Yantian Express - following up

Will we be seeing this sight soon?
 

Yantian Express sailing into Bedford Basin (in 2013)

 
There is very little new news about Yantian Express. After fire broke out on deck January 3, the crew exerted their best efforts to fight the blaze, but bad weather and concerns for their safety forced them to abandon the effort. The nearest tug, Smit Nicobar arrived on the scene and eventually evacuated the entire crew.

Yesterday about mid-day the brand new Canadian anchor handling supply tug Maersk Mobiliser reached the ship. This impressive vessel, measuring an astounding 10,181 grt and with a 260 tonne bollard pull delivered by 14,400 kW (20,000 + bhp) main engines, has all the equipment needed to respond to offshore emergencies, including fires. By good luck it had only arrived January 2 in St.John's from the shipbuilders in Norway, and had not yet taken up its charter work.

The Yantian Express is well outside Canadian territorial waters, but since it was headed for Halifax it is logical to assume that the ship will be coming to Halifax  eventually, but many questions remain as to how that will be done safely.

If the fire has not reached the ship's accommodations and engines, and it is extinguished quickly, then it may be safe to have a salvage crew board the ship and perhaps even  make it possible to take back control. However if the fire cannot be put out quickly, and it spreads, it may be a very long time before the ship is in any condition to tow. Some container ship fires have smouldered for weeks, and it was therefore unsafe for firefighters to board and deal with hot spots.

Assuming that the ship does make for Halifax, there is still the question of  where and how to deal with the cargo - both the burned out portions and the rest which may or may not be damaged and may or may not present hazards.

Halifax is lacking in isolated port installations where the cargo can be removed far away from other activity, and without interfering with other port business. Removal of all the cargo without the use of long reach container cranes is almost impossible. Therefore one has to assume that the only place to do the work would be at one of the container piers. I am sure Halterm is not volunteering, and that Cerescorp's Fairview Cove terminal would be the only other possible location. It was the destination of the ship in any event.

Towing a dead ship through the Narrows and taking many weeks to offload at Fairview does pose some problems, since it could tie up the pier's big cranes when they will be needed for other ships.

Certainly an area would need to be cleared and quarantined for storage of the ship's cargo, some at least would be salvageable, and might be forwarded on to consignees by other ships. The large filled area outside the Fairview Cove terminal could be fenced and a temporary road connection could be made to access it if all the containers must be removed form the ship.


I suspect that the law of general average has been  or will be invoked.  A very old principal of maritime law, it means that all cargo owners and the ship owner will share pro rata in the loss of some of the cargo. In this case all the cargo may be written off. However each container would have to be evaluated, so a large inspection area would be needed in order to deal with insurance claims.

Then there is the issue of handling and disposal of  damaged or ruined cargo, some of which will be hazardous. A mitigation and transport loading area would be needed for this work too.

It will be a major headache for Halifax to deal with, if in fact the ship comes here at all. There are other ports along the US eastern seaboard better equipped to handle the problem since they have more space and are away from populated areas. The ship may end up going to one of those ports instead.

Damage to the ship itself is unknown at this time, but it is unlikely that it will be able to continue its voyage. Other arrangements will have to be made for waiting cargo - at this point it will have to be loaded on the next ship in the rotation until a substitute ship can be brought in.

Clarifications and Corrections:
 
The Port of Yantian
I fear I grossly overstated the Yantian port's container throughput. It appears that the widely published port stats include a far larger area - possibly the entire Pearl River delta area. Shanghai alone accounts for some 40mn TEUs per annum, and is the world's largest port. Yantian seems to handle more like 10mn TEUs p.a., making it the fourth largest in the world.

HAPAG-Lloyd
Shipping Lines certainly have strange names - often abbreviations or their initials. Lines such as MSC= Mediterranean Shipping Company and CMA /CGM = Compagnie Maritime d'Affrètement / Compagnie Générale Maritime have shortened their names for obvious reasons by using the initials. Some, like  COSCO = China Ocean Shipping Company, have found that the initials are pronounceable as a word. 

However HAPAG-Lloyd is a a bit different. It is an amalgam of initials and the names of the founding companies, but each is a little different.


