Shoalbuster 2509 Tug Bommel photographed 28 March 2014 underway on the River Mersey. 

Her hull was built by Damen Kozle and she arrived at Damen Hardinxveld in The Netherlands on 9 August 2012 where she was completed.

She is equipped with a 175hp Kalkman bowthruster, two John Deere 4045 TFM76 60KVA generators and two Caterpillar C32-TTA ACERT (1,492kW, 2,000 bhp @1,800 rpm) engines. This gives her a service speed of 11 Knots via twin 1800mm diameter Promarin fixed pitch propellers in Giessen Optima Nozzles. 

She can operate up to 200 nautical miles offshore in a variety of roles including anchor handling, surveying, towing and offshore support. 

Overall she is 24.99m long with a 9m beam and 3.19m draught.

GT = 174 and NT 52.

Bollard Pull is 27.6t

Accommodation is provided on board for six persons and consists of a Captain's cabin, single cabins, a double cabin, galley and sanitary facilities.

Deck equipment includes a HS Marine 145 LHE (4.6t @17m) Deck Crane, Ridderinkhof towing winch and a 25 t SWL A-Frame. She also has a 600mm x 400mm moonpool for the deployment of equipment.

She is owned by Herman Sr BV which based in Zwijndrecht, The Netherlands. The Company was founded in 1992 and they operate a fleet of multi-purpose tugs and workboats for towing, anchor handling, ofshore work, surveying , support and other operations. 
 
MMSI - 245386000
REG - NL
IMO - 9643659
Call Sign - PCCM
Tug
Built - Damen Hardinxveld, NL
Yard No. - 1570
L 24.99m W 9m
GT - 174
Year - 2013
Liverpool, 28 March  2014

Personnel Transport vessel Venom photographed in the River Mersey
on 20 March 2014.

The vessel is currently employed working on the new Liverpool 2 berth on the River Mersey.

She is 15.8m long with a 4.50m beam and 1.82m draught, displacement is 37.88 tonnes.

Powered by two Volvo Penta TAMD 120C engines (750bhp @2000rpm)
with twin four blade fixed pitch propellers she has a service speed of 18
Knots.

Accommodation is provided for 8 personnel in suspension seats (2 in the wheelhouse and 6 in the main cabin). A twin berth cabin, galley and sanitary
facilities are also provided below deck.

She is owned by Carmet tugs which are a family owned Company based in Eastham which started operations in 1971. The Company provide a wide
range of services including harbour towage, personnel transfer, anchor handling
and dredging. Since 1989 Carmet have been the sole towage contractor on the
Manchester Ship Canal operating out of Eastham Locks.

MMSI = 235097487 and Call Sign MQDE3.

Smit Collingwood photographed in Liverpool Docks on 6 June 2013.

She was built in 1981 by Richard Dunston in Hessle as Yard Number 928 and is 30.64m long with a 9.33m beam and 4.30m maximum draught.

Powered by 2 Rushton 6RKCM (3,938 kW) engines she has a bollard pull (ahead) of 32 t and a maximum speed of 12 Knots.

Accommodation is provided on board for eight crew.

Up to 2007 she was named Collingwood and is currently operated by Smit Towage who operate over 200 tugs Worldwide.

This vessel was involved in an accident on 31 July 2007 when she was assisting the Container Vessel Velazquez into the Port of Liverpool on one of her regular weekly visits. 

The incident involved a crewman getting his ankle caught in a line and being pulled towards the panama eye. The crewman braced himself against the panama eye while his fellow crew members tried to assist but concerned at losing his leg the crewman put his feet and legs together and was pulled through the panama eye. He landed in the water and managed to swim to the surface and cleared himself from the tangled line. He was very quickly retrieved from the water by the crew of Smit Collingwood and taken upstream to a landing stage where he walked ashore and was taken to hospital. Fortunately the seaman only lost the tip of his right little finger in the incident.

MMSI - 232002704
REG - UK, Liverpool
IMO -  7917991
Call Sign - GBVP
Tug
Built - Dunston, Hessle,  UK
Yard No. - 928
L 30.64m W 9.33m
GT - 281
Year -  1981
Liverpool, 6 June 2013

Yesterday morning I went on a site visit to Exeter flying from Manchester on a Bombadier Dash 8 Q400 operated by FlyBe.

