Cement Boxes

[j.sabourn]

Or sprinkled on cappys plums when short of sugar. JWS

[cappy]

Or sprinkled on cappys plums when short of sugar. JWS

##could certainly stiffen up other regions .....cappy

[John Arton]

Up to P.G. in the 70's we discharged bagged cement using helicopters whilst at anchor, this due to berth congestion causing long delays.
rgds
JA

[Ivan Cloherty]

Up to P.G. in the 70's we discharged bagged cement using helicopters whilst at anchor, this due to berth congestion causing long delays.
rgds
JA

John I was general manager and marine supt for Global Shipping of Dubai in the 1970's acting as agents for many shipping companies and also having 20 plus ships on time charter and voyage charter, not one ship under our control whether agency or chartered waited more than ten days to berth,some berthed on arrival, no other agency ever achieved that although some in business 100 years plus longer than my company Global (which I set up for Al-Shirawi). Other agencies had ships waiting anything up to fifty plus days, but the Ex-pat bosses were too lazy to get off their backsides and personally attend the 0800 hours morning Port Authority meetings, which authority was run by very straight British Master mariners, who could not be bribed or swayed by local Sheiks, but put up a good argument and they would listen to it. I would get up every morning (for nearly 4 years) at 0500 and together with my Pakistan foreman (who I had poached from a long established Agency where he had been a 'temporary employee' for 17 years and he spoke 7 languages including greek and russian, so I put him on salary where-in he got paid whether we had a ship in or not, I knew he would screw me on expenses but I also knew he would stop others doing it, having lived in Pakistan for 4 years previously, I accepted the mentality as a norm) we would tour the port and measure the distance between sterns and bows of the 12 ships alongside and total them up. The PA would not allocate more than 12 ships alongside at any one time on the 12 berths unless you could give them a reason. We totalled up the free quay space twixt vessels and I would offer to pay moving and tug expenses for shifting these ships around so that the wasted space was one continuous length and long enough to get one of my ships in. Out of all the agencies in Dubai at that time I was the only seafarer who attended the morning meetings, the others sent office boys or similar, who probably never reported my arguments to the PA, probably because they never understood them. It was over two years before the other Agencies cottoned on but by that time I had had 4 x 400 ton barges and a tug built in India towed them to Dubai so if I had two ships in at the same time I could discharge one alongside in Dubai, one at anchorage in Dubai into barges and discharge the barges in Sharjah (just up the road) which was nearly always void of ships because of draft restrictions. I handled over 500,000 tons of cement a year as well as general cargoes. Never did see an helicopter though!

[j.sabourn]

Was it not feasible to put two vessels on the same berth Ivan. Or were the crane out reaches too short.? Know you wouldn't get away with it these days due to the Safety Regs. but in those days time and money was the biggest contributory factor in shipping. JWS

[John Arton]

Ivan
The first time up the Gulf, not on a tanker we had loaded in Houston, Orange (Texas), bagged rice, mobile drilling rigs (mounted o trucks), vehicles of all sorts (cars, 4x4's, buses)
and on deck we had 3 x 266 ton modules that made up the business end of a drilling rig. These were discharged at an oilfield west of Kharg Island (where we had been alongside discharging drilling equipment). After that the rest of the cargo was boun for Basrah and we were anchored off the Shatt Al Arab, along with 100+ other vessels. This lasted for some 8 months (I paid off in Kuwait where we had gone for water and stores). That ship eventually spent 2.5 years anchored off Basrah due to disputes over the rice cargo. This would have been in the late 70's.
It was in the early 80's when I was next up that way with general cargo, mainly equipment for the oil industry but we also had bagged cement on board (not a full cargo though) which was discharged using helicopters. Memory not too great but possibly the cement was for the oil industry and not building cement, hence the use of helicopters.
rgds
JA

[Ivan Cloherty]

Was it not feasible to put two vessels on the same berth Ivan. Or were the crane out reaches too short.? Know you wouldn't get away with it these days due to the Safety Regs. but in those days time and money was the biggest contributory factor in shipping. JWS

No John the PA would not double bank ships alongside in Dubai port (at that time), it took me two years to get them agree to put barges alongside and discharge into them when there was no transport available alongside because the truckers had found a more lucrative business than port work. The reason for not double banking was safety regs, as used to get some crap ships in (like Lagos) and they used to work on main engines despite PA asking them not to thus making them immobile and port only at two tugs which may have been utilised elsewhere. They had had an experience with fire on a ship in port and its firefighting ability was impaired by engineers stripping down various pumps (or equipment just plain crap) so were not going to put themselves in that position again. At this time Dubai was a fledgling port and although had its own fire trucks a lot wasn't up to modern day standards, a fact I found out when fighting a ship fire at anchorage in Dubai when most of the crew (Greek) had left by lifeboat, the ship was on charter to my company (Global) and our cargo on board and instincts took over, for which I later got a right bollocking from my wife for not considering my children first before taking what she considered a dangerous action and not my concern, but any seamen (British) would have done the same, it's inbuilt into us, regardless whether its our ship or not. They were interesting times and educational, but not very lucrative for the hours put in seven days a week, but glad I did it.

[happy daze john in oz]

Yes must agree there were many chefs and cooks who may well have substitued cement for flour in some of the so called bread they made, and some of them considered they were Condom Blue chefs.

[john gamble]

Yup! Especially when the wing tanks went through by the valves,galvanic reaction....