HAPAG stands for Hamburg-Amerikanische Paketfahrt-Aktien-Gesellschaft, meaning Hamburg America Steam Packet Joint Stock Company. Founded in 1847 it was commonly known in North America as the Hamburg American Line [HAL] and was once one of Germany's two major transatlantic passenger lines. It was also active in general cargo work

HAPAG's major competitor was NDL = Norddeutscher-Lloyd (North German Lloyd) based in Bremen. Founded in 1857 it borrowed the Lloyd name from Lloyd's of London - the insurance market place of old. At the time the word "Lloyd" was used as a convenient synonym for "shipping company", and several companies, particularly of Germanic origin used.  It was not an indication of any financial connection with Lloyd's of London or Lloyd's Register of Shipping.
[Another company the Dutch Koninklijke Nedlloyd Groep.  (Royal Nedlloyd Group) merged with P+O before A.P. Moller-Maersk bought them out in 1997. PONL containers can still be seen on Maersk ships.]

The two companies, HAL and NDL, merged in 1970, joining forces to finance their investment in container shipping. Despite many changes of ownership and numerous mergers and acquisitions, it has steadfastly held with the HAPAG-Lloyd name ever since.

As for pronunciation I prefer Hay-Pag. Although there are variations such as Heh-Pag or Hah-pag, it is never Hah-Paj as I heard on one media outlet the other day.

Shoebox Oldie
In September 1966 the Wuppertal arrived with fire in the number one hold. The cargo was cotton bales, en route from Corpus Christi, TX to France. The ship's crew, longshoremen and Halifax firefighters removed smouldering bales from the ship and drafted seawater from the harbour to extinguish the fire.
This was before the founding of HAPAG-Lloyd, and the ship was owned by Hamburg-Amerika Linie as it was then called. The acronym HAPAG had not come into use yet.

Here are a few pictures of the operation:

The ship docked at Pier 9C. Aside from the vintage cars in the foreground, note the uninhabited hills of North Dartmouth, with Shannon Park to the right. The Shannon Park pier is visible just above the ship's poop deck.

That is the family Rambler on the left.

 

There was still smoke emanating from number one hold. 

The A. Murray MacKay bridge was in the planning stages and there was no sign of construction. 

BIO appears to the far left.

The four pieces of fire apparatus on scene, include a Bickle-Seagrave, lower left.

Note also the multiple railway sidings.

Two open cab Seagrave pumpers, dating from about 1964 were on scene, one drafting water from the Narrows. Curious bystanders wandered through the scene, and took pictures freely in the days before pier security.

Cotton bales were moved well away from the ship and doused with harbour water.

The Wuppertal was built in 1956 by Lubeker Flender-Werke and was a conventional engines amidship, four hold cargo ship with reefer capacity. Measuring 3280 gt, 5040 dwt, it had accommodation for twelve passengers and handled its cargo with one 60 ton, four 10 ton and eight 5 ton derricks. It lasted through the HAPAG-Lloyd merger, but was sold in 1971 and was renamed Morning Cloud, and in 1973 Siehhui under Somali registry. In 1976 it was purchased by China Ocean Shipping (ancestor of COSCO) and renamed Huang Shan. Its fate after the mid-1980s is unclear and it was finally deleted from listings in 1992.

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Break Bulk - and a throw back.

Non-containerized cargo at Port of Halifax facilities has been dropping steadily over the past several years, and is down to about 370,000 tonnes - below 2013 levels. [Cargo handled by National Gypsum, the oil terminals and Autoport are not included in that number.]

Therefore it was most unusual to see four non-container ships working at Port of Halifax piers today.

From  north to south:

CLI Pride carries a pair of 60 tonne cranes, and a large yellow spreader stowed forward athwartships.

CLI Pride was tucked in at Fairview Cove, and must have discharged its project cargo quickly. The 7138gt, 7821 dwt ship dates from 2011 when it was built by Dongfang Shipbuilding Group in Yueqing, China as Brielle. It became BBC Luanda in 2014 and took its present name in August last.
The ship arrived off Halifax Sunday from Rotterdam, and is returning to the same port. I am not envious of the return trip across the Atlantic in ballast in a relatively small ship.
The ship was in  Montreal as recently as the end of October. It was also on the Great Lakes in July under its previous name.

