Saturday 17 August 2013

Container Ship MAERSK PEMBROKE


I could barely contain myself when just after we arrived at Parc Rene-Labrosse in Montreal East, the partially loaded 688' container ship MAERSK PEMBROKE motored by. This was as close as I have been to a container ship since last September in Fremantle, Western Australia where I snapped the  965' MOL EMINENCE http://carlzboats.blogspot.ca/2012/10/container-ship-mol-eminence.html below. Though both container ships are approximately 105' wide, the MAERSK PEMBROKE can only carry up to 2,902 containers or 'sea-cans' compared to 4,658, the maximum TEU (Twenty foot Equivalent Units) for the MOL EMINENCE.
When built in 1998 in Rostock, Germany, she was named P&O NEDLLOYD SIDNEY. Her name was changed to MAERSK PEMBROKE when purchased by Maersk Lines of Copenhagen, Denmark in 2006 though she flies the flag of The Netherlands. What also was surprising to me was the name 'PEMBROKE' because there's a city called Pembroke about an hour's drive north of here along the Ottawa River. Having said that, there's also a 'Pembroke' in Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia in the US and one in the UK according to Google Maps. Then again perhaps the ship was named after the Earl of Pembroke or the Pembroke Welsh Corgi, which QueenEII has owned 30 dogs of this breed since her coronation in 1952. Regardless, it's better that she's named 'Pembroke' instead of being simply 'broke-in-half' like the 1,037' MOL COMFORT which split in two during a severe storm and spilled her load of 4,500 containers into the Indian Ocean this past June. Kind of gives a whole new meaning of the term 'sea-can', don't you think?

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