As you can see from the picture above Manchester was a grey, overcast and very wet place.

This was the first time I have been on a Turboprop aircraft and I was surprised how quiet and smooth the plane was and in particular the way the engines power the plane into the sky on take off.

The Bombadier Dash 8 Q400 is manufactured by Bombardier Aerospace based 
in Dorval, Quebec, Canada. They can carry 78 passengers + crew and are  32.8m long with a 28.4m wingspan 
 
Powered by 2 P&WC PW150A 2 x 5075 hp engines they have a 2,500km range (with maximum payload) and a cruising speed of 667 km/hr, maximum altitude is 8,200m.

Somewhere over England, soon after leaving Manchester the solid cloud cover started to break up.

Approaching the Bristol Channel, the villages / towns of St Athan and Eglwys-Brewis are visible. I believe the coastline here is known as Limpert bay which at low tide is a vast expanse of rocks and pebbles interspersed with rock-pools and patches of sand.
 
The airfield close to the centre of the photograph is RAF St Athan which was built in 1939.

Sadly the bodies of two crew members who were lost following the sinking of the barque 'Ida' were washed ashore along this stretch of coastline in January 1881. 

During a storm on New Years Eve 1880 the vessel with a crew of eight was driven ashore onto rocks at Boverton and wrecked. Most of the crew and the Captain managed to climb the cliffs and find help in a nearby cottage. The lost crewmen were buried in a local churchyard.

Exeter - Less than one hour South from Manchester and the weather could not be more different.

I flew back to Manchester early afternoon. Exeter Airport has an open sun terrace overlooking the runway and although I only saw one plane land it was a good place to sit in the sun and do some work whilst waiting for my flight home.

L2 Leader photographed 11 March 2014 at one of the Pilot berths in the River Mersey.

She was previously operating as a Harbour Master vessel and was called Medway Leader before leaving Sheerness Docks on 13 September 2013 on the back of a low loader and making the journey North to Liverpool.

She has presumably been renamed L2 Leader because of the new Liverpool 2 Container Terminal currently being constructed by Peel Ports in the River Mersey. 

This facility is designed to double the current container handling capacity of the port from 750,000 TEU to 1,500,000 TEU / Year and will be able to accommodate much larger vessels that currently are unable to enter the dock system.

MMSI - 235077487
REG - UK, 
Call Sign - MLPC5
Port Tender
Liverpool, 11 March 2014

Chemicals / Oil Products Tanker Alora photographed in Hull Docks on 10 August 2012. I took the photograph from the P&O ferry to Rotterdam as we were manoeuvring into the locks before heading out into the River Humber.

She was built by Yangzi Shipbuilding in China as Yard Number 2006-06 in 2011 and is 90m long with a 15.2m breadth and 5.6m draught. 

GT = 2,918, NT = 1,246 and Summer DWT = 4,139

In total she has 11 tanks with a total capacity of 4,175.4m3.

She has two MAN B&W 6L23-30 diesel engines (1290kW.2608hp)  giving a
service speed of 11.2 Knots and  until 2011 she was known as Yangzi2.

She is owned by Rose Shipping, Athens and operated by Seatrend Shipping, Essen, Belgium a Company which was originally formed in 1989.

MMSI  - 209524000
REG - CY, Limassol
IMO - 9534066
Call Sign - 5BQP2
Chemical / Oil Products tanker
Built - Yangzi Shipbuilding, Yizheng, CN
Yard No. - 2006-03
L 90m W 15.2m
GT - 2918
Year - 2011
Hull, 10 August 2012

Container Ship Waddens photographed as we were leaving Barcelona on 29 May 2012.

She was built by the Heinrich Brand Shipyard in Oldburg, Germany in 1984 as Yard Number 217 and has an overall length of 99.42m (88.67m between perpendiculars), 17.56m beam and 6.53m draught.

Powered by a MAK 6M551 (2499kW) engine she has a maximum speed of 15 Knots, the vessel also has two diesel generators (740kW and 257kW) a 500kW shaft generator and a single 270kW bow thruster.

