Doug Wright

Next Sunday marks the 40th anniversary of the arrival of Columbus New Zealand, the first container ship to visit Port Chalmers.

It is just over 27 years ago since the 2169gt, Wellington-registered Tarihiko made its first visit to Dunedin on June 2, 1984, to deliver the second shipment of cargo to the new lpg terminal. The first shipment arrived in the tanks of Coral Gas on February 12, 1984.

On its visit to Port Chalmers last week, the log ship Chitral became the first Pakistan-owned and registered vessel to enter this harbour.

Thirty-four years ago yesterday, the Bank Line's Ernebank berthed at Port Chalmers to discharge cargo. A few weeks later, the vessel built at the Doxford yard in 1965 returned and berthed at Dunedin on July 19, to load for overseas.

Today the waterfront area at Port Chalmers has large reclaimed areas, cargo sheds, stacks of containers, two container-handling berths, plus logs and woodchips awaiting shipment from the Beach St berth.

When container shipping services gathered momentum on the trade routes of the world in the early 1970s, several German owners seized the opportunity to build vessels purely for the purpose of chartering out.

Listed as coming from Bluff, the 19,882gt carrier Carl Oldendorff berths at Dunedin today to load logs.

The name Bahia has enjoyed a long history with ships of the Hamburg South America Line (Hamburg-Sud) since 1872. Yesterday, the sixth ship of the name made its first appearance at Port Chalmers.

Well in the case of MSC Brianna, due on its first visit this week, its former and current names bring back memories of earlier visitors to this harbour.

An interesting week at Port Chalmers with a visit from Stellar Eagle, the largest ship to load logs, and a record cruise ship season ending with visits from Pacific Pearl yesterday, and consort Pacific Dawn today.