Ship-Photo

I joined the Thames Ship Society (TSS) in 1999 and, although I had been on their Solent and Thames day trips, I hadn't yet been on one of their longer Continental trips, which afford the opportunity to see more - and different - ships than you do at home. I decided to join their short trip to Hamburg in March 2000, sailing from Harwich aboard DFDS' Admiral of Scandinavia. This was an overnight crossing from Harwich, sailing up the Elbe during daylight hours with a night spent aboard the ferry alongside in Harwich, before another overnight crossing back to Harwich. The trip would include a couple of harbour tours (Das Grossehafenrundfahrt), which gives you great opportunities for photographing ships alongside and underway.
I travelled up to Harwich from the South Coast by train, which in those days was a bit cheaper than driving up and paying for fuel and parking, and I met the other TSS participants at the ferry port.

Early the next morning found us entering the Elbe, with plenty of ships to be seen. There were also groups of Harbour Seals on sandbanks, out in the estuary.
All the way down the river towards the city, there was a precession of ships, mostly container ships as well as the odd ferry crossing the river.

After we had docked and gone through the usual formalities - where I found that I had forgotten to sign my new passport and thought that I was going to be in for an awkward time; luckily as soon as I'd signed it I was free to go on my way - a coach took us to the city centre via the famous (infamous?) Reeperbahn. Some of us walked back along the waterfront, visiting book shops along the way. When we got back to the harbour, we joined one of the public harbour cruises. These are on large and comfortable glass boats, which have plenty of outside decks space for photographers. The weather wasn't great, in fact it was overcast and wet, but that didn't deter the photographers.

After a night spent about Admiral of Scandinavia, we had a fairly early start for a private harbour cruise which would take us to some of the places that the public cruises didn't, including to the Blohm and Voss shipyard. The weather was still grey, unfortunately, but at least the rain had stopped.

We had an early evening sailing back to Harwich that night and I managed to catch P&O Nedlloyd Kobe in the river before the light went completely. The previous year I had visited the ship in Southampton, with the Isle of Wight Branch of the World Ship Society, so it was nice to see her underway.

After a fairly rough overnight passage, we arrived back at Harwich later the next morning.

These short TSS trips are good value for money and enable to you go to places and see ships you otherwise normally wouldn't.