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Post by mossie on Jul 28, 2013 14:27:15 GMT
Over the years I did a lot of work at Felistowe Dock, starting in 1959 when the port was just being developed for modern traffic. It became the UKs first purpose built container port now handling over 2 million boxes, as containers are known, a year. This all started because the RAF had used it to test all flying boats and seaplanes and when they left in the 1950s they left behind the large crane used for lifting the planes from the sea onto the dock. The new owners used this crane to lift the containers from the ships onto the dockside and vice versa. Notice in the foreground, the little tugs used to help these monster boats in and out of the port Things have developed of course and now cranes have to be capable of reaching 50 metres and lifting a 40 ton box from there, quite a crane. Fleets of lorries and dedicated trains take the boxes all over the country. The boats have followed suit, some capable of carrying over 14,000 boxes. Anyway, this morning I took a ride down there and was lucky enough to capture the Mediterranean Shipping Companys boat Regulus, capable of carrying over 13,000 boxes, being worked. This little boat is 366 metres long and 48 metres wide This boat runs a regular 77 day trip from China via Malaya and the Suez Canal to France Holland and Felixstowe. This is just one of these super carriers bringing in all our cameras TVs etc etc.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 28, 2013 15:40:08 GMT
Container ships always amaze me, but I have also seen some of the YouTube videos of the containers breaking loose and falling off the ships in high seas. There will be some interesting things to discover at the bottom of the sea in 100 years.
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Post by htmb on Jul 28, 2013 17:00:12 GMT
The number and size of the cargo boggles the mind!
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Post by bjd on Jul 30, 2013 6:54:29 GMT
Seeing the word Panama on that ship makes me think what an extraordinary sight a ship like that must be going through the Panama or Suez canals. Just a giant load (a bit like cruise ships coming into Venice now ;D)
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Post by Deleted on Jul 30, 2013 22:51:23 GMT
And on top of that, ships like that are built just so they can squeeze through the Panama or the Suez canals. They would be even bigger if the canals were bigger.
I've seen the Suez Canal with ships in it, and there's not much room for the water when they are going through!
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Post by htmb on Jul 30, 2013 23:13:02 GMT
The Panama Canal is in the process of being widened and will be able to accommodate even more cargo ships in a few years.
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Post by mossie on Aug 12, 2013 10:33:12 GMT
Had another trip down to Felixstowe yesterday and caught this monster ship coming in, another capable of carrying over 13,000 boxes. It may look top heavy but was drawing 12.4 metres, about 40 feet. That is the bit you can't see below the waterline. Note the tugs fore and aft to assist, here they are getting into turned around alongside the quay.
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Post by mossie on Aug 12, 2013 10:46:23 GMT
When the box is lifted of the boat the crane places it onto a special lorry which then carts it off to a container park where the boxes are stacked waiting transshipment. Here is a transtainer which then lifts the box off the lorry and stacks it. It also takes boxes from the stacks and drops them onto waiting lorries to transport them all over the country. Or, as here, onto rail wagons for onward transit
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Post by Deleted on Aug 12, 2013 14:11:52 GMT
Containers are such an excellent idea it makes you why it was all bags and bales and boxes for so long, being hauled up in those nets. Obviously the old ships could never had handed modern containers, but they could have made smaller ones.
One of the things that is the most brilliant about containers now is that they can be put on both trucks and trains for the next part of the journey.
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Post by mossie on Aug 13, 2013 11:09:23 GMT
The reason for keeping the old fashioned cargo methods of bales etc was the power of the dock workers unions. In the earlier days of Felixstowe all men working on the dock had access to a free supply of Danish lager, which was imported through the dock. When supplies ran low another batch of crates got dropped a little and classified as damaged. Strangely enough the bottles were not cracked and were still drinkable ;D
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Post by htmb on Aug 14, 2013 3:10:01 GMT
Surely you never drank any.
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Post by bixaorellana on Aug 14, 2013 3:55:15 GMT
This is a wonderful report, Mossie. I'm amazed at how deep the water is so close to shore. Has Felixstowe always been a natural deep-water port? Your pictures are great, but made me nostalgic for when I lived in New Orleans & would see the container freight being off- and on-loaded during my bike rides. Seeing the photos of the huge tall cargoes and the relatively tiny tugs really brings home all the skill, coordination, & danger involved in sea freight. Have you read the Garcia Márquez non-fiction book, The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor? I read it years ago, but still remember the account of the on-deck cargo shifting and breaking loose in a storm, it is so vividly and harrowingly rendered. www.amazon.com/Shipwrecked-Sailor-Gabriel-Garcia-Marquez/dp/067972205X
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Post by mossie on Aug 14, 2013 7:04:54 GMT
Felixstowe stands at the mouth of the Orwell Estuary across from the port of Harwich, which was once a naval base, so the inlet is deep water. However the quays at Felixstowe have been formed by building a quay wall in the sea and then large barge bourn pumps pump the gravel from the seabed over the new wall to build up the quay. A conventional stone and asphalt surface is then heeled in and in a few months a new stretch of quay is made.
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Post by htmb on Aug 14, 2013 23:12:19 GMT
Mossie, did you work on projects like the one you describe?
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Post by mossie on Aug 15, 2013 18:39:57 GMT
I was responsible for producing and laying the blacktop on a lot of roads and container parks. The group I worked for had a permanent manager and workforce on the dock for many years, he would ask me to come in and do my bit on jobs he had acquired. In the period of rapid expansion in the 70s and 80s there was a continuous flow of work, which also included a new railway link into the dock from the branch line a few miles away.
