Today (August 8) it was another consignment of new cars for Autoport - this time from Emden (and therefore most likely Volkswagens). Appropriately enough the ship carrying the cars belongs to the legendary F. Laiesz fleet based in Hamburg.
Ferdinand Laiesz rose from being a hat maker in 1824 to operating a major trading house for import and export with South America. This lead to owning a fleet of fast sailing ships in the nitrate trade from Chile to Europe via Cape Horn, known as the "Flying P Line". Sixty-six of his 86 ships had names begining with the letter P. The ships gained fame for their speed, and many of the names became household words.
After steamships and the Panama canal made the nitrate trade unprofitable for sailing vessels the Cape Horners went on to set speed records in the Australian grain trade, some under later owners. Laiesz then operated fast refrigerated cargo ships but several of the square riggers were preserved and four still exist today. One is the Kruzenstern, the former Laiesz Padua, which was awarded to Russia as war reparations in 1946.
The Autoport arrival is perhaps less impressive than a full rigged ship or barque, but it still shows its Laiesz ancestry with the company monogram on the bow and a "P" name.
Patara was delivered by the Yangfan Group shipyard in Zhoushan in 2012. It is a medium sized PCTC (pure car and trruck carrier) of 47,053 gt, 12,755 dwt with a capacity of 5,000 RT size cars.
The F.Laiesz company works in many lines of business, but in shipping it currently operates about sixty ships of all types including containers gas tankers, research and river cruisers. Its autocarrier fleet includes five "P" class and more than thirty others for Gram Car Carriers.
As the ship turned with the assistance of the tugs Atlantic Fir and Atlanrtic Beaver it displayed the company logo - three red stars (for Trade, Shipping and Insurance) over a red anchor, flanked by the letters F and L.
In its long years of existance the company has only rarely re-used names (comparisons with square riggers would not be kind), but has found many individually distinctive "P" names. "Patara" was an ancient seaport on the south coast of Lycia, now Turkey, dating back to the 1200s BCE.
Even without its fore topmast, the Kruzenstern exPadua (dating from 1926) was an impressive sight in the July 20, 2009 Tall Ships event in Halifax. The mast broke in a storm Jun 23, 2009 when the barque was en route from Bermuda to Charleston, SC.
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