Big Day in the Port of Halifax

It was a big day in the port of Halifax in many ways.

For one, it was the presence of no less than five cruise ships, Veendam at pier 20, Carnival Sunshine at pier 22, Insignia at pier 23, Zuiderdam at pier 30-31 and  AIDAdiva and pier 33-34.

The container ship Itea outbound early this morning with the Zuiderdam inbound.

It was also another big day for ZIM as one of its 10,000+ TEU ships arrived. Zim Antwerp was also here in June and was the second ZIM ship of that size to call here.

The 114,044 grt, 116,294 dwt ships came from the Hyundai Samho shipyard in 2009. Its 10,062 TEU capacity just squeezes past the magic 10k threshold to qualify as a large ship. US ports are seeing 14,000 TEU ships already and we may be in line for some too.

While not a large ship by Autoport standards, Siem Cicero is quite new, having been completed as recently as June of this year by the Uljanik shipyard in Pula, Crotia.

The ships comes in at 56,677 grt, 17,416 dwt.

And at Irving Oil in Woodside, a relative rarity, a Maersk tanker.

 Maersk Matsuyama dates from 2008 when Onomichi Zosen in Japan delivered the 26,911 grt, 47,165 dwt handysize tanker. As usual with foreign flag ship (in this case Panama) at Irving Oil, it arrived from the Netherlands with refined product. We should expect European import cargoes at Imperial Oil too after recent events in the southern US.

On top of all this September 13 and 14 are the annual Port Days where the Halifax Port Authority organizes a number of events to highlight the Port. [ A boat trip around the lower harbour on Harbour Queen 1 was one of the vents, and made most of the above photos possible.]

This year the concentration was on Supply Chain Innovation, and various speakers emphasized the importance of cooperation and teamwork to make the shipping process more efficient.  This is also an occasion for the Port to celebrate its achievements and certainly the projected 17% increase in traffic this year is a major one. Last year the Port of Halifax's volume increased by 15% making it the fastest growing container port in Canada, although its total volume is still well behind Vancouver and Montreal.

Although the Port hinted at critical infrastructure changes using all of the harbour, that the  port is on the edge of something big and that it is time to take a big leap, there were no details. Perhaps this is a run up to the revelation of the Port's long term plan - let us hope so - it is indeed time. 

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Liberal name change

The federal government has taken the liberty of changing the names of the new RCN Joint Support Ships (JSS) . Originally to be named the Queenston class the new ships will now be named the Protecteur class. Queenston will become Protecteur and Chateauguay will become Preserver continuing the names of the ships they will replace.


The original names were chosen by the previous Conservative government and reflected then Prime Minister Stephen Harper's preoccupation with the War of 1812-14. They commemorated two significant battles of the war, fought between "Canadians" (not yet a nation) and Americans. They hardly seemed to be diplomatically correct in terms of fostering good relations with our southern neighbours, so perhaps the change reflects the current government's fraught re-negotiations of NAFTA and that other issues between the two countries need to be worked out amicably.


In order to speed up delivery of the two ships, Seaspan Marine in Vancouver has told by the current government to delay construction of the new Polar class icebreaker which has been named John G. Diefenbaker. Do we see a pattern emerging here? Can we expect another renaming in the offing? Perhaps a Lester B. Pearson or even another well known former Liberal Prime Minister's name would be applied - would it be similar to the current Liberal Prime Minister's name? Would it be wise to make the change before the 2018 federal election, when the ship will not likely be delivered until 2021-well into a possible second mandate?
Oh horrors.


The new HMCS Protecteur will be the second ship of the name in the RCN, but HMCS Preserver will be the third. A pair of  World War II tankers were named Preserver and Provider and served as Fairmile depot ships until paid off at the end of the war and sold to South America. When Canada built its first post war supply ship, it was named Provider but a second ship of the class was never built.


The navy explains the new name change respects the previous ships and those who served on them. This is the same explanation that has been given in the past to cover a lack of imagination in ships naming, a change in naming policy or to overcome controversy  (CCGS Edward Cornwallis (ii) was not named for the man but for the previous ship of the same name according to a CCG official.)


Quite frankly if the RCN can't develop esprit de corps without reverting to nostalgia they need a wakeup call. When the name change is so overtly political do they think that matelots are too stupid to recognize it for what it is? And what message does it send to the forces - that they serve at the whim of political parties or that they serve all the people of Canada no matter their political affiliation?


I have a couple of suggestions for another name change for the JSS ships. They should be named Kitchener and Waterloo after two adjoining cities in southern Ontario.


Since the new ships will be built to the German Berlin class, we will be reminded that the City of Kitchener was named Berlin until 1916 when it was changed in view of the anti-German sentiment of the First World War. Many Canadians of German ancestry experienced discrimination solely because their names sound German.


We will also be reminded of the battle of Waterloo (in Belgium), wherein Prussian and British troops defeated Napoleon Bonaparte in 1815, resulting in his abdication as emperor of France. It was this war in Europe that distracted the British from the War of 1812-14 in North America, and largely left Canada on its own to defend itself. Napoleon met his Waterloo and we should all remember the necessity of overcoming the aspirations of all those who want to conquer the word.


So something to learn from the significance of the names of two ships other than how to score political points.

