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Replicating a piece of history
Friday 29 January 2010
SHE was called Hermione and he was called Lafayette . She took him over the Atlantic to the US where he played an illustrious role in the American War of Independence. She was a three-masted French frigate measuring 44.2 m by 11 m and equipped with 26 cannons.
The year was 1780 and the celebrated General Lafayette, later to be a leading figure in the French Revolution, used the vessel to return to the US to rejoin George Washington in his struggle to oust the occupying British forces.
Hermione , built in 11 months at the royal arsenal in Rochefort in 1779, had a short life, however. The frigate was wrecked on rocks off the French Atlantic coast near Croisic, not far from the modern day STX shipyard at Saint Nazaire, in 1793.
A group of enthusiasts has been at work over the last 12 years on the construction of a new version of the vessel and is now hoping that the end of the project may be in sight.
Following a promise of €200,000 ($280,000) this year from the French state by President Nicolas Sarkozy, the association running the project says that it expects to be able to launch the vessel before the end of next year. And, in 2012, Hermione should be ready to take to the sea, sails and all, in readiness for a transatlantic crossing in the wake of its historic namesake.
The whole project has been evaluated at €20m, although the association says it already has €19m thanks to support from members of the public, local authorities and a number of corporate benefactors.
Smokeless zone
IT IS probably just as well that there are no difficult seafarers’ wage negotiations going on at the moment. Giles Heimann, secretary general of employers’ organisation International Maritime Employers’ Committee, has recently given up smoking. He says he is clawing the walls as he strives to resist temptation and is in danger of becoming addicted to plastic nicotine substitutes. But his demeanour is being eased by recently being able to return to riding his beloved powerful motorbike, following his recovery from a nasty accident last year.
By the time of the next round of tough wage talks, he hopes to have come to terms with his smokeless status.
New Baltic service
WHERE one company fails, another might succeed. A new ferry operator has decided to enter the competitive waters of the Baltic Sea, reopening a link between Helsinki and St Petersburg, a route that has already seen the downfall of one company.
Aptly named St Peter Line, the newly registered company has said it will begin in April, operating a five-times weekly service with a single vessel between the two Baltic ports
In 2008, Stella Lines started a similar endeavour, going bust a mere month after launching its one-vessel service. Last year, Finnlines added the route to its ro-ro network in the region.
On its website, St Peter Line said the single vessel it would use for its service was a 34,000 gt Finnish-built, former DFDS-operated vessel with the capacity for 1,638 passengers.
DFDS has been trying to sell off the 34,000 dwt Queen of Scandinavia since bringing it off the Newcastle-to-Bergen route in 2008. However, it told Last Word that it had yet to agree a sale or charter of the vessel, which is in Fredericia shipyard after apparently being used as a floating police hotel during the Copenhagen climate talks last month.
