Box Ships and Cruisers

 The cruise season is now well underway and today, May 16, marked the arrival of both a familiar ship and a new ship to Halifax.

The Pearl Mist ought to be familiar because it was built by the Halifax Shipyard. Its story is a convoluted one, best summarized by its Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Mist

 With a passenger capacity of 210 (in 105 cabins, all outside with balconies) and 70 crew, the ship is one of the smallest cruise ships to call in Halifax. It arrived this morning from Portland, ME and sailed this afternoon for the Strait of Canso en route to the Great Lakes for the summer.

At the other end of the scale was the first time caller Norwegian Prima, a 143,535 gt behemoth with a passenger capacity of 3,099 and crew of 1,506.

 The first of six ships to be built by Fincantieri, Marghera, it is just about the ugliest passenger ship I have ever seen. It boasts large open deck space including a ten deck water slide and a race track, plus an exclusive First Class section called The Haven which is isolated from the common passenger area. No doubt it has many other amenities, which can be enjoyed without actually having to see the ship.

There was lots of more prosaic container ship activity in the port too. The MSC Rossella made a call at PSA Halifax Atlantic Gateway to top up cargo en route from Montreal to Barcelona on MSC's Canada Express 2 service.

A veteran ship, built in 1993 by Samsung Geoje, it is a 37,398 gt, 43,605 dwt vessel with a container capacity of 3398 TEU. Launched as Hansa Europe it was delivered as Ville de Carina and renamed MSC Rossella in 1997. With the fluctuating market for ships these days it is hard to know how much longer it will survive. With all the deliveries of new ships scheduled for 2023-2024, the market may become saturated, but few of then will be this size, which is ideal for the St.Lawrence trade. However thirty year old ships are rare due to the cost of keeping them in class. It is due for its next surveys later this year and almost all of its certificates expire December 31, 2023.

In the above photo, the MSC Rossella is outbound in the Main (Eastern) channel and the tug Atlantic Willow is on its way to meet the ZIM Qingdao inbound in the Deepwater (Western) channel. Ferguson's Cove is an ideal viewing spot for ships in the western channel as they swing close to shore.

On the Zim Container Atlantic (ZCA) service, arriving from Valencia, Spain, the ZIM Qingdao is a 39,906 gt, 60,690 dwt ship with a capacity of 4250 TEU. It was built in 2006 by Dalian New Shipbuilding.

By using the Western Channel, ZIM Qingdao gave the Norwegian Prima lots of room in the Eastern Channel.

Another arrival, about an hour later sailed on through the harbour to PSA Fairview Cove. The NYK Constellation is another of the Daedalus class of 55,534 gt, 65,919 dwt, with a capacity of 4922 TEU with 330 reefer plugs. As with several recent sister ships it is on THE Alliance's AL5 service arriving from Saint John, NB on the eastbound leg. Its sister ship NYK Daedalus arrived early this morning westbound from Antwerp, also at PSA Fairview Cove. There was thus the rare opportunity to see two ships of the same class together - which I missed.

Despite best efforts (Shipfax can only be in one place at a time - so far) I also managed to miss the MSC Cornelia on the Turkey-Greece run en route to Boston and the auto carrier Supreme Ace from Emden for Houston. (Both ships hsave been mentioned in this blog before.)

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