A week ago, I had the good fortune to be invited to visit one of the Emma class ships, called
Ebba Maersk.
I entirely understand those who can enthuse about cargo ships as much as about passenger ships. Ebba and her seven sisters must be the best there are in the world today -- the equivalent of QE2 in their own class.
Read some more about them here :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ebba_Maerskhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_M%C3%A6rskhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A6rsk_E-classWe were a group of four, invited to visit the Captain and enjoy a tour of the ship, while she was in Rotterdam port last Sunday.
A set of photos has been uploaded here :
https://www.flickr.com/photos/prondis_in_kenya/sets/72157626961265761/The ship is huge -- almost half as long again as QE2 and almost half as wide again too.
A fascinating sight as we approached her, after having passed the security checkpoint and left two out of our three cars behind at the car park. We wandered up slowly, making sure we did not disturb the six huge cranes working away at her, busily loading her with containers, ready for sailaway in the late afternoon.
A fleet of six or seven high-legged trucks were running around each of the six cranes, giving them a constant supply of containers to be loaded.
She can carry over 15,000 containers -- on this occasion, most of them were being shipped back to China empty, ready to be filled with goods for the Christmas trade! She plies a regular route between Asia and Europe, taking eleven weeks for each loop -- the crew of only 23 members work eleven week on and eleven weeks off. She refuels in Rotterdam, and the fuel she takes on at that stage is sufficient for the entire loop, so that she does not bunker again until she reaches Rotterdam the next time, eleven weeks later.
We climbed up the enormously long ladder-like gangway suspended along the hull of the ship (I so regret not taking any pictures, but I was hanging on for dear life and had the other visitors following me!) and reached the top of the hull, from where we had this view upwards :
A lift, taking us up another ten decks, brought us to the Bridge, where we met the Captain, the Chief Officer and the Chief Engineer.
It was fascinating to watch the containers being slotted into the structure of the ship, and then piled upwards, lashed together with a patented system. When the ship is fully loaded, the containers stop some 5 m short of the bridge, so that the Captain can still see her bow.
She has two bow thrusters and two stern thrusters, but nevertheless normally uses two tugs to moor.
Her top speed is 25 knots, a speed that will not be matched again by newbuilds in the foreseeable future. At the height of the global financial and economic crisis, she cruised at 12 knots, this was raised to 15 knots as the crisis eased, and currently, she is cruising at 18 knots. She has one main engine and one propeller only (we saw the huge propeller shaft!), but all other systems have plenty of redundancy built in, so that she can normally have her maintenance at sea and in port, without needing any time out. She did recently have a dry dock and had been entirely repainted just a few months ago.
The Chief Engineer showed us his office and his cabin, then took us down to all the various sections of the Engine Room, lofty, clean and impressive, with a great heat recovery system that produces all the electricity needed, once the ship is moving.
We were with one of the worker representatives of Lindø Shipyards, who asked the technically savvy questions and was very interested to hear how the ship, which he had helped to build, was performing in her working life. Sadly, the shipyard will be entirely closed just a few months from now, and he had just received his notice for 22 December. It is such sadness to lose another European shipyard -- this one being one of the leaders in its field, with recent investments and docks and workshops that had been specially enlarged to build Ebba and her sisters -- before the crisis struck, the intention had been to build several more series of these excellent ships.
At the end of the visit, we actually
drove up to her bow, took a few more photographs and took our leave from each other.
It had been an excellent day!
