The AGM very rarely takes up too much time and we handed over the rest of the evening to Roy Kittle who showed us Part One of his collection of slides, �Shipping in the New Waterway in 1970/71, (NOT the Scheldt as previously and incorrectly advertised).
Until 1970 Roy didn�t venture much further than the Thames to view and photograph ships but after meeting a couple of other WSS members he was invited to join them on a trip to the New Waterway. This was Roy�s first trip abroad and he set off complete with his trusty Pentax S1 and standard and 105 mm lens. There was a great variety of shipping to be seen on the Waterway and the number of ships somewhat overwhelmed him, totalling at least 500 in the 15 days he was there. Photos were mainly taken in the Rozenburg area with some at the Hook. The advent of containers to Rotterdam in the mid sixties was gathering pace, with close to 250,000 boxes handled in 1970 (6.5 million in 2000). During this time there were a number of vessels converted to container ships from other trades. Roy�s slide of Verona was typical, converted from the tanker Esso Paris complete with a new mid body inserted. Others were conversions from T2 and C4 standard ships. Also depicted were the emerging purpose built containerships which were soon to be found too small for the fast increasing trade in boxes. Another innovation was the barge carrier Acadia Forest. Probably those to draw most comment from the audience were British ships such as Clan Macdonald built in 1939 and the 1952 built City of Port Elizabeth. Also favourites were ships of the Holland America line with their passenger liners Ryndam and Nieuw Amsterdam and some �kerks and �dyks. We thank Roy for his accomplished commentary and ship research, and look forward to Part Two in January.