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As THE Alliance scrambles to make up for the port calls missed by the Yantian Express fire, there was the rare sight of two ships on the same line, in port at the same time.

Two ships on the same line at Cerescorp, Fairview Cove this morning.

Dalian Express (a sister ship to Yantian Express) is on its regular routine for the EC5 service, having called here westbound January 13. It is now on the return leg eastbound, having picked up its own allocated cargo at US ports, and presumably some that was intended for Yantian Express.

Docked directly ahead at Fairview Cove is Shanghai Trader brought in to take up Yantian Express' eastbound cargo. Although remarkably high in the water, the ship appears to be close to capacity. That would indicate that a large proportion of eastbound containers are empties headed back to Asia.

There did not seem to be any cargo handling going on, but there was quite a bit activity at the dockside with truck cranes.

Shanghai Trader came out of the Hyundai, Ulsan shipyard in 2005, built for charter work. It has been owned since new by the Offen Group, but has carried a sort of Who's Who of names: 2005: P+O Nedlloyd Delft, 2005: Maersk Dolores, 2010: Santa Patricia, 2010: Cap Scott, 2012: Santa Patricia, 2012:  SCI Nava Sheva, finally taking its current name in 2015. It has been on the spot charter market ever since. At 54,809 gt, 76,255 dwt and a capacity of 5047 TEU (including 550 reefers) it is significantly smaller than the ship it is replacing: Yantian Express 88,493 grt, 100,003 dwt, 7506 TEU (700 reefers).

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