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Post by mossie on Aug 15, 2013 18:41:57 GMT
Regarding the deep water port, the quay areas and entrance channel has to have periodic dredging to maintain the necessary depths.
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Post by tod2 on Aug 15, 2013 20:27:07 GMT
I found this rerport extremely interesting for many reasons. One of them being your mention of the flying boats. I know my father flew to England (probably in a flying boat) to do his engineering apprenticeship on the flying boats. Secondly, your mention of laying the tar macadam down on the roads etc. I wonder if you knew of any business in the Isle of Wight which built the roads on the island and were the first company to acquire the new Barber Greene asphalt layer?
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Post by mossie on Aug 16, 2013 7:17:59 GMT
The company on the Isle of Wight was the Vectis Stone Co, I once applied for a job with them. I did once work for a company called Roads Reconstruction Ltd, which I understood to be the first to have Barber Greene pavers. They had been brought over from America during the war to help in the worlds largest civil engineering works, the construction of runways all over the country to take the bomber forces to pound Germany into submission.
Barber Greene set up a subsidiary company in Bury St Edmunds to make asphalt pavers and plants. For the last 22 years of my work I was responsible for a B G asphalt plant which I had to totally remodel, while still chucking down asphalt over innocent lumps of East Anglia. I had also worked with B G pavers, which became outmoded as the company was very "stick in the mud" and eventually went bust.
So glad to be retired, life could be very stressful around all that machinery.
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Post by mossie on Aug 16, 2013 7:21:05 GMT
Slaving through the above reminded me of the old joke. "She was only the foremans daughter, but she sure liked her asphalt"
I'll get my coat.
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Post by tod2 on Aug 16, 2013 7:40:44 GMT
Thanks Mossie - yes, I think you are right about the Roads Reconstruction Ltd acquiring the first Barber Greene. It's many years ago now (1965) that I first met the old man who started Vectis Stone with his brother. I think in those days the called it Cheek Brothers. Hard to remember exact details - maybe they were two different companies or one merged with the other? Maybe you know more?
Many an hour was spent listening to the method of making roads on the island when it was all hand done, cart and horse, eating lunch under the hedgerow..... We visited his island home twice and since his death, many years ago now, have been back for a nostalgic visit.
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Post by mossie on Aug 16, 2013 14:32:51 GMT
I don't know the previous history of Vectis Stone, I knew it as a local Isle of Wight company. It was eventually taken over by Bardon Hill Quarries of Leicester, owned by the Tom family. That morphed into Aggregate Industries by amalgamating with other quarry/construction companies. It is now a subsidiary of Holcim, a large American group in the cement and associated industries. All these takeovers and amalgamations form the large construction giants who dominate the industry today and I guess some very profitable cartels have evolved. No wonder astronomical figures are quoted for construction projects I fell into the asphalt industry by chance on leaving the RAF in 1958 and carried on with different firms until retirement in 1997. So I can tell all sorts of wild and fanciful stories, how I blamelessly caused a 14 mile jam on the M1, Britains major road etc., etc.
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Post by patricklondon on Aug 16, 2013 14:56:45 GMT
And it's back to the "asphalt"......
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Post by lugg on Aug 29, 2013 6:04:42 GMT
The sheer size of these container ships is hard to imagine but your photos do a very good at demonstrating this. Interesting to see the tugs next to the Evergreen ship, the first appears to be connected and "tugging" ??
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Post by mossie on Aug 29, 2013 7:20:24 GMT
The tugs don't actually tug as much as guide. They help in steering, there are some quite strong currents, and also the boats sometimes have to be turned round to dock and or nudged sideways to dock. You can see this in progress in pic No. 4.
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Post by lugg on Aug 30, 2013 5:43:46 GMT
Ah yes - thx Mossie
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Post by mossie on May 17, 2015 15:40:51 GMT
Here is another monster capable of carrying 14,000 boxes. Built for China Shipping last year at a cost of $170 million She is just leaving Felixstowe on her way to Rotterdam. On the left is the tower carrying the radar by which the entrance to the estuary is controlled. It serves the ports of Felixstowe, Harwich, Parkeston Quay, and Ipswich, as well as various pleasure boat marinas and anchorages, so traffic is heavy.
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Post by htmb on May 17, 2015 16:13:06 GMT
Enormous!!!
I'm sure it's fascinating to watch from that point as ships come and go.
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Post by Deleted on May 17, 2015 19:51:41 GMT
A French shipping company just took delivery of a huge container ship last week, the CMA CGM Kerguelen -- 400 metres long, keeping in mind that the Eiffel Tower is only 315 metres tall. The press release says that it can carry 17,722 containers which, if lined up in single file, would make a line of containers 109 kilometres long. This only makes it the 5th biggest ship in the world.
Naturally, there are very few ports in the world that can handle such ships, but I guess they know what they are doing.
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Post by tod2 on May 18, 2015 17:09:45 GMT
All I see any time I am on the freeway is these enormous shipping containers. Reason they are on the road is that our rail service is old and out of date. These containers should be going by rail day and night. I am in awe of the size of the bulk carriers.
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Post by lugg on May 25, 2015 17:28:29 GMT
That's one humongous ship
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