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CNAV Quest - Next one to go

The Canadian naval research vessel CNAV Quest (AGOR 172) is the next ship from the Atlantic force to head to the scrap yard. The tug Lois M ( the same tug that towed out the Preserver in August) arrived at HMC Dockyard this morning, September 12,  and is due to leave tomorrow. The destination is Sydport in Sydney, NS harbour, where Marine Recycling Corp has established a yard to break up ex RCN ships.

There are several references to Quest in this blog over the years, but to summarize, it was built in 1968 by Burrard Dry Dock in North Vancouver, and commissioned in 1969. Nominally a hydrographic research vessel (hence the white hull and buff funnel) it was assigned to the RCN and used by what is now Defence Research and Development Canada on a variety of under water acoustic projects.  A major refit from 1997 to 1999 somewhat marred its looks, particularly on the port side where an open alley was enclosed. Although laid up with stability and deck subdivision issues in 2009 , it was reconditioned for special projects and sent to Europe in 2011 with an unusual paint scheme of navy gray on the starboard side only. It also participated in arctic operations in 2012.

However in 2014 it was "parked" effective March 31 due to lack of funding for the next fiscal year. It has not sailed since. Decommissioning was announced September 2, 2016 and the ship was sold in March of this year.

This leaves the now decommissioned Athabaskan still occupying a berth in the Dockyard. It is still being prepared for the inevitable.

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Onego Ponza - another load of rails

After only four days in port Onego Ponza is sailing this evening after unloading a cargo of rails from Poland. This is not the first visit for the ship. It was here in August 2009, March 2011 and again in September 2015, also with rails.

Onego Ponza with fresh looking paint, beginning to unload. Pontoon hatch covers have been lifted off by the traveling gantry and stacked fore (not visible) and aft.

Daewoo Mangalia shipyard in Mangalia Romania built the ship's hull and superstructure and it was completed by the Bodewes Volharding shipyard in Foxhol, Hoogezand, Netherlands in 2002. Launched as Sider Ponza, it was renamed Sider Monique on delivery. In 2009 it was renamed Onego Ponza by Eckhoff GmbH+Co of Jork, Germany. It has the usual box shaped holds and pontoon type hatch covers of a multi-purpose ship. It is also equipped with a pair of 40 tonne cranes.

As with many German ships it is is registered in Antigua and Barbuda. Its builder, an offshoot of Korea's Daewoo Industries (51%), and co-owned by the Romanian state (49%) is the biggest employer in the country. However with Daewoo's current financial woes at home and $1bn in accumulated losses for the Managalia yard alone, its share is likely to be taken over by Damen according to recent news reports.

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Rotterdam arrives

The cruise ship Rotterdam arrived and tied up in bright sunshine this morning unlike the short look -in last week. It apparently reached New York and sailed on schedule after its transatlantic crossing.

Many cruise lines are adjusting their fall and winter schedules due to severe hurricane damage in some of the ports of call. While this may mean some changes in the Halifax cruise season, it is hard to pre there will be as the routes of developing storms are far from certain and the next one may reach our waters.

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Hyundai Sunday

ZIM continues to bring in bigger ships. Today's first time arrival was the Hyundai Mercury, a ship owned by the nebulous Arzel Shipping Inc, and managed by Eastern Pacific Shipping (UK) Ltd. The latter is the London branch of a Singapore company that manages more than one hundred ships of all types. This particular ship, not surprisingly built by Hyundai Heavy Industries, Ulsan in 2009, has a capacity of 8562 TEU and measures 94,511 grt, 9581 dwt.

Hyundai Mercury just clear of Halterm, heads for sea.

The crane shadow neatly frames the pilot door let into the side of the ship.

The ship serves the ZIM Container Service Pacific route, and has worked its way up the astern seaboard from Savannah (Sept 2), Charleston, Norfolk and New York. It has now sailed for Kingston, Jamaica, then on through the Panama Canal to China and Korea before returning to the Canal, Kingston and Savannah by mid-November to start the rotation all over again.

Leaving its last east coast port and heading for the hub port of Kingston, Jamaica, the ship is fairly lightly loaded, since most cargo is likely imports from China and Korea.

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HAPAG-Lloyd ships

Since the formation of THE Alliance earlier this year, there has been a dearth of HAPAG-Lloyd ships in Halifax. Other members of the block have been providing the ships on the various routes that call here.
However with the Chilean company CSAV holding 34% of H-L since 2014, the nature of H-L has changed and several CSAV ships have been folded into non-South American trade routes. The current H-L fleet consists of 219 ships both owned and chartered, with a capacity in excess of 1.6 mn TEU.


Among them is Palena which is owned by something called HL-4160 chartering (possibly associated with Southern Ship Management of Valparaiso, Chile) and since earlier this year the ship has been carrying full HAPAG-Lloyd livery, but still with a traditional CSAV name.

Palena sails this morning as the fog clears.

Palena is a 6541 TEU ship (including 600 reefer plugs) of 73,934 grt, 82,248 dwt, built in 2006 by Hyundai, Ulsan. It is a regular on the EC5 service for THE Alliance (Halifax, Jedel Ali, Singapore, Laem Chebang, Singapore, Colombo, Halifax and various east coast US ports).

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