Crew members check the lashings on a pleasure craft stowed in its cradle on deck.

 It took an extra wide angle lens to squeeze Danzigergracht into one photo at Pier 9 c. As with many Spliethoff ships it has several pleasure craft on deck as part of their regular yacht delivery service from Europe to the Caribbean. However that was not the reason for the ship's call here. To the bottom right of the photo are the tips of three wind turbine blades that the ship offloaded this morning.
They would have been carried below deck and are as long as the space between the middle crane and the ship's bridge.
Built in 2009 by Jinling Shipyard in Nanjing, China, the 13,558 gt, 18,143 dwt ship has three 120 tonne capacity cranes and is specialized for heavy lift and project cargoes, but can also carry sensitive cargoes such as paper products.

Work continues on Thorco Liva at Pier 9c.

Although not carrying cargo, work continues in the holds of Thorco Liva. If its past visits to Halifax in 2016 -2017 are any indication, it is related to carrying fibreoptic cable. It is also multi-purpose ship, capable of heavy lifting. It was built in 2012 by Honda Heavy Industries in Saiki, Japan, rated at 13,110 gt, 16,901 dwt and fitted with a pair of 50 tonne cranes.

And at pier 27 there is another ship of the same type. Regrettably no photos are possible, but Onego Rio  is a 7576 grt, 10,300 dwt ship built in 2003 by Damen Okean in Mykolayiv, Ukraine. It carries a pair of 80 tonne capacity cranes, which it is using to discharge a cargo of rails for CN.

Throwback
The recent news about the Yantian Express* fire noted that the ship Happy Ranger was standing by the to assist if needed. When the tug Smit Nicobar arrived,  Happy Ranger was relieved, and continued its journey from Abidjan, Ivory Coast to Trois-Rivières, QC. 

The ship visited Halifax only twice as far as I can recall, and on its first visit it loaded a very unusual cargo.

As part of the development of the Sable Offshore Energy Project (SOEP), the accommodation structures for the Thebaud field were fabricated in Dartmouth and Halifax. The ship used its 400 tonne cranes to load the blocks. They were then taken to Teeside, UK where they were mounted on the bases, then transported back to the Thebaud field for installation. 

Now twenty years after the first gas flowed, the project is being decommissioned, the structures will be removed and taken to Europe to be scrapped.

The ship was built by Schelde SNB, Flushing in 1998 and measures 10,990 gt, 12,950 dwt. Owner Mammoet is a division of Spliethoff's.


* Footnote
I am irritated by "the media's" continual mis-pronunciation of the name Yantian Express. Named for a city in China, the spelling should accurately indicate how it is to be pronounced. It is not "yan-TAIN" please! 

Just to give a sense of why HAPAG-Lloyd named a ship after Yantian - the Yantian International Container Terminals has an 8km long waterfront, equipped with 70 container cranes and had a throughput of 78.3mn TEU in 2013. (Halifax will likely squeak past 500,000 TEU again for 2018).

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Dark Arrivals

Short days are still with us, and it will be several weeks before they are long enough to catch most arrivals and departures.  There were two arrivals after dark today and there will be one before sunrise tomorrow - all first time callers.

There was just enough light to catch Spliethoff's Danzigergracht as it made it way in this afternoon to Pier 9c. Due to come in from anchorage tomorrow morning CLI Pride will be going to Fairview Cove. Both ships will only be in port for a short time, so there may be a chance of photos in daylight when they sail.

 Danzigergracht is coming up on the  Maugher's Beach reporting point, while CLI Hope' Pride's lights show over the breakwater from its anchorage position. (1700 hrs AST)

Also arriving late this afternoon, the cargo ship Onego Rio tied up at Pier 27 to off load rails for CN. No chance of a photo there - perhaps when it sails later in the week.

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Federal Ruhr - ghostly visitor (plus addendum)

The geared bulker Federal Ruhr made an over night visit at pier 26, and sailed this morning at 0800 hrs AST, in dense fog. While the ship's bow was visible, the stern was not, but the name was readable!

