder he opted out of tankers and joined Safmarine where he found the company's reefer ships a far more leisurely and interesting experience.

In contrast to the storage tankers now moored all over the world , Ainsley's tanker will be trading far and wide, and doubtlessly, this young man will be well-equipped to take his examinations for his second mate's ticket early next year. 

  • Captain Ravi Naicker, Cape Town's amiable harbour master, has resigned and the shipping community will wish him well as he opens a maritime consultancy office.  His successor must be appointed without delay as this is a most important and high-profile position that demands the incumbent to have much sea-going experience as well as a dynamic vision for the future of the port.
  • The high-speed catamaran-hulled warship USS Swift was scheduled to arrive yesterday, and her consort, the frigate USS Nicholas will berth this morning.
  • Residents along the False Bay coast will see the German naval tanker Westerwald steaming up the bay tomorrow prior to berthing in Simon's Town, and the rest of the German flotilla will arrive in Simon's Town on 15 February.  Apart from the tanker, the German warships and two South African frigates will berth at the Waterfront towards the end of the month.Their arrival in Simon's Town reminds one of the Dutch submarine KXVIII that called at the naval port in 1934 as part of a 23000-nautical mile voyage from Holland to Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia.  The purpose of the voyage was to test the durability of the materials from which she was constructed, and, one imagines, the resilience of the crew was also tested.  She had called at Dakar, via Madeira, that then crossed the Atlantic to South America.  En route to Cape Town, she stopped at Tristan da Cunha, a call that would have been of great interest to the islanders.  A few records were established during that epic voyage: she was the first submarine to enter False Bay, and that was the longest voyage by a submarine at the time.
  • Atlantic coast folks will have their turn to gaze seaward next Monday when the magnificent Bahamas-flagged passenger ship Crystal Serenity arrives in Cape Town from Buenos Aires.  Built in France in 2003, she was named by Julie Andrews of Sound of Music fame.  She will sail on Tuesday for the coast, East Africa and India. 
  • Also of interest on Monday - or perhaps on Sunday evening, weather permitting - the rig Sedco 700 will arrive off port limits for a crew change and to revictual en route from Equatorial Guinea. Smit Amandla will hold the rig while the Chinese tug De Da berths for bunkers before resuming the voyage to Batam in Indonesia. 
TOP: Cadet Ainsley Olivier aboard a Stena tanker.  He is one of a growing number of South African cadets who are seeking training berths abroad, as local berths are severely limited.


TOP: Crystal Serenity in Cape Town. 
Photograph : Robert Pabst.
TANKER TRADES ON THE RISE
 
10 Feb 2010
COASTERS - ONCE FAMILIAR IN THE DOCKS, NOW FEW

Besides nostalgic references to Union-Castle voyages, my Saturday chat over coffee with an avid reader of this column - there are such folks! - opened my eyes to what can be found during a beach ramble - an array of shells, whale fossils and more, many discovered on that lovely stretch of beach not far from his Table View home.

"Every tide on that long beach," wrote Lawrence Green in his book South African Beachcomber, "washes romance into my path"  That beach, to the east of Robben Island strait, holds a similar fascination for me. 

I have passed through that strait several times in the mailship St Helena, heading for a delightful spell at sea, and an equally delightful time on the island of that name, confronted at every turn by historical reminders of the British empire, of Napoleon, of the Zulu war, the Anglo-Boer war, and more recent history. 

Past those white sands of the Table View beach steamed the tiny Thesen coasters on passage to Port Nolloth, Luderitz or Lambert's Bay. 

On one occasion, Xhosa Coast, chartered initially from Dutch owners as Paraat and later bought by Thesen for the Port Nolloth service, loaded a large gas tank as deck cargo and sailed from Cape Town shortly before midnight.  Early the following morning, Thesens received a call from the air force base at Ysterplaat.

