Saturday 30 April 2016

River Meet (2) Multipurpose Dry Cargo Carrier FRASERBORG

...now where were we? Oh yes, as the new FedNav Laker-class bulk carrier FEDERAL CARIBOU continued upstream making her way to Picton with a load of steel, the Wagenborg multipurpose dry cargo carrier FRASERBORG  impressively sliced her way passed various red and green marker buoys in front of me at the "Battle of the Windmill" Historic Site and Ogdensburg's river's edge homesteads will motoring downbound towards Cardinal and then Iroquois Lock.

Though no stranger to the Great Lakes, this was only my first meeting with the 507' FRASERBORG which was built  at Ferus Smit Shipyards of Leer, Germany in 2011. Registered in  Delfzijl, NL, FRASERBORG can carry 14,603 tonnes of dry cargo in her two holds or in up to 475 TEU containers above or below deck.
FRASERBORG is one of 50 in Wagenborg's fleet of 180  multipurpose dry cargo carriers  that frequent Great Lakes every year carrying anything from forestry and steel products to fertilizer, grain and more recently wind turbines to U.S. and Canadian ports on their crane equipped vessels like the ATLANTICBORG which I snapped at Iroquois Lock and near Cardinal in 2012 (http://carlzboats.blogspot.ca/2012/07/canada-day-2012-and-what-better-way-to.html)

Though perhaps not in actual the size of their vessels, Holland based Wagenborg Shipping has a lot in common with FedNav and their laker's like the  FEDERAL CARIBOU. They both only specialize in the movement of dry goods, their ships are well maintained and  before the company suffix "BORG" each are named after the continents, countries, cities, seas and rivers they trade in or with throughout the world like, Vancouver, Albany, Mississippi, Elbe, Volga, Erie, and Aruba, just to name a few.
The slender FRASERBORG is named after British Columbia's longest river, the 1,370 kilometre long "Fraser" that flows from Mount Robson, on the Alberta border, through the Rocky Mountain Trench to the Straits of Georgia at Vancouver. Fur trader Simon Fraser, the river's namesake led an expedition in 1808 along the river from Prince George to the mouth and not only confirmed that it was not connected to the Columbia River, but he was also partly responsible for Canada's boundary with the United States which was later established as the 49th parallel.
Later in life, Simon Fraser settled on land near present-day Cornwall, Ontario. He became an entrepreneur and served as Captain of the 1st Regiment of the Stormont Militia during the Rebellion of 1837 and the defeating of an American invasion at the "Battle of the Windmill", the location where I snapped the above photos of the ship that was ultimately named after, him. A coincidence, or WHAT? c):-o  


Laden with grain loaded in Hamilton and destined for Greenore, Ireland, I got a few more snaps of the seemingly motionless FRASERBORG as she slipped passed the Ingredion Canada corn starch plant in Cardinal but as I panned the horizon to the east, out appeared the light 641' Lower Lakes bulk carrier TECUMSEH motoring upstream at a good speed. "Oh my goodness, don't tell me, Another Meet?" YES!! c):-D To be continued...

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