Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Ships named Halifax part 4

I have had several occasions to mention ships named Halifax or with Halifax in the name. Now another ship has been added to the list, but unlike the previous ships, this one unlikely to call in its namesake port.

The ship achieved world notice March 6, 2018, when, as Maersk Honan, a fire broke out in the forward section of the ship and soon spread to the accommodation block and bridge located forward of amidships. It was 900 nautical miles off Oman in the Arabian Sea, and a total of five crew members lost their lives.

Firefighting proved to be difficult and it was not until April that the fire was extinguished. Nevertheless there was little damage aft of the superstructure, and the engine and machinery space and a good portion of the 7960 containers aboard were untouched.

A Goggle search reveals many imagesof the fire and its aftermath:
https://www.google.com/search?q=maerk+honan&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwivsdz34M3jAhXohOAKHbK8ALEQ_AUIESgB&biw=1115&bih=665&dpr=1.25

The ship was towed to Dubai where the forward section including bow and superstructure were broken up. The remainder of the hull was loaded onto a semi-submersible ship and returned to Hyundai Heavy Industries in Ulsan, South Korea where it was joined to a newly built bow, forward holds and superstructure. In a recent ceremony the ship was renamed Maersk Halifax.

It is now reported that the ship will re-enter service August 9 on the joint Maersk / MSC AE11/Jade service between Asia and the Mediterranean.

The original ship was one of nine ships of the "H" class, of 153,153 gt, 162,051 dwt with a nominal 14,000 TEU design capacity. (Actual capacity has been variously reported as 15,226 and 15,282 TEU.) The rebuilt ship has a newer bow design and therefore tonnages may be adjusted. It will still be significantly larger than the largest container ships that call in Halifax, and its better suited to the heavy traffic lanes between the far east and Europe.


For info on some of the ships with Halifax names see:

http://shipfax.blogspot.com/2012/02/halifax-express-first-visit-with-new.html

http://shipfax.blogspot.com/2015/02/ships-named-halifax-msc-halifax.html

http://shipfax.blogspot.com/2015/02/ships-named-halifax-melfi.html

So far to my knowledge no container ship has been named after Halifax from new.

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