Ship-Photo

Antwerp and Rotterdam, October 2002
Part 2 - Rotterdam

(For Part 1, Antwerp, click here)

We left the hotel just after 0815 to join our vessel for the day, MV Diane (the Partyschip Diane, as she is known as), for the cruise around Rotterdam Harbour. The weather was wet, gloomy and very chilly and didn't look at all promising for the day ahead. It didn't brighten up until 1000, when a slight lifting of the gloom meant photography was at least possible. A lot of my early shots that day were all at 1/60th sec, even on ISO 400 film, but I did at least get some acceptable, if not great, results.

As we left the berth, we passed various dry docks with ships in them but, because of the gloomy weather, I didn't get any photos of these or their occupants. One occupant was the tanker Stena Alexita, which I had seen on the Solent just a few weeks previously. Further up, we came across the British ro-ro ship Seawheel Humber - best known as Andrew Weir's Baltic Eagle, which some members of the TSS had travelled on a few years before - and the container ships Al-Abdali, Star Inventana and Alianca Antuerpia, plus the orange juice carrier Orange Star.The Russians were represented with Pechenga and Monchegorsk, although the latter was now registered in Limassol. There was a large ship off to one side in the Waalhaven, painted in an eye-catching scheme of blue and yellow and carrying the name Marcor Bulk 1. This was an old bulk carrier, built in 1975 in Szczecin, whose seagoing days are over but which is just used for storage these days, having arrived in Rotterdam on 21st September 1998. Marcor Bulk 1 is, as far as I know, still there in 2011.

It was still wet and chilly at this time and not a lot of photography was being done, with the more sensible people huddled below in the lounge, where a woman crew member was doing a good trade in coffee. I decided to go below, join the sensible people and get warm.

Rotterdam and Antwerp are full of small barges carrying all sorts of items, from coal to containers. Each barge carried at least one car, and sometimes a dog, and were everywhere. If I'd taken photos of these, I would have used up about 50 rolls of 36 exposure film.

One of the interesting ships we found was the former ocean-going salvage tug Elbe, built in 1959. This ship was notable in the 1980s for being used by Greenpeace to campaign against nuclear testing in the Pacific after the Rainbow Warrior (1) was sunk in New Zealand by French agents. The ship, named Greenpeace, was arrested a couple of times by the French authorities and, as a teenager in the 80s this had all captured my imagination, so I was pleased to see her. A few years later, in 2004/5, she suffered a couple of sinkings, first rammed and sunk by another ship and then a mysterious sinking alongside the dock a while later - even her time in Greenpeace wasn't as hazardous. Luckily, she has now been restored.

The weather hadn't improved much, although it was a bit lighter. We headed for Europoort via a short cut through a lock system. There weren't any ships here, so it was time for lunch and once that was out of the way, we continued to Europoort. There were various huge ore carriers here, including Magandang Ilog ('Beautiful River' in Filipino), Sanko Oasis and Berge Athene.

Stena Searider and Stena Hollandica were over at the Hook of Holland ferry terminal while at the container terminal, there were four ships, OOCL Neva, P&O Nedlloyd Stuyvesant, P&O Nedlloyd Kowloon and MOL Promise, all familiar visitors to Southampton in those days. By this time, my short zoom lens had steamed up beneath the filter, thanks to the wet conditions, so I changed to another short zoom which then promptly jammed! Shortly afterwards my camera batteries died, so I had a run of technical bad luck! Fortunately I had another camera with me, and spare batteries as well. The jammed lens stayed jammed and went in the bin when I got home, as it was not economical to repair.

We passed the dock where Pride of Rotterdam, our transport home that night, was waiting but we didn't go in and take a picture of her which was a little disappointing as several of us, me included, would have liked a photo of her. I think time was against us, as we had to go and get our luggage and then get back to the P&O dock at the conclusion of the cruise.
Heading back along the New Waterway, we passed various ships on the way, including the bulk carrier Lucky Trader and in the Botlek complex we found tankers Jo Ebony and Bow Cedar and the Norwegian seismic survey vessel Ramform Valiant, a strange wedge-shaped ship and one of the oddest-looking ones I have ever seen. On leaving the Botlek complex we were held up by tugs manouvreing a large drilling platform which was interesting, as we don't see those in southern England, except on occasions far out in the shipping lanes when the weather and visiblity are good and you are at a high vantage point, such as the downs on the Isle of Wight. However, I didn't get a photo of it, or if I did I have lost it.

A few more photos from the day, bulk carrier Alfred N, Docecape and Rubin Hope and the final photo I took, the Finnlines vessel Antares, from the ferry as we waited to depart.

Once back on the coach it was back to Europoort and the waiting Pride of Rotterdam for the journey back to Hull. As we headed out to sea we passed the ore carriers again and, from the height of the ferry, Magandang Ilog and the others didn't look quite as huge as they had from the little ship which took us round the harbour.
On arrival back at Hull the following morning, it was a fairly straightforward journey back to the capital. We were going to stop at Goole enroute but the weather was so bad that we didn't bother and, from what we could see from the M62 there wasn't anything in anyway. The final ship of the trip was the coaster Borelly, seen at Howdendyke as we sped past.

Once back at the Embankment we went our separate ways. It had been an excellent couple of days, I saw 206 ships in total, most of them new to me, and used 13 rolls of film. Despite the grotty weather, low light and technical hitches with cameras and lenses, my pictures mostly turned out pretty well.