The ship is one of three built in 2016 and 2017 by The New Times Shipbuilding Co Ltd in Jingjiang, China for Fednav's Great Lakes trade. Federal Alster (2016), Federal Mosel and Federal Ruhr are Seawaymax size (199.918m x 23.753m), and 22,947 gt, 36,754 dwt. They are multi-purpose dry cargo ships with box shaped holds, and are fitted with four 36 tonne cranes that can use grabs. Fednav charters the ships from Canada Osiris Shipping Ltd, and they are managed by Intership Navigation of Cypress.

Atlantic Willow nudges up in the bow of Federal Ruhr as it prepares to sail at 0800 hrs this morning.

 
The usual trade of these ships is to bring in steel products, and take away export grain. Federal Ruhr made one trip to the Great Lakes in December 2017 to Oshawa, Windsor and Hamilton, but sailed in ballast - likely loading grain at a St.Lawrence port.

In 2018 the ship made four trips to the Lakes. On the first it unloaded at Sault Ste.Marine and loaded grain in Thunder Bay. On its way downbound in the Seaway May 15 it struck a Seaway workboat and jetty at the St.Lambert lock, but was not damaged itself.

The St.Lawrencxe Seaway snag recovery boat VM/S 002 appeared to be more or less intact when I saw it through the fence at St-Lambert in August.

On its second trip it unloaded at Gary, IN, and loaded at Windsor, ON in June.

On the third trip it unloaded at Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee and loaded grain at Thunder Bay, clearing the Seaway October 17.

On its fourth and final trip it had unloaded some cargo at Trois-Rivières, then entered the Seaway December 3, unloaded at Oshawa, Cleveland and Detroit and loaded grain at Thunder Bay December 18 to 22, and was exiting the Seaway on December 26. That leaves several days unaccounted for before its arrival in Halifax, so it may have had a mechanical problem or perhaps topped up its cargo at a St.Lawrence port. Its destination is Trieste, Italy.

This visit to Halifax, of less than eight hours, would likely have been to perform some sort of repair.

I didn't get a decent picture of the Federal Ruhr today, but did catch one of its sister ships this summer. Federal Mosel unloaded at Sorel but did not venture into the Lakes on that trip.

Federal Mosel is a sister ship of Federal Ruhr.

A few other arrivals and departures today were largely invisible. Somewhere out there in the lower photo Atlantic Sail was making its way round George's Island.

Addendum:

In looking more closely at the photo of the Seaway workboat VM/S-002 I can see some damage to the bulwark on the starboard quarter, which is why it was taken out of service.

The boat was built of aluminum by Eastern Equipment Ltd in Vile LaSalle, QC in 1977. That company built numerous similar  vessels for the Coast Guard and others, but only appears to have been in business for about eight years.
VM/S -002 [the initials stand for Voie Maritime/Seaway] is owned by the St.Lawrence Seaway Development Corp. As mentioned its primary use was as a snag boat, and here is photo of it in operation. Note the forward gantry frame is removable, and is rigged with lifting gear to haul the snags and other debris on board.

 

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Yantian Express in trouble

Fire has broken out aboard Hapag-Lloyd's container ship Yantian Express en route to Halifax from Colombo in the EC5 service. Due to severe weather conditions, the crew has suspended fire fighting operations. This is certainly a perilous situation. In view of several recent fires aboard large container ships, cargo fires are very difficult to fight even in good conditions and can take days or weeks to control. However there is little to prevent the spread of fire, particularly on deck, and if not contained quickly can race out of control.

When a ship is far offshore and away from external resources it is difficult to predict how the situation may evolve. There is only sketchy information available at this time, some conflicting, but most news sources agree the fire erupted Thursday, January 3, northeast of Bermuda in a container on deck and none of the 23 on board had been injured. References to the ship being 1200 km (648 nautical miles) off Halifax are not possible to verify without expensive satellite technology.


