Coal shipments from the tyne

[j hardy]

my father, butch hardy, sailed with stevie clarkes colliers, as cook/steward, from 1948 (when he was stopped from going deep sea because of malaria) till 1968, when he was taken off his collier, the beeding after suffering a major heart attack. i spent my early years going to visit him when he was watch aboard, seaham harbour, shields, pelaw, loved the old coal boats.

[happy daze john in oz]

All the talk about coal being bad for the environment, yet without coking coal you cannot make steel.

No matter what is said by many I believe coal will still be in use by 2050 when the so called Zero emissions comes in, if it does.

[cappy]

my father, butch hardy, sailed with stevie clarkes colliers, as cook/steward, from 1948 (when he was stopped from going deep sea because of malaria) till 1968, when he was taken off his collier, the beeding after suffering a major heart attack. i spent my early years going to visit him when he was watch aboard, seaham harbour, shields, pelaw, loved the old coal boats.

Just wondered which ones of stevie clarkes he sailed on......do you have any names of the vessels and dates served ie discharge book .....as had family went through the war years in them....ie the stelling....halo....gaslight....st david .....firedog.... flamma and others......fine seamen on these small craft .......regards cappy from shields

[j hardy]

hi cappy, from memory early on he was on the firebeam, portslade, did 12 years on the murdoch, spent some time on the beeding, horsham, and the last of stevies coal fired colliers, the keynes. no discharge book i'm afraid, my brother had it but it has disappeared over the years. hope this is of some use.

[cappy]

well they are days long gone now i was only on one collier the corfen ...no matter what you did you had bloody coal dust every where ......and your clothes were always damp .....a pal of mine who fell from a bosuns chair in florida and spent many months in hospital there......came on the coast for a while he always called the Beeding the bedding .....as a young man......sadly as we talk of stephie clarks a fine ex ships master lives in my village he has sadly just lost his wife ...i called on him yesterday ...it is a hard time ...he served his apprentice ship in stephies in the late forties 50s but spent all his time foriegn going as ships master ....an old time proper seaman.from siksworth.....regards cappy

[Ray Arnold]

And now, those same Yorkshire power stations are powered by Canadian wood chips, brought by ships to Liverpool, where they are off-loaded into special rail wagons.

Convoys of those wagons, in (I believe) 3,000 tonne batches, come racing and rattling past my house on a regular basis.

[Ivan Cloherty]

And now, those same Yorkshire power stations are powered by Canadian wood chips, brought by ships to Liverpool, where they are off-loaded into special rail wagons.

.

Well Ray you can sleep sound in the knowledge that these wood chips were the result of carbon free forest machinery cutting them down, carbon free transport to the processing plant, carbon free processing mill, carbon free transport to vessel, carbon free loading appliances, transported by a carbon free ship over thousands of miles from Canada, discharged with carbon free grabs/cranes, carried by carbon free rail wagons to be burnt in a carbon free manner. I wonder if anyone calculated the carbon output from nature to burner of the wood chips as opposed to carbon content of the coal. Three cheers for the Greens!!

[happy daze john in oz]

Well as said before we burn wood on our log burners here in Oz no worries mate.
Cleanest form of heating according to our scientists.
We would have Nuclear power but the 'Greens' say no.
Funny though, we are the worlds largest exporter of Yellow Cake, we take in much of the worlds nuclear waste and burry it deep in the outback, we have Nuclear medicine and take the waste from other countries but the 'Greens' say Nuclear power is dangerous?????

[john walker]

John I think if our power sources were just fresh air with no dangerous emissions some bright spark with strong views on the subject, would find reasons for not using it like we are depleting the world of a very natural resource etc. etc. Some of the greens would have us living off grass and plants wearing goodness knows what and living in caves or twig huts. Their thoughts being, it is wrong to eat meat or use animal products. Stuff that, I enjoy a fat juicy beef steak and living in a sturdy abode with central heating. The greens of the world can do what ever they wish as long as they do not dictate to me what I can/can not do. Green issues are important but those who strongly espouse them are a small minority in the political spectrum but appear to have a very large voice on the world stage.

[Ivan Cloherty]

I have noticed that greens use their cars, trains and buses to reach their protests rather than walking there to save the planet.