On the waterfront: Container ship age celebrating 40 years

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

As a matter of interest, while this ship was the first of three sister ships, Bahia, which will be in port on Sunday, was the lead ship in a class of six.

Second-time visitor Bahia was delivered from the Daewoo shipyard at Okpo, on February 9, 2007. Designed to operate at a speed of 22.40 knots, the 41,483gt, 254.06m-long vessel has a container capacity of 3630teu, including 844 reefer plugs.

And it perpetuates the name of the fourth ship in the Hamburg-South America Lines (Hamburg-Sud) fleet after it was founded in 1871.

In comparison, Columbus New Zealand was a much smaller 19,146gt, 193.89m-long vessel which could carry 1187teu, increased to 1213teu after 1986. But it was notable in being the pioneer red-hulled container ship in the fleet, the pioneer container ship on a transpacific service from the east coast of North America to Australia and New Zealand.

The ship also introduced the Columbus naming system to the fleet of owned and chartered ships that followed later. This indicated that they were operated by the Columbus Line, a marketing brand name that had been introduced in 1957 to operate a freight service between North and South America. This name lasted until 2004 when the majority of companies in the Hamburg-Sud group were rebranded under the parent company's name.

Before arriving here on June 26, 1971, Columbus New Zealand had visited Wellington then Auckland. After spending two days in port, the ship departed for the United States.

The ship introduced a new dimension of cargo-handling to the port and attracted widespread interest from the public, as did sisters Columbus Australia and Columbus America when they started calling.

Beach St wharf was the centre of these operations which used the ship's gantry crane, whose arm folded out to land or pick up containers from the wharf. When shore-side container cranes became available at ports the three sisters visited, their cranes were removed and fitted to later additions to the fleet.

All three ships were ordered from the Howaldtswerke Deutsche Werft A.G. yard at Hamburg and were engined by A.G. Weser of Bremen.

Columbus New Zealand was launched on November 27, 1970, and was delivered on April 17, 1971. Propulsion machinery consisted of two steam turbines having double reduction gearing to the single shaft. The total output of 25,000shp gave a service speed of 22 knots.

Because of their reliability, coupled with their speed, steam turbine container ships were in vogue in the 1970s. However, rising oil prices in the 1980s saw many of these fuel-guzzling vessels converted to cheaper-to-run diesel propulsion systems.

Columbus New Zealand underwent such a transplant at its builders yard in 1986. The replacement machinery was a six-cylinder MAN unit supplied from the Kawasaki works at Kobe. This developed 12,000bhp, reduced service speed to 18.5 knots and the daily fuel consumption by about half. The ship also returned to service with accommodation for 12 passengers.

The only major incident that marred its successful career was a fire that broke out in the engine room on December 20, 1974, when the ship was near the Galapagos Islands on a south-bound voyage from Halifax (Nova Scotia) to Sydney. The ship was subsequently towed back to Germany and arrived at its builders yard for repairs on February 19,1975.

Columbus New Zealand made 111 visits to Port Chalmers, appearing here for the last time on June 5, 1998. The pioneer container ship's final voyage took it to Alang, where it arrived on September 7, 1998, for beaching and demolition.

The name reappeared as something of a token gesture when it was given to one of the 4112teu vessels built for the round-the-world service in 2002. But neither the Columbus Line or Hamburg-Sud had anything to do with the operation of this vessel.

Now loading logs at Port Chalmers, the 17,019gt Lake Deer is another comparatively new vessel from the Imabari yard this year. It was handed over to World Star Shipping S.A. of Tokyo for service under the flag of Panama on February 7.

 

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