When the ship called here first in 2013 it was the largest ship to date to call at Fairview Cove. With a capacity of 7506 TEU (including 700 reefers) the ship measures 88,493 gt, 100,003 dwt. It dates from 2002 when it was built by Hyundai Heavy Industries, Ulsan, as Shanghai Express. It was renamed in 2012 to free up the name for an even larger ship.

 On May 20, 2013 Yantian Express made its way to Bedford Basin en route to Fairview Cove for the first time.

 

When Yantian Express called here on March 17, 2015, the port was still cleaning up from a 70 cm snow fall. It was not until March 21 that the ship was able to complete its work.

Trees were in leaf when the ship visited April 6, 2016.

A photo taken by a crew member and posted on line shows flames erupting from the top of a container a few bays forward of the bridge. The ship has reportedly turned out of the wind to keep the fire away from the accommodation block.

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Tropical Hope

When Tropical Shipping moved its operations from Saint John to Halifax starting in January 2017, it was with chartered ships, but the company had new ships on order, and they were expected in July and September of 2018. Time has flown as have delivery dates, but the first of the new ships arrived today. Tropical Hope was built by Guangzhou Wencheng Shipyard in China, the first of four in Tropical's Carib class. Measuring 15,125 gt, 20,400 dwt, it has a stated capacity of 1100 TEU including 260 reefers, and carries two 45 tonne cranes.

Two of the Carib ships will be assigned to Halifax calls, replacing chartered tonnage. Tropical Hope will sail January 7, replacing Asian Sun, which was here last on December 24, 2018 .

Bomar Rebecca will continue in service, having been delayed by weather on its last trip, but is expected January 14.

At 9,950gt, 13,700 dwt the chartered ships are much smaller than the new one, but are rated at 1118 TEU. The owners may be giving nominal TEU (as opposed to loaded TEU), whereas the new ship may be given a more realistic number allowing for a percentage of loaded boxes.

On Janaury 8, 2017, the first ship to call for Tropical was Vega Omega which was replaced by Asian Sun in September 2017. Bomar Rebecca was the second ship to call, January 16, 2017, but at the time carried the name AHS Hamburg. It was renamed in July 2017.

Although neither Halterm nor the shipping line give out numbers, it is widely believed that they are moving more than the predicted 500 boxes per week in and out of Halifax.

 Most of Tropical's containers are temperature controlled (white coloured). Dry boxes are a rusty colour, and all display the company name in large graphics.

The stylized "T" and arrow, looking like a palm tree, has also been applied to the crane pedestals on the new ship.

Tropical Hope tied  up at pier 37 Halterm for welcoming ceremonies.

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Ringing in the New Year

There was harbour activity on January 1 despite blinding snow, later turning to rain, and more activity January 2.
Note: black bordered photos are form the Shipfax archive. Borderless photos are usually "fresh".

 Atlantic Tern

The offshore standby vessel Atlantic Tern had the distinction of being the first arrival of 2019. It was returning from its duties at Deep Panuke. The Encana facility stopped producing gas in May 2018 and is now in the dismantling process.  Fleet mate Atlantic Condor was built at Halifax Shipyard in 2010 for a ten year renewable contract as supply vessel for the troubled gas project.

 Atlantic Tern has a rough job standing by off Sable Island for a month at a time.

The other offshore gas producer, Sable Offshore Energy made the surprising announcement that it is halting production this week - one year earlier than planned. The Exxon Mobil lead project (with Shell, Imperial, Pengrowth and Mosbacher) came on line in 1999. It is also in a dismantling process.

Salarium

Heard but not seen for its arrival January 1 was the bulker Salarium. The ship arrived in very restricted visibility but its "fog horn" could be heard until it was secured at anchor in the lower harbour. Returning from Saint John, NB, where it had unloaded a cargo of road salt, the ship is en route to its loading port in the Magdalen Islands. Its stay in Halifax was brief, sailing again this morning less than 24 hours after arriving. Its visit was to shelter from very high winds last night. With the ship in ballast, it would not only be uncomfortable, but potentially dangerous at sea.

The ship was built for Great Lakes trade with limited seagoing and is restricted to Canadian waters south of 52 degrees latitude, and is permitted to go to St.John's, NL and "the eastern seaboard of Canada." which includes Halifax, Saint John. NB and the St.Croix River to Bayside, NB.

