In an email from South Africa, John Scofield sent this in, after visiting the Doxford Opposed Piston section of the website. “ I was third mate of the KosmosV, a whale factory ship, in the early 70s by which time she had been renamed Suiderkruis, and just as l left, L’interpeche. Built in 1948, at Tyneside, it was an absolute delight to be in engine room at sea, with those…
Charles Leeuwenburg wears many hats, being charitable to visiting sailors is just one more. (Picture by CL) Some people think I make a fortune off my marine engineering website. I don’t get that comment so much these days, but back when I started in 2000, there was this expectation that everybody with a website was a millionaire. No, far from it. It’s actually quite a bit of an expense in…
Quebec City is always such a great place for ship lovers. It’s a bustling port, with lots of action to admire, and neat iron plying about. Today, I had the opportunity to visit some berth mates before I signed off, here are some pictures. River traffic is constant, above is Umiak 1 leaving for its monthly trip to northern Quebec, with supplies for the mines; then coming back loaded with…
Just watched Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s latest movie, Escape Plan. Stallone is some expert in maximum security prison – a breakout artist – and he gets to test out the latest “alphabet soup” secret super max prison. I had to laugh at the irony of it all, because as it turns out, the prison is actually a ship, or more correctly, on a ship. What do you think being a seafarer…
Evans McKeil We are just wrapping up cargo operations in Hamilton, the cargo is of wheat, lightered off the grounded Orsula, off Cape Vincent in late December. The ship made it to Montreal albeit with some damage to her propeller, but the “salvaged” cargo has been a long experience on its own, challenged by numerous weather, and “administrative” fronts. My workplace, and home, for this particular adventure has been the…
I have a special fondness for the Marine Branch of the British Columbia Ministry of Transport. They accepted me as a Marine Engineering Apprentice a long time ago, when very few companies chose to invest in training future Marine Engineers. The Marine Branch ran all the provincially owned ferries in the province until the 60’s, when BC Ferries was created. The ferries in the province where then separated into Fresh…
The ridiculously large giga yacht Dubai On my last “hitch”, I ended up in Ajman, near Dubai, picking up an ex Swire Pacific Offshore tug that my current company bought, and brought back to Canada. While there, I ran into an “old friend” unexpectedly. We took the day off from the busy shipyard, and went ‘touristing’ in Dubai. One of the sights we went to was the Palm Jumeirah, where,…
Vancouver’s Translink MV Burrard Pacific Breeze, built 2009, image from BMT Shipyards in BC are again being passed over in another planned government funded new build. Translink, the regional Vancouver public transit authority, has sourced Damen Shipyard in the Netherlands, to build a new Seabus replacement vessel. The venerable Burrard Beaver as been in service since its launch in 1976, working alongside its sister ship Burrard Otter, ferrying passengers from…