Following very solid crowd funding and the backing of some big French corporate names, TransOceanic Wind Transport (TOWT) is proceeding with the construction of two sailing cargo vessels, adding to France’s leading position when it comes to the building and operation of these ships that hark back to a bygone era.
The first vessel is scheduled for delivery in late 2023, in Concarneau in northwest France, while the second will be delivered in spring 2024.
The ships are 80 m long, capable of carrying more than 1,100 tonnes of cargo equivalent to nearly 50 semi-trailers or over 100 containers, with 12 passengers onboard, two masts, and nearly 3,000 sq m of sails.
The two vessels will ship cargo on behalf of over 50 committed clients at speeds of about 10 knots.
“With TOWT, we have shipped by sail in a very practical and decarbonized way thousands of tons of goods since 2011. Sail cargo has a huge potential of drastic decarbonisation of maritime shipping,” commented TOWT CEO, Guillaume Le Grand, who said plans were already being drawn up for “dozens” more vessels based on client demand.
France has been providing global shipping with many leading wind-assisted projects in recent years with a host of shippers such as tyre manufacturer Michelin, automaker Renault and cognac maker Hennessy committing to move a portion of their products on new sail cargo ships under construction.
A dry bulk ship loaded with steel rebars was beached 200 m off Catalan Bay in Gibraltar early this morning morning having collided with an LNG carrier.
The bulk carrier, OS 35, was ordered to come close to shore to minimise the risk of it sinking with tugs and booms quickly deployed.
As of 7am today, the Gibraltar government said the situation remains stable with the bow of the vessel resting on the seabed in 17 m of water, listing by three degrees to starboard.
A notice to mariners has been issued by the Gibraltar Port Authority with a 200 m exclusion zone already in place around the OS 35.
The vessel was carrying 183 tonnes of heavy fuel oil for its own consumption, alongside 250 tonnes of diesel and 27 tonnes of lube oil.
The bulk carrier was leaving Gibraltar to head to Vlissengen in the Netherlands at the time of the collision with the LNG carrier Adam LNG, which was heading into the Bay of Gibraltar. The LNG carrier was not damaged in the collision
The OS 35 is owned by Greece’s Oldstone Management while the LNG carrier is controlled by Oman Ship Management.
Ports of Stockholm is investing in the environment by building onshore power connection facilities for cruise ships at two city centre quays. This environmental initiative will result in significantly lower air pollution emissions in Stockholm and the Baltic Sea.
The groundbreaking ceremony to begin building onshore power connections for cruise ships took place during the World Water Week 2022. Building the facilities at Stadsgården quay berths 167 and 160 makes Ports of Stockholm the first port in Sweden to offer cruise ships onshore power connection.
“We are now taking a huge next step towards being an international class sustainable cruise destination. Onshore power connection for cruise ships in the city centre is an important joint environmental initiative that Ports of Stockholm is part of, together with other Baltic Sea ports,” explains Joakim Larsson, City Commissioner responsible for Ports of Stockholm.
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The environmental initiative is a collaboration with other Baltic Sea ports. It will result in significantly lower emissions of carbon dioxide and air pollutant particles from the cruise ships in Stockholm and the Baltic Sea area. Ports of Stockholm is working with the ports in Copenhagen, Aarhus and Helsinki to enable cruise ships and shipping companies to connect to onshore power of a common international standard in all of the different ports. This will encourage more shipping companies to make the major investments in equipment that the ships need to connect to onshore power.
“It feels really good that we will also be able to connect cruise ships to onshore power next season. This will be the first facility of its kind in Sweden, and one of only a few in Europe. The cruise passengers are very important to Stockholm financially, and generate over 1,000 jobs in the region,” says Thomas Andersson, CEO Ports of Stockholm.
The work to equip the two city centre quays with onshore power connections will be completed, respectively, in 2023 and 2024. These cruise quay-berths are two of Ports of Stockholm’s most visited. It is estimated that at least 45 percent of the cruise ship calls will be able to connect to onshore power when the facilities are in place.
The total reduction in greenhouse gas emissions will be at least 6,000 tonnes each year as a result of connecting to onshore power. This environmental investment for cruise ships in Stockholm is a top priority and has been awarded grant funding from both the EU and the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Leap program.
Facts international cruises Stockholm
In 2019 just over 656,000 cruise passengers and an additional 240,000 crew members visited Stockholm. Collectively they spent more than EUR 57 million on hotel rooms, food, sightseeing excursions, shopping etc. In addition, the cruise shipping companies spent a total of EUR 25 million on harbour dues, pilotage dues and fairway dues in Stockholm. The cruise industry therefore contributes hugely to the Stockholm region, generating a total economic effect of almost EUR 176 million and creating around 1,100 jobs. Stockholm is a popular cruise destination and the majority of cruise passengers state that they are very satisfied with their visit.