She has a single hold measuring 52.2m x 13.2m with hatch cover that can accommodate 116 TEU with a further 182 TEU located over the hold, 21TEU forward of the hatch and 31 TEU aft of the hatch totalling 350TEU. 

She is also equipped with two Electro-Hydraulic cranes and has 52 reefer plugs on deck.

GT = 3,784, NT = 1,820 and DWT = 5,189.

Over the years she has had a number of names including Weser Guide (1984), Zim Kingston (1984), Nedlloyd Trinidad (1994), Rangiora (1995), Waddens (1998), Captaine Bligh (1999), Southern Man (2000), Waddens (2001), UAFL Express (2002), Waddens (from 2010). 

For many years she worked in and around Australia and New Zealand.

MMSI - 304010572
REG - AG, St John
IMO - 8317978
Call Sign - V2VP
Container Ship
Built - Brand, Oldenburg, DE
Yard No. - 217
L 99.42m W 17.56m
GT 3784
Year - 1984
Barcelona, 29 May 2012

The Bascule Bridge spanning the entrance to Stanley Dock from Collingwood Dock  in Liverpool  photographed on 11 March 2014 ,the bridge was built in 1932 but was refurbished relatively recently.

Bascule bridges operate through the use of counterweights which continuously balance the bridge throughout its upward swing.

I believe that the Bascule Bridge at Stanley Dock is a Scherzer Rolling Lift type where the bridge deck not only lifts but rolls back to allow clear unobstructed clearance the full width of the waterway.

This type of brige was designed by William Scherzer (1858 - 1893) who was an American engineer who filed the patent for this design in May 1893 a few months before his death at the age of 35.

The patent was granted in December 1894 and after his death his work was continued by his brother Albert who started the Scherzer Rolling Lift  Bridge Company. 

View of the bridge looking North showing the bridges machine room spanning the roadway

Container ship Antje Schulte photographed on 22 August 2012, she
had just left Zeebrugge and I took the photograph from the deck of the P&O
ferry following our overnight sailing from Hull.

She is powered by a Sulzer 6RTA6A (15,146kW) engine. 

Built by the Nordic Yards, Wismar, Germany in 1997 she has an overall length of 168m with a 26.7m beam and 10.8m maximum draught.

GT = 15,929 and Summer Deadweight 22,520

TEU capacity is 1,014 on deck and 594 in the hold giving a total capacity of 1608.

Since I saw her she has been renamed Xiumei Tianjin having been sold by Thomas Schulte with sister ship Fabian Schulte for a reported $2m each.

On the morning of 6 December 2013  Xiumei Tianjin en-route from Zhoushan to Shanghai was involved in a collision approximately 3.5nm South of Zhoushan with the bulk carrier Jia Li Hai which was carrying 60,000 tons of coal. Xiumei struck the bulk carrier on her port side in a hold area near the superstructure resulting in water ingress. The vessels were towed to shallow water where Jia Li Hai was stabilised.  

MMSI -  304349000
REG - AG, St.Johns
IMO -  9138252
Call Sign - V2DU
Container Ship
Built - MTW, Wismar, DE
Yard No. - 301
L 168m W 27m
GT 15929
Year - 1997
Zeebrugge, 22 August 2012

Victoria Tower is a Gothic revival clock tower located adjacent to the two entrances into the River Mersey from Salisbury Dock.

Plans for the tower were put forward by the Dock Engineer Jesse Hartley in December 1845 and following approval work started with the tower being completed in 1848. 

The tower is just over 31m high with a 9.6m diameter at ground level.

It is often referred to as the 'Docker's Clock' and was was built to aid ships and people working in the docks as well as allowing ships to set their clocks as they sailed out to Sea. The clock towers bell was also used to confirm high tide as well as warn of fog and other hazards. The bell dated 1892 is located in an open belfry above the clock faces and was made by Mears & Stainbank of Whitechapel Foundry, London.

The tower is constructed from Scottish grey granite, sandstone and brickwork. It has a circular base that changes into a hexagonal column housing the six clocks which tapers to a castellated overhanging parapet. Originally a flag pole was mounted on the top although this is no longer there.

The tower also had accommodation on the lower levels presumably for the clock/ tower keeper or some other official.

 Photograph taken Liverpool, 19 February 2014.