Press day on Maersk ships in Loch Striven and a surprise focus

Maersk, the shipping line owner of the raft of 6 ships laid up in Loch Striven, recently hosted a Press Day on the raft. Its purpose was, as part of the company’s Corporate Social Responsibility policy,  to open up information on the specific technical challenges that laying up these particular ships presented to the responsible engineers.

Alongside the raft’s skipper, Captain David Johnstone and Kate Sanderson from Maersk’s London-based public relations team,  Group Manager Tony Greener was there to talk the journalists through the characteristics of the B-class ships and the reasons why they had to tear up the manuals in finding their own way to lay them up.

The journalists there were from Lloyds’ List; International Freighting Weekly; Safety at Sea; the shipping magazine, Fair Play; and freelance writer Rose George, of whom – and of whose eclectic interests – more later.

The tour moved from information and discussions on the bridge, to a privileged glimpse of the BBC’s film unit working in the cargo holds in making a new sci-fi series for CBBC – Mission 2110. One of the breathtaking giant robots was seen in motion, intimidating children gaming for the future of the world.

Lunch was then needed to calm the nerves, after which Stewart, the Chief Engineer took the party on a tour of the awesome engine room, taking incessant questions – with some left fielders from Rose George – which we’re keeping for later.

The B-class container ships, 5 out of 7 of which are in the raft, are the fastest boxships in the world. But with oil prices rocketing between their ordering and their emergence 7 years later from Germany’s Stralsund yard,they  are so inefficient that they have never worked at the speed they were built to reach. It costs too much. Fuel amounts to around 40% of voyage costs.

For the record, the newest of the Bs, Maersk Beaumont – second from the right in Rebecca Martin’s moody photograph above – did 32 knots forward and 19 knots in reverse in fully laden sea trials. The B’s rated speed is 29.2 knots forward.

We’ve discussed these ships in detail in a piece published after an earlier visit to the raft.

But these shackled sprinters have more surprises up their sleeves and it is these that made their current lay up something of a play-it-as-it-goes operation. These ships are computer controlled. This means that the traditional procedures for laying up ships are largely irrelevant; and that software issues in disabling them came sharply to the fore.

This is the first time that ships like these have been laid up so the team had no prior experience – their own or anyone else’s – to draw upon. They had to bin the manuals, start from scratch and work it out as they went along.

Tony Greener made it clear that these ships are not in cold layup – a process that would see something like a three month period necessary to get each ship back into operation. The B’s have been stood down more shallowly and Greener is adamant that one week per ship should see them breathing ozone and carrying for their living again.

This may not, of course, be the same for the old lady of the raft, the black-hulled Sealand Performance, which is being looked after by the engineers on the raft but is not known to any of them. There has been general industry surprise that Sealand Performance has been laid up at all. The feeling is that, given her age, it must have been a marginal decision not to send her to the breakers.

Now for Rose George, the freelance writer present and the one who, by all accounts, made the tour a memorable one for reasons no one could have anticipated.

Her core interest as a writer is in ‘hidden industries’ – work and processes that go on but remain largely off the radar for various reasons, leaving their nature unknown to most people. Her next book is on freight shipping – hence her presence on the raft.

The title of her recent book is alone enough to put you in the picture: ‘The Big Necessity: the unmentionable world of human waste and why it matters‘. One reviewer said it should ‘become a classic in the limited literary annals of coprology’.

Put politely, Rose George has spent a lot of time in the preparation of this book getting on very familiar terms with aspects of sanitation most of us have never confronted.

Her fund of knowledge on this – and other – subjects was described as remarkable and hugely entertaining. She will have enjoyed answers to her questions on the waste management system aboard Maersk Beaumont – the most advanced yet possible. Beaumont is the ‘warm’ boat on the raft (the one most of the maintenance team live on and which is therefore kept at a higher operational level than the others, which are kept on tick-over by her generators.

The visiting journalists stayed on Rothesay on the Isle of Bute the night before the visit to the ships – which, from Rothesay, opposite Loch Striven in the Firth of Clyde, look like a collection of unexpected tower blocks beamed down into Glen Striven.

The spur of Ardyne Point at the eastern entrance to Loch Striven conceals the hulls and the inshore part of the loch where the ships are rafted up.

The visiting party were picked up from Rothesay Pier in the morning to go over to the raft. Needless to say, Rose George leapt into the Victorian lavatories on the pier, notebook in hand.

Previous articles on Loch Striven – including the Rolling Story with its host of correspondences from site visitors, can be found here – and can also be accessed by clicking on the story box in the right hand of this page.

The photographs above are all by copyright holder Rebecca Martin and may not be reproduced without permission. They show, from the top:

• the port side of Maersk Brooklyn, the nearest to the east shore of Loch Striven, with its accommodation ladder waiting to receive visitors;
  
• the engine room;
• the raft, a visible secret in Loch Striven.