Ship-Photo

Antwerp and Rotterdam, October 2002
Part 1, Antwerp

This was a TSS mini-Continental trip, a short and affordable trip to the ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam, two of the biggest and busiest ports in Europe. I'd booked as soon as it was advertised, bought plenty of film and, on October 12th, 2002, travelled up to London to meet the rest of the party outside the Embankment tube station. From there we would be getting a coach to Hull and travelling overnight on the ferry to Rotterdam (Europoort). Once we reached Hull, we boarded the new P&O ship Pride of Hull and sailed at 2100, arriving at Europoort at 0800 local time.
Once we'd disembarked from the ferry, we immediately left for Belgium and a boat cruise around Antwerp docks, arriving at Den Hertog's office at Haven 100 to join our boat for the 5-hour docks cruise. For some reason the boat we were going to use was replaced by a smaller one, the Antverpia 19. However, this was still a nice boat, with an open deck for photography and a lounge below but wouldn't have been so comfy if the weather had been inclement - luckily it was reasonably good, with variable amounts of sunshine.

The first ship we saw was an SD14, an increasingly rare "species" these days, the 1988-built Jordan II. I like SD14s but had only seen one once before, in the Solent, from home back in the 1980s and that had been too far off to photograph. In Antwerp there were two that day; just like buses, none for ages then two at once. The other SD14 was the Cypriot-registered Oriental Kiku, built in 1984.

All the photographs are from scanned prints, the scanner doesn't really do justice to the originals, even with some 'tarting up' in Photoshop.

The first dock we entered contained the Isle of Man-registered Foylebank and a bright blue small ship, named West. Further on, we came to a dock containing various cargo ships including Carisbrooke Shipping's Johanna-C, registered at Cowes, Isle of Wight (a touch of home). The tankers Jo Spruce and Jo Venezia D added a splash of colour, as did the Isle of Man-registered CEC Venture with her blue and green colour scheme.

The weather stayed largely fine throughout the day, the beer flowed (but didn't flow too much!) and people's cameras were practically worn out. We eventually reached the container terminal where we found several occupants, including the previously-mentioned Cypriot-registered SD14 Oriental Kiku, the Japanese bulk carrier Suruga Maru plus some MSC container ships MSCs Alexa, Jade and Floriana. We had already passed MSC Samia, which was in a dry dock.

By then it was lunchtime, so the boat pulled into a quiet side dock, as much to prevent spillages and indigestion as anything as people would likely try and scramble to photograph anything while eating at the same time.
After lunch we continued on and caught the Vauatu-regiustered bulk carrier Rubin Pealr under way out of the port. Approaching the completion of the cruise we encountered another nice general cargo ship, this time Flora V, built in 1981 and registered in Panama.
Other ships we saw included Brazilian Confidence and Canadian Ace II, the latter the photographers' favourite ( ;) ) a car carrier.

The Antwerp part of the trip was now nearly over but we had one more place to visit before leaving to return to Holland. We went to the locks at Berendrecht, which is an excellent place to watch and photograph anything entering the port. Here, you can get close views of the ships in the locks, so close that you need a wide-angle lens in order to photograph them. we missed MSC Ilona but did manage to get the container ship P&O Nedlloyd Hudson, tanker Nordamerika, feeder container ship Heike and container ship City of Tunis.
This was a great place and just the sort of place that, if it were in the UK, would be closed off to the public and have unfriendly 'Keep Out' signs, guard dogs and security guards present. As far as I know, as of 2011, it is still a great place to watch the ships entering and leaving the port at close quarters.

It was time to reboard the coach and head back to the Netherlands and the Delta Hotel at Vlaardingen, where we arrived as it was getting dark. The Delta Hotel is an ideal location being, as it is, right on the waterfront and with views of passing river traffic. The hotel had just been rebuilt, because of a fire the previous year which had destroyed large parts of it, and was very smart indeed. The rooms were spacious, even the single ones (and, as a single traveller, I have stayed in my share of broom cupboard-sized 'single rooms' and been ripped off for the privilege over the years - I could easily write an entire page about discrimination against single travellers but I won't. At least, not here) and it was clean.
All our rooms had views of the New Waterway and, throughout the night, ships passed by, although most of these were examples of the myriads of tiny barges which travel Europe's waterways. I got a grandstand view of the docking of the Liberian tanker Chembulk Rotterdam at the Petroleumhaven opposite.

The next morning we were to have a 10-hour cruise of the port of Rotterdam and the New Waterway. Continued in Part 2.