At the the north end of Haifax Harbour, Bedford Basin has been a refuge and anchorage since the earliest days of the European presence in Nova Scotia. Today it is surrounded by insitutional, residential, recreational and commercial activity and there are also numerous parks and some historic sites. A National Historic Site memorial to Duc D'Anville, who landed there in 1746, is located in a tiny park adjacent to the Canadian National Railway's Pace Yard in Rockingham.
A little bit farther north, just before Birch Cove is an even smaller park with two look-off platforms that give sweeping vistas of the entire Basin and a clear view of ships at anchor and at several piers and moorings.
On a quiet day, such as today, March 7, it was possible to see five ships at once, but there is no camera lens wide enough to take them all in at once. So working from the north and counter clockwise here is what was to be seen.
Arriving from Montreal this morning the Vistula Maersk is waiting its turn at PSA Fairview Cove terminal.
It is one of four ships on the joint Maersk /CMA CGM transatlantic service that call in Halifax typically on Saturday, while eastbound for Bremerhaven. The Vistula Maersk was
built in 2018 by COSCO Zhoushan Shipyard Co, as an ice class ship for
Baltic service to Russia. At 34,882 gt, 40,000 dwt, it has a capacity of
3600 TEU including 600 reeefers. In 2022, following the Russian
boycott, along with two sister ships, it was transferred to the joint
Maersk / CMA CGM St-Laurent 1 / Canada Atlantic Express service. It made
its first call in Halifax June 23, 2022.
Also at anchor is the now familiar tanker CB Pacific. It has been in Halifax several times in recent months carrying ethanol for Irving Oil.
The CB Pacific, built by Jiangsu New Hantong shipbuilding in Yangzhong, China, was delivered in 2020. The 27,250 gt, 37,787 dwt ship is equipped to handle crude oil, clean petroluem products or chemicals in twelve phenolic epoxy coated tanks (plus two slops tanks). The ship is also built to DNV Baltic Ice Class 1B and is fitted with a hybrid exhaust gas scