| Meeting Report June 2007 |
| We were pleased to welcome the return of Derek Sands to our meeting at Ingatestone on Monday June 4th. Derek has been on several occasions with his slide shows of ships in East Anglian ports, but this time it was �The Port of Rotterdam� during the period 1975 to 1979. Rotterdam was, as is now, a very busy port. The ships then though were smaller with general cargo ships and reefers of about 8 to 10,000 gross a common sight. It was the early years of the containership conversions and first generation new builds. Derek�s photos portrayed amongst others, MANCHESTER VANGUARD, ASIA FREIGHTER, LIVERPOOL BAY and ACL�s ATLANTIC CHAMPAGNE. On the tanker front many were still centre-island such as Ropner�s THIRLBY and ESSO STUTTGART. SD 14s were a common sight, as were some of the old wartime standard T2 tankers, which by then had been largely modified almost out of recognition in some cases. It became almost a quiz with the many familiar ships that had found themselves under new ownership and colours. These included ex ships of Blue Funnel, Blue Star, Elder Dempster, Union Castle, and Cunard. There were also passenger ship visitors which included STEPHAN BATORY and CALYPSO (ex Shaw Saville�s SOUTHERN CROSS). Of the European owned ships there were examples of ships of the CMB, Fernley & Eger, DFDS, Nedlloyd, Wallanius, and MSC lines. Our thanks to Derek (and his minder Stuart) for coming to show us his collection of slides from this period, largely taken on a second hand fixed lens camera he bought for �5. This just demonstrates that you don�t need to spend a fortune to take good photographs. It was also noted that a large number of ships were under British registry somewhat different to today - so many changes in 30 years. We hope Derek will come again soon and show us the next in his series of �Rotterdam� shows. |