Royal Christening For New ACL Ship.

[John Arton]

Gulliver
Dart America, was she one of the Charlie Hills of Bristol container ships built in conjunction with a Belgium outfit? I was mate on the C.P. (later) Canmar Ambassador, ex. Dart boat. She had been built on the Tyne and C.P. had fitted her with an ice belt and extra framing. Although she was a great ship and still went like stink (26 knots easily maintained and could crunch through the ice going up to Montreal with ease, due to lack of maintenance she was suffering from terrible cracks in the hull and hatch coamings. Used to pick up a gang of sunderland when going round the European coast and actually ended up in Hamburg doing an emergency dry dock when hull cracks running from the ice belt to the keel were discovered. Container capacity had been upgraded to 2200 t.e.u.'s by this time.
rgds
JA

[j.sabourn]

In the oil Industry approx..the same years Davy, The twin screwed 4 engine ships 2 to a shaft used to burn about 25 tons a day all out. On economic speed on 1 engine per shaft was about 12 tons a day. Fuel at the time was about 100 pounds a ton. However ships on the spot market was due to charterers account. So a ship which was hired for say 10 days would have an on/of hire survey, all consumables including Lub oils was also to charters account. The daily rate for the spot market you will still find in your daily papers if you read the right ones of course. When I left the uk could of been anything between 6000 and 16000 pounds a day for the charter rate. The Diving support ship I was on for 4 years was hired out to the RN and was on 10,000 pounds a day so the 4 years I was there earned 1,460,000 pounds No overheads apart from wages. Other ships earned much more than this. We had the 4 point mooring system with a mile of wire on each anchor any breakages or normal wear and tear these were also paid by charterers, and a mile of wire of 32mm size is not cheap either, think they also paid all the food bills as well, they may of even paid the crews wages, I know she was a good money earner and kept other company ships going through hard times in their quest for oil and gas and the shortages of work for same. Cheers JS

[John F Collier]

Gulliver
Dart America, was she one of the Charlie Hills of Bristol container ships built in conjunction with a Belgium outfit? I was mate on the C.P. (later) Canmar Ambassador, ex. Dart boat. She had been built on the Tyne and C.P. had fitted her with an ice belt and extra framing. Although she was a great ship and still went like stink (26 knots easily maintained and could crunch through the ice going up to Montreal with ease, due to lack of maintenance she was suffering from terrible cracks in the hull and hatch coamings. Used to pick up a gang of sunderland when going round the European coast and actually ended up in Hamburg doing an emergency dry dock when hull cracks running from the ice belt to the keel were discovered. Container capacity had been upgraded to 2200 t.e.u.'s by this time.
rgds
JA

There are some nice pics of that ship on Google images. JC

[John Arton]

JC
Thanks for that, there is quite a bit more regarding the Dart Atlantic on Ships Nostalgia.
rgds

[Gulliver]

Gulliver
Dart America, was she one of the Charlie Hills of Bristol container ships built in conjunction with a Belgium outfit? I was mate on the C.P. (later) Canmar Ambassador, ex. Dart boat. She had been built on the Tyne and C.P. had fitted her with an ice belt and extra framing. Although she was a great ship and still went like stink (26 knots easily maintained and could crunch through the ice going up to Montreal with ease, due to lack of maintenance she was suffering from terrible cracks in the hull and hatch coamings. Used to pick up a gang of sunderland when going round the European coast and actually ended up in Hamburg doing an emergency dry dock when hull cracks running from the ice belt to the keel were discovered. Container capacity had been upgraded to 2200 t.e.u.'s by this time.
rgds
JA

That's right John.DART was a consortium of Bristol City Line,CMB (Compagnie Maritime Belge) and Clarke Traffic Services,Montreal.
DART AMERICA,registered in Bristol was owned by Clarke T. S .but managed by Bristol City Line,whilst DART ATLANTIC,also registered in Bristol was owned by Bristol City Line.Bibby Line took over B.C.L. and hence these two ships,which was how I came to know them.The third one,DART EUROPE was Belgian,registered in Antwerpen. Rotation was a three week round trip: Southampton-Halifax-New York-Norfolk-Antwerp-Southampton.
At the time of introduction,as well as being the largest container ships in the world,just slightly beating their contemporary ACL jobs,they had the widest fully enclosed bridges in the world(no going outside).Also they had the a Flume Tank Stabilizer System but I think they were rather troublesome later.
DART ostensibly stood for Direct and Rapid Transport,but I noticed many of the Southampton Pool crew had changed the 'D' to an 'F' on the backs of their donkey jackets. We had quite a few crew,deck and catering,who had been made redundant from the passenger ships,notably the Andes,so I think they weren't too impressed by these new-fangled modern box carriers with a bare eight hours in ports like New York (actually out at Newark,NJ,)and maybe 12 hours turnround in Soton.

Good old shrewd Bibby Line's accountants ensured Bibby's got rid of these ships sooner rather than later I would say!

Attachment 21505DART House Flag

Attachment 21507Usual view from the Wheelhouse on this run.

Dart America.jpgSOTON 203 Berth

[happy daze john in oz]

Not sure how they worked it out but one mathematician here said it takes 1 gallon of fuel to move the QM2 6 inches!

[John Arton]

Gulliver/Jim
Firstly let me apologise for going off on a tangent from Jims thread regarding the new ACL ships but the posts regarding the Dart ships got my interest going.
As I said before I did 4 trips in the late 80's as Mate on the C.P. Ambassador ex. Dart America and although she was a bit of a wreck I really enjoyed my time there.
The run was Felixstowe inbound-Antwerp (pain in the neck, long pilotage and only one shift alongside)-Hamburg-Felixstowe outbound-Le Havre-Montreal.
Montreal was a 4 day round turn. Arrive 0600 and a day and a half discharge (ships crew unlashing during passage up the St. Lawrence--nice little earner) then due to scheduling a 24/32 hour lay over (which meant I was able to meet up with my cousin who lived in Montreal), then a day loading export containers with again crew doing the lashing on departure. The turn around in Montreal was timed such that when ever possible the need to employ night shift work was avoided.
A good friend of mine (Captain in C.P.) had been mate in Bristol City line and had been involved in the design of the bridge and it was him that had pushed for the totally enclosed wheelhouse given that the run would mean winter trips to Canada. At each outboard end of the wheelhouse there was a navigation centre with chart table etc. a a chair fixed on rails that could be moved along to position you at the work station or lookout.
All three of the ships suffered from hull cracks, with the staff on the Belgium one welding half diameter pipes over the cracks from the inside. The OOCL manned one got rid of the top 4 Brits and replaced them with a full Chinese crew top to bottom. The very next trip it lost power going up the St. Lawrence, ran aground and ripped half its bottom out. It spent months in dry dock in Sorrel being repaired and the top 4 were again made up of the same Brits who had been recently removed.
The first call I did at Montreal I had to get in shore labour to patch up the hatch covers as they were more like Gouda cheese than hatch covers. That cost some $18000. I left after one trip expecting to go back to my assigned ship ( a chemical tanker) but the regular mate threw a wobbler halfway across the Atlantic so I was shanghaied to re-join it in Montreal. Again shore welders were on board patching up the hatch covers. The fwd ballast tanks were out of commission due to huge amounts of scale and mud in them and also the trace heating of the ballast lines that ran along the tank top in the cargo holds being out of action due to it having been soaked in water that had got into the holds via the holes in the hatch covers and box girders.. The bilge valves invariably never worked to such an extent that there were strict instructions that containers carrying mail should never be loaded on the tank top as these were invariably swimming in water that came in through the holes in the hatch covers and cracks in the box girders that formed the hatch coamings. Due to crap heavy fuel loaded in Montreal previously at least two of the heavy fuel oil double bottoms could not be used as they were thick with in-pump able sludge. On the crossing back to Europe, on going down for breakfast one day I found the main deck alleyway outside the saloon swimming in water that had come through the access manholes situated in the cross alleyway to those box girders. We arranged for a gang of welders from Sunderland to join in Felixstowe and they spent the European leg of that trip welding up all the cracks, working from 0600-2000 daily then hitting the ale up to midnight. The next crossing in Le Havre I was in the stbd access tunnel when I heard water pizzing in somewhere, opening up the ballast tank lid I could see water flooding in from a huge crack in the hull. On this trip Le Havre was our first port in bound as there was talk of a stevedore strike starting shortly (which it did just after we left). After doing Felixstowe and Antwerp pumping ballast regularly we went into emergency dry dock in Hamburg. Again we had our gang of Sunderland welders on board and they continued welding up the cracks in the box girders. The yard had 3 cracks running from the ice belt right down to the centre line to grind out and re-weld and the opportunity was taken to get the heavy fuel oil double bottom tanks cleaned out an returned into service, up to that point she had been burning diesel oil mainly. C.P. also employed an extra Indian fitter (Only myself, Captain, Chief Engineer and 2nd Eng. were Brits, rest all Indian) whose sole job was to overhaul all the bilge valves in order that we had a working cargo hold bilge system. Did one more round trip and then left and went back to tankers. When C.P. folded a year or so later I was offered the Mates job back on her as C.P. had turned themselves into Canada Maritime. I thought there would be no chance of promotion if I went back there and I already had been offered a job with the Greeks that brought out C.P.'s chemical side, so I refused the offer, which may have been a bad thing as next thing I knew all those Dart Boats had been scrapped and Canada Maritime had embarked upon a new building program of very swanky container ships from Korea. Canada Maritime expanded rapidly with new buildings and buying out existing container companies ending up being about the 4/5th largest container outfit going, before being taken over by Hapag Lloyd.
Again sorry Jim for hi-jacking your excellent thread on the new ACL ships, wonder if John Curry is still the ACL appointed pilot or maybe he has retired by now.
rgds
JA

[Jim Brady]

That's fine John very interesting to me anyway.You mention the CanMar newbuilds in Korea my son went on the trials on them in Korea they were built by Daewoo.
Regards.
Jim.B.

[Ivan Cloherty]

John/Jim, that's what makes this site interesting and worthwhile, going off at a tangent, because we all do it, without any intention of disrupting the thread, but we see a word or comment and it lights a spark that has been dormant and we rush into print before the spark goes out again, and we all learn so much when we inadvertently go off course

[Captain Kong]

Those CP ships sounded like Coffin Ships. Not a bit like the old Empress liners.
Brian