When laid down by the Collingwood Shipyard, it was with the intention of naming it "Gleneagles" reviving a traditional CSL name. However it was launched as Nanticoke, named for a new Stelco steel mill built near the town of the same name, on Lake Erie. CSL had long standing  contracts to deliver iron ore to Stelco and it was a fitting choice. (The plant was located on Lake Erie, which allowed it to receive iron ore from upper lakes ports without having to send ships down through the Welland Canal to Hamilton.) A nearby coal fired generating plant provided power for the mill (until it was closed in 2014).  CSL was also in the coal delivery business.

Afrer an end of season grain delivery, Nanticoke was about to shift to Natyional Gypsum for its backhaul cargo.

A Seaway size self-unloader, Nanticoke plied the other usual routes for CSL carrying grain, gypsum, coal and ores. It also participated in the early top off operations in the Strait of Canso and Sept-Iles Bay where CSL self-unloaders completed the loading of large deep sea ships that could not load to maximum draft in their usual loading ports.

CSL self-unloaders used to have black hulls, which were thought to be more serviceable in view of the coal and other dirty cargoes they carried.

In May 1997 Nanticoke, Atlantic Huron (a regular Halifax caller) and Atlantic Erie (scrapped in 2016) were fitted with special cargo handling systems to deliver magnetite, in slurry form, to ballast the Hibernia Gravity Base structure on location off Newfoundland. The ships were converted and "unconverted" in Halifax.

A large pipeline was attached tho the ships' bows and pumps were used to move the heavy ballast

from shore to ship, then to the gravity base, well out at sea.

Not long after the Hibernia Challenge, CSL began to paint its self-unloaders with traditional red hulls, once reserved for bulkers and general cargo ships. 

Here Nanticoke disembarks its pilot at Escoumins as a whale tour boat sets out.

In 2009 CSL signed a long term contract to carry salt for (what is now) K+S Windsor Salt/Morton Salt, Mines Saleines in the Magdalen Islands. To make back haul voyages more profitable the ship hauls gypsum and other products, but rarely grain. Salt is very destructive, and despite lining the holds with special composites, the cargo does take its toll, and cleaning for grain handling must be hard work. It did deliver grain here in Septmber 2011.

At first Salarium did carry some grain cargoes, but has not done so for some time.

Renamed Salarium (the word describes "payment in salt", from which the word salary derives) [I used to be paid peanuts, now I just get the salt] the ship commonly runs the St.Lawrence River and into the Seaway, with occasional forays as far as the Great Lakes. It has also loaded gypsum in Halifax from time to time. Once the Seaway closes for the winter the ship can be seen on the aforementioned Atlantic seaboard delivering road salt.

A Mines Saleines logo was added to the CSL funnel.

The battle against rust must be constant when carrying salt.

When Halifax Shipyard was in the repair business, Salarium was a refit customer, and looked quite splendid when it emerged with its fresh paint.

Now the ship generally works year round and only drydocks for its five year renewals. With a big one coming up in 2022, one has to wonder how much longer the ship will remain in service.

Plowing its usual furrow on the St.Lawrence, Salarium spends the summer supplying stockpiles of road salt for the coming winter.

Kitikemeot W.

Coastal Shipping's tanker Kitikmeot W. is due to sail this afternoon, and as speculated the ship has been reflagged to the Marshal Islands for winter trading internationally.

Algonorth

On January 1, Algonorth shifted from Imperial Oil dock 4 to anchor. Because Salarium was occupying the lower harbour anchorage, Algonorth went to Bedford Basin. The ship may just be waiting out weather or possibly will be there for a longer term.

Thorco Liva

The general cargo ship Thorco Liva arrived this morning and tied up at pier 9c. This is the ship's third visit to Halifax. In October 2016 it was fitted with steel frames to carry fibreoptic cable. The prefabricated frames were loaded aboard and assembled here, and the ship loaded the cable in Newington, NH where it is manufactured. The ship returned to Halifax in January 2017, presumably loaded with cable, and anchored for nearly a month before sailing for Spain.

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