"Has one of your ships lost a tank overboard?" inquired the duty officer who had received a report from a pilot that a tank was floating north of Melkbos.  The coaster master confirmed that the tank had gone overboard, for the police to find it ashore near Ysterfontein.

When calling at Lambert's Bay to discharge diesel and to load fish oil for Cape Town, the smaller Thesen's vessels went alongside a dolphin berth, while the larger Pondo Coast and Griqua Coast anchored off the port for small boats to ferry bagged fish meal and cartons of canned fish to them.

Ovambo, the last ship to be registered in the name of Thesen but not to be confused with an earlier Ovambo Coast that was wrecked on Marcus Island in 1958, also passed through the Robben Island strait dozens of times as she traded along the west coast for nine years.  Among her unusual ports of call was Sandy Point in St Helena Bay to load frozen fish, now carried to Cape Town by truck.    

The 61-metre coastal tanker Oranjemund also carried me through the strait on the homeward run from Luderitz, a trip that can be rough when the south-easter whips up a heavy head-sea that causes severe pitching.  The propellers of that lightly laden mini-tanker frequently bit the air, sending shudders through the entire ship.

On her northbound voyage laden with diesel for the Luderitz fishing fleets, Oranjemund usually kept Robben Island to starboard in the latter years of her west coast trade, a response to tightened regulations surrounding the carriage of oil products. 

Huge trucks put the coasters out of business, and the small west coast ports now have other roles.  From Port Nolloth, tenders serve the diamond mining vessels, and Luderitz, modified to berth small containerships, now exports processed zinc.

And thus from that beach, I no longer see those small ships heading for the west coast ports, laden with household goods, drums of fuel and diesel in their tanks.  Instead, there is the inevitable queue of containerships, delayed by the wind and by the reduced number of berths while the upgrade of the terminal drags on.

As the cold front approached last week-end, Safmarine Oranje and a few other ships left the summer anchorage off Sea Point and headed for a safer area off that beach.  Her container load looked better than when I sailed in her last July, perhaps a positive sign for the South Africa-US trade and perhaps the containership market in general.

Indeed, a British journal reported last week of a glimmer in the firmament of container shipping which, it said, was looking better than 12 months ago as volumes and freight rates have been rising recently.  Chinese containership indices also showed a positive trend, and a small number of laid-up vessels have returned to service.

As the fruit season swings into gear, the South Africa-Europe Container Service (SAECS) will increase its reefer capacity by adding extra vessels to its existing fleet with DAL Madagascar stemmed for 15 February as the first of these additional ships.

One wonders what will be the future of the 19-year-old Safmarine Oranje, the only commercial vessel on the South African register.  Certainly, the tardiness of various government departments to process legislation pertaining to the local ships' register has not helped and for a while, dockland gossip has pointed to her flagging elsewhere.  If that should become a reality, it will mean that every ton of cargo passing through South African ports is carried by foreign-owned ships, with foreign owners reaping the benefits. 

Some may be prompted to lobby government for the introduction of some form of cabotage whereby a percentage of local cargo must be carried in South African-flagged ships, a proposal that will precipitate heated dockland debate.

Other spray in the wind may indicate some restructuring ahead for local shipping operations that could have a profound effect on the broader maritime picture.

Watch this space.

  • A three-ship German naval flotilla will arrive in Simon's Town on Monday to join the tanker, Westerwald, already in port.
TOP LEFT: In the colours of Aberdeen Direct Line, the Blue Funnel liner Neleus in Cape Town, circa 1934.  She was built in 1911, survived two world wars and was scrapped in 1948.

TOP: The 1936-vintage Union-Castle Intermediate liner Dunnottar Castle sailing from Cape Town, circa 1956.  She was sold to Greek interests in 1958 and renamed Victoria under the Liberian flag.




LEFT: The coaster Springbok (later Walvis, Ovambo, and finally Ovambo Coast, the name she bore when she was wrecked on Marcus Island, Saldanha Bay in 1958.




COASTERS - ONCE FAMILIAR IN THE DOCKS, NOW FEW