Our meeting saw further slides of Ray Smith�s TSS trip to the Far East last year. We left Ray last month on a boat on the Chao Phraya River during his visit to Bangkok. This month we saw further examples of shipping in this busy port, which also included naval vessels. These were mainly LSTs and minesweepers, some of considerable age including 611, which looked like an Algerine class sweeper of the last war. This turned out to be the �HMS Minstrel� built in Canada in 1944 for the R.N. and now a training vessel. There were a large number of smaller ships engaged on coastwise traffic including refers, tankers and bulk carriers. The river also supports repair and building facilities complete with floating docks and a full range of harbour services such as tugs dredgers etc.
Following the break Tony Hogwood showed us slides of ships he had taken only a couple of weeks before during his Easter trip to Rotterdam, Antwerp and the New Waterway. The weather apparently had been rather poor, but Tony entertained us with a good selection of slides with the sun shining. Notable ships seen in Antwerp were the new tug Fairplay 27; Jumboships, Jumbo Challenger; the Isle of Man registered Iron Baron in Safmarine colours, with a cargo of imported coal; the tug Elbe which is part of the Rotterdam Maritime Museum and was the vessel �Greenpeace�; and a barge carrier loading barges.
In Antwerp Tony took the dock tour and showed us gas tankers, bulk carriers, reefers, container ships, which included the COSCO Ningbo, a feature in our local press and on TV recently as the largest containership to visit Felixstowe at over 109,000 grt. Another giant was CMA CGM Othello with a teu count in excess of 8,500. Another surprise was to see the 2002 built UK registered BP tanker British Endeavour.
Our thanks go to Ray and Tony for their excellent slides and informative commentary. We look forward to part three of Rays trip when he will be showing us ships in Singapore, and no doubt Tony will be showing us further slides of his visit in due course.