Ships

Given that we've got a smashing view of the Atlantic Ocean from our windows ...

... we're quite often asked "Do you ever see any ships going past?"

The answer to that is "occasionally, but not that often." About once a month, maybe, on average. And they're invariably so far away that they're just specks on the horizon - you can see them with the naked eye but for any kind of detail, I need to get out the "oculor" (= binoculors with one side broken. I refuse to buy another set as long as the remaining "oculor" continues to function perfectly well even if I do look like someone not quite right who's been let out for the afternoon when I'm using them (it)).

The ships we see are also invariably container ships. Shipping these days is terribly dull compared with previous decades. When I was a boy, the cargo ships that plied the oceans looked like this:-

Picture credit David Christie

They were generally built at Glasgow, registered at London and emptied their bilge oil into the pristine waters of some foreign port and if the natives dared to complain, they got a stiffly worded rebuke from the British Consul for their trouble (Col. Gaddafi please take note.)

But nowadays, the ships we see from our windows look like this:-

Picture credit Dominic Winsor

Built in Korea and registered in Panama, they're doubtless very efficient and economical in terms of stuff shifted per unit load but they need a risk assessment before they flush the lav and are generally lacking in eight bells and top masts.

Actually it's a coincidence the googled picture above is a CMA-CGM ship because we saw one of theirs going past here once, the letters on the hull being big enough to make out with the oculor. It's a big French shipping company and I went to their website and was able to work out from their schedules where it was going from and to. (It was news to me that container ships operate to schedules like car ferries.) I can't remember now exactly where but the screen grab below from Google Earth suggesting Le Havre from somewhere in South America rings a bell:-

From somewhere in the southern states of the USA ( I believe Savannah, Georgia is quite a big port) to the Straits of Gibraltar is also a candidate for passing our front door:-

I'm quite glad the passing ships don't get too close, though. A container ship called the CP Valour suffered engine failure off the Azores in 2005 and ran aground on the north coast of Faial. It couldn't be towed off and there was the inevitable release of fuel oil and many of the containers were knocked off and washed ashore (although no BMW motorbikes to be looted off the beach by the natives as with that ship - MSC Napoli, I think - that went aground on Cornwall (England) a couple of years ago and caused a lot of extra work for Her Majesty's Receiver of Wrecks in the public education arena).

The official salvors of the CP Valour didn't have much luck either. They spent months removing the remaining containers and the superstructure of the ship with a view to lightening the load to be able to refloat the hull and tow it away for salvage but, as I recall, they got the hull off but it sank into deep water barely a kilometre or so off the coast!

 

Of course, the CP Valour wasn't the first ship to be wrecked on the Azores. In 1909, the Cunard liner Slavonia was steaming east across the Atlantic from New York bound for Trieste when it is said that some of the passengers, keen to sight the Azores, asked the captain to alter course. The request was acceeded to but they ended up getting a closer view than they bargained for:-

 

This was at Lajedo on the south west coast of Flores. There was no loss of life but it's said that all the houses on Flores dating from this era - and No 5 Rua da Assomada must fall into this category - have floors made from wood salvaged from the Slavonia. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but here's a sample of our floors in case there are any shipping woodwork afficionados out there who can spot a decent bit of fin de siecle Cunard when they see it:-

 

 More recently, in 1965, a ship called the Papadiamandis was wrecked right here at Faja Grande while en route between New Orleans and Hamburg:-

Recognise anyone? More pictures of that event at Memorias d'um Povo which is a great source of old pictures of Flores.

 

STOP PRESS - I started writing this last night and what happens this evening but a ship went by, passing from west to east. First time this year, I think - maybe the second. Photo below - even zoomed to the 12x limit of my camera, you'll have to take my word for it that that's a fully laden container ship:-