Jeffersonville, Ind.-headquartered marine transportation company American Commercial Barge Line (ACBL) is expected to operate Hydrogen One, a first-of-its-kind towboat that will run on emissions-reducing methanol-to-hydrogen generator technology—without diesel propulsion.
The groundbreaking vessel is being developed by Louisiana-based Maritime Partners, the U.S.’ largest lessor of marine equipment, and will be built by Intracoastal Iron Works in Bourg, La. for launch in 2023 as the maritime industry continues to plot its course toward cleaner vessel operations.
“Our industry must be diligent and innovative to keep our standing as the most efficient mode of cargo transportation for our customer base,” ACBL’s CEO, Mike Ellis told Marine News. “We are excited to be a key player in developing a more sustainable reduced carbon footprint supply chain for our customers and all of our stakeholders through our partnership with Maritime Partners on this project.”
Hydrogen One’s propulsion system, which relies on e1 Marine’s reformer technology to essentially convert bunkered methanol into pure hydrogen on demand, will emit no nitrogen oxide (NOx), sulfur oxide (SOx) or particulate matter (PM) pollution. The hydrogen will run through fuel cells, creating electricity for the vessel’s motors, which drive dual L-drive azimuth thrusters
While pure hydrogen can be difficult to carry in quantity and get distance, methanol—which is readily available and routinely carried on U.S. inland waterways—is very similar to fueling conventional diesel, said Mike Complita, principal in charge and VP of strategic expansion at Elliott Bay Design Group (EBDG), the Seattle-based firm that designed the vessel.
“Methanol, in my opinion, is probably the safest alternative fuel to transfer to the vessel beyond diesel and biodiesel,” Complita said. “You bunker it from a truck or a terminal through a hose. It does not take any special permitting, unlike hydrogen and ammonia and some other alternative fuels.”
RIX Industries has been tapped to manufacture Hyrdogen One’s M18 reformers and PowerCell Sweden AB will supply the PowerCellution Marine System 200 fuel cells. The vessel will also be equipped with batteries that provide additional power when needed, both while underway and for hotel power.
Equipped with ABB’s electrical power distribution and automation technology, Hydrogen One will be able to perform at standard operational speeds for up to 550 miles before it needs to refuel. It will meet the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) 2030 goals, which target 40% reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions relative to 2008. The vessel will also meet all requirements of the U.S. Coast Guard’s Subchapter M regulations.
Once Hydrogen One is completed, ACBL will likely use the towboat to move petroleum products in and around Louisiana and Texas. Increasingly, barging customers are seeking ways to remove emissions from their supply chains.
“This project aligns with our strategy and ESG goals and initiatives,” Ellis said. “We have to find more sustainable solutions to meet our customer demands.”
Swedish and Finnish rescue services began evacuating families and elderly passengers from a fire-stricken Swedish ferry in the Baltic sea late on Monday, but said the situation was calm and that no one had been injured.
About 70 out of around 300 people onboard were scheduled to be evacuated by helicopter as the powerless vessel was drifting toward the island of Gotland and risked running aground later on Monday, at roughly 2100 GMT.
“We are evacuating families with children and the elderly. We have strong winds that make evacuation by boat difficult,” a Swedish Maritime Administration spokesperson said. “But the situation is calm and under control,” the person added.
Global defense and technologies partner HII announced on Monday that its Ingalls Shipbuilding division has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Navy to begin the combat systems availability for the Zumwalt-class destroyer, Lyndon B. Johnson (DDG 1002). During this availability, Ingalls will complete the installation, activation and testing of the combat systems to ensure a fully functional system is ready to operate in the Navy fleet, as part of the Navy’s phased delivery approach.
“HII is excited to support our Navy colleagues in bringing this new capability to the fleet,” Ingalls Shipbuilding President Kari Wilkinson said. “As a dedicated partner in the construction and system activation of Navy destroyers, Ingalls is eager to leverage our shipbuilders’ expertise and modernized facilities in supporting the Navy’s future generation systems and platforms.”
The $41.6 million cost-incentive-fee contract allows Ingalls to begin program management, labor, materials, and facilities to accomplish industrial efforts and fleet industrial efforts to support the ship’s combat system.
The DDG 1002 features a state-of-the-art electric propulsion system, wave-piercing tumblehome hull, stealth design and is equipped with the most advanced warfighting technology and weaponry. This ship will be capable of performing a range of deterrence, power projection, sea control, and command and control missions while allowing Navy to evolve with new systems and missions.
With the brand new ship of the Italian Navy Thaon di Revel, “a concentrate of avant-garde Italian technology”.
