Bluer than Blue at PSA Halifax

 PSA Halifax welcomed two blue ships today, June 10, at its South End terminal, Atlantic Gateway. First in was the Ultra size CMA CGM Adonis. At 154,839 gt, 155,502 dwt, it has a capacity of 15,536 TEU including reefer plugs for 1800. The giant was built at Shanghai Jiangnan Chanxing Shipbuilding and was delivered in March of last year.

Although its capacity is about 1,000 TEU less than the largest ships to call in Halifax, it nevertheless made an impressive sight, occupying a large swath of Pier 41-42.

 It also used the three largest cranes leaving the two small cranes unused at the south end of the pier due to clearance issues.

The ship's dark blue hull looked dull in overcast conditions, but when the sun broke out for a few minutes it took on quite a glow.

Unfortunately the sun did not stay out long enough to light up the inbound Volga Maersk all the way in to Pier 41. Too bad because there are few more impressive sights than the (trade marked) Maersk Blue in bright sunshine,

This is the first time to see Maersk Lines' new white lettering and seven point star motif on the ship's hull. The A.P. Moller-Maersk company has used the seven point star on a sky blue background since 1886. It has appeared on their house flag since 1904 and on their funnels and more recently on their containers. They began to paint their ship's hulls in sky blue starting in 1955. At that time the ship's full name was painted on the side in black letters. Many Scandinavian ships, going back to the pre World War II  era, carried their full names in a similar fashion.

 The Halterm container terminal was operational, but they were still building one crane in January 1971 when I caught the Clifford Maersk at Pier 36.

In the late 70s the hull lettering was changed to "Maersk Line".

Maersk continued to use conventional cargo ships for several years because many of the ports they served could not handle containers. The Chastine Maersk was typical in that sense, but untypical in how scruffy it looked. Later that year it was rebuilt as a container ship with a new longer and wider forebody so maybe the neglect was intended as the old forebody was scrapped.(Note the word "Line" was added and the name "Chastine" was painted over, giving an unbalanced look to the billboard.)

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Volga Maersk was fresh from drydock when it joined the St-Laurent 1 service in April of this year, and still looks very neat on arrival today.

Volga Maersk dates from 2018 when it was built by COSCO Zhoushan Shipyard Co. It is a 34,882 gt, 40,079 dwt ship with a capacity of 3600 TEU. It is one of several (seven by may count) ships built to ice class for Maersk's Baltic service. When sanctions were imposed on Russia in 2022, two of the ships of this class were transferred to the St-Laurent 1 service operated by Maersk and CMA CGM. 

Sister ship Vistula Maersk remains on the St-Laurent 1 service and Vayenga Maersk has been in Setubal, Portugal since May 9, presumably in drydock where it is likely receiving the new white bill board. 

On its previous trip to Montreal in mid-May Volga Maersk returned directly to Bremerhaven and did not call in Halifax. It then called in Rotterdam and Antwerp on its way back to Montreal.

Sister Vayenga Maersk June 6, 2022 in the "old" livery.

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Blue and Black

The blue hulls were confined to the south end, as PSA Fairview Cove handled the more usual black hulled NYK Nebula for THE Alliance's AL5 route.

Another member of the large Constellation class and built in 2007 by Hyundai, Ulsan, the 55,534 gt, 65,600 dwt ship has a capacity of 4922 TEU. NYK is one of the partners in Ocean Network Express (ONE) along with MOL and K-Line. The lines new ships are painted in ONE's magenta and given ONE names, but the existing ships retain their individual line identities.

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