A special VTC meeting was held in these days between the Information Fusion Center of the Singapore Navy and the Force Headquarter of Agenor – the maritime operation born from the European initiative called EMASoH (European-led Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz ), in connection with the latest ship delivered to the Italian Navy, the Thaon di Revel, of the brand new Ppa class (multipurpose offshore patrol vessel).
The event was opened by a speech by the Ambassador of Italy in Singapore, Mario Vattani. “This program – explained Vattani – has not only a strategic significance, it is also a concrete signal of the will of Italy, together with the other European partners, to be more present from now on in this region, in line with the Strategy European for the Indo-Pacific in which Italy has played an important role, thanks to the work done in recent years by the Farnesina ”.
The topic – very topical in light of the growing threats to maritime navigation – is the opportunity to improve collaboration at a trans-regional level, and establish standard operating procedures for sharing information on civil shipping, in order to extend maritime knowledge to the entire region. Indo-Pacific, and therefore the safety of the seas.
“It is a pleasure to note – underlined Ambassador Vattani – that the European multinational staff of Operation Agenor will embark for the next 4 months, aboard our ultra-modern multipurpose offshore vessel, a concentrate of cutting-edge technology, which shows the very high capabilities of our defense industries (in particular Fincantieri, Leonardo and Electronics), well known in South East Asia and throughout the world ”.
The Commander of Task Force 474, Rear Admiral Stefano Costantino (Commander of the Tactical Force of Operation AGENOR, assigned for the first time to Italy) has in turn promoted cooperation at the multilateral level in sectors of common interest with Singapore thanks to the involvement of ‘Defense Attaché of the Embassy in Singapore, Commander Armando Simi.
“The Strait of Hormuz and the Strait of Malacca are apparently distant bottlenecks, but they are united by crucial factors that strongly unite them – said Admiral Costantino – and highlight the importance and vulnerability of maritime communication lines, on which 90% of world goods travel today, vital for the European and national processing industries so hungry for raw materials and energy ”. Hence the importance of collaborating with other stakeholders, such as the IFC of Singapore to help ensure freedom of navigation and safe passage.
The ordeal of several seafarers from Pakistan continues on the vessels owned by Saint James Shipping. More than 20 seafarers from Pakistan remain stranded on arrested vessels, while the MT Ariana ship is now off the radar.
Pakistani media covered the story of Pakistani seafarers toward the end of last month. They reported that almost 100 Pakistani crew members are now encountering a life-and-death crisis.
Sam Tariverdi is the son of Dr. Hassan Tari Verdi. He is the CEO as well as the owner of Saint James Shipping. Seafarers accused him of putting their lives and security at risk and making them suffer even for basic needs like food, bunker, water, and spares for the vessel.
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Earlier, Saint James Shipping endangered vessels in war zones without any insurance cover. About 23 seafarers from Pakistan were stranded on a ship named Ariana in Al-Mokha (Yemen). At gunpoint, they were removed from the vessel with Naval Escort at the owners’ behest, and some local crew members were placed on the vessel. These crew members were reportedly repatriated in highly critical and risky conditions.
In a recent development, Ariana has gone missing. It cannot be seen on the maritime radar. The vessel was last observed on 23 August off Sharjah; after that, the vessel’s location could not be tracked.
The Pakistani seafarers who’ve reached Pakistan safely have appealed that it is high time for international maritime monitoring agencies to execute a formal search and rescue mission to ascertain the safety of the vessel and the crew members onboard.
They have raised a concern that in maritime affairs, typically, the owners resort to putting the vessel off the radars when they consider using the ship for illegal business purposes. Such activities include transporting sanctioned cargo, entering prohibited territories, or even evading some critical maritime regulations.
Sam Tariverdi, the CEO of Saint James Shipping, was asked to clarify the entire situation, but it yielded no results. Sam, Iranian by origin, is the passport holder of Grenada and has his residence in the UK as well. He had informed the seafarers that he would resolve their issues, but no progress had happened.
A group of Pakistani seamen who are extremely worried about their colleagues has reported that criminal indifferences and violations of Saint James Shipping and its owner/CEO Sam Tariverdi is unprecedented and persistent in the maritime sector.
Saint James Shipping owes millions of dollars to its managers, vendors, crew, and lenders. Ariana is operating without an operating license (DOC) and insurance coverage. The seamen added that the owner is jeopardizing the lives of innocent crew members by using the vessel in critical conditions without complying with International shipping regulations.
Safety of the vessels remains crucial as the owner does not release necessary funds for routine repairs and spares of the vessel, ship managers have informed. They have also said that it is unexpected that such transgressions were made for financial gains and vested interests, as done by Sam Trivedi.
They have said that it’s high time that renowned international maritime firms take note of Saint James' unlawful activities endanger seafarers’ lives. Besides the seafarers being repatriated in severe conditions; still, some Pakistani sailors are on the Saint James’ vessels.
The firm also owes a colossal amount to ship managers at GRSM, Entrust — a US-based financier, and vendors besides the unpaid wages of seafarers. It is, hence, warranted that Pakistani maritime authorities take note of the sufferings of seafarers of Pakistanis at the hands of Saint James Shipping and the CEO named Sam Tariverdi and officially approach international naval organizations to take legal action against offenders.
The ship’s remains are considered the Dolphins, a beach near Argentina’s Puerto Madryn. Tree ring data taken from the Timbers of a 19th-century vessel discovered in Argentina highlight that the ship was a Whaler based in Rhode Island. It was last seen to be sailing more than 150 years back. The remains — exposed on a beach close to Puerto Madryn, a city almost 700 miles the south of Buenos Aires — seem like that of the Dolphin per research published in Dendrochronology.
Ignacio Mundo, the research’s lead author and a leading dendrochronologist associated with IANIGLA-CONICET, an Argentinian lab, mentioned that he could not confirm with 100% certainty. Still, analysis of the tree rings seems to indicate that this may be the vessel.
The vessel was first found in 2004 on the shores of Puerto Madryn, and several years later, the remains — the remnants of the vessel’s ribs and some of the hull — were first excavated. Speculations that the vessel was the Dolphin have been making rounds for a decade, but the recent research group considers that the tree ring data confirms it.
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Tree rings benefit dating events, be it volcanic eruptions Thu colonialism in North America. They are used for encoding climatologically, like with droughts, and of course, tell time, as a tree starts growing one ring for each year it has lived.
Some wood samples were collected (a nicer way of mentioning that they were removed using a chainsaw) from the wreck. Then, they were cross-referenced with the North American Drought Atlas. The atlas has tree ring samples from almost 30,000 trees dating back more than 2,000 years.
The comparison confirmed that the wreck’s ribs were made with white oak, and the hull and the wooden nails were made with black locust and yellow pine, respectively. All three types of trees grow in the eastern part of the US. The dating of wood showed that some of these trees first began growing in 1679, and the latest oaks were cut in 1849, just a year before the construction of Dolphin started.
The details appear to line up. However, there’s no smoking gun for the wreck’s identity. It was a not-so-common story for the Discovery this year of the wrecked vessel carrying the Shackleton expedition. In that case, “Endurance” is emblazoned on the stern, over a century after the ship had sunk to the Weddell Sea’s bottom.
A man, a Chinese national, was seen last Saturday at 8 am when he completed his shift, Maritime NZ mentioned in a statement today.
He failed to report at 4 pm for duty on Saturday.
The crew members searched the vessel, and the ship got back along its track to look for signs of the missing individual in the water, Maritime NZ mentioned in a statement.
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A thorough search around the Otago coast was carried out with an Otago Rescue Helicopter and a closeby vessel.
The search is temporarily on hold as a thorough review is undertaken to assess the likely success of the additional search effort.
A cold-water survivability specialist has been engaged by the Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ) and believes there is little possibility the person would have survived. The search assets have now been withdrawn pending the review and search assessment. The statements mentioned that their thoughts and prayers are with the near and dear ones of the missing Chinese individual.
Broadcasts continue shipping carried out in the area, requesting vessels maintain a strict lookout.
Maritime Union urges thorough investigation; in a statement published on Sunday night, Craig Harrison, the National Secretary of the Maritime Union of New Zealand, mentioned that such as incident is more common than people are aware of, adding that the loss of a crew member on a bulk carrier is undoubtedly concerning.
He added that New Zealand has to step up and do more to safeguard the welfare of international crew members in their territorial waters. Harrison mentioned that he would like Maritime New Zealand to examine whether the crew members were taking adequate rest breaks and that they weren’t needed to secure cargo when underway. He said that it’s a typical practice with a few New Zealand stevedores with poor standards to have overseas seafarers lash the cargoes when a vessel is underway, rather than shore-based stevedores carrying out the work at the port.
He said the sea time the crew member had also been working needed to be examined. He added that the authorities would like to know how long the seafarer was at sea as well as on duty and have assurances that they were not kept on the vessel longer than the contracted period, as rising mental health issues have been observed among seafarers kept captive on vessels for several months and sometimes years.
Harrison mentioned that the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) and Maritime Union would like to meet the crew members and discuss their welfare and what the shipping company, company, and cargo owners are doing for the crew and family members of the lost seafarer.
He urged relevant New Zealand authorities to do an investigation into this incident.
About 400,000 seafarers are working on cargo vessels all over the world. Official figures reflect that between 2015 and 2019, about 527 were reportedly killed at sea, and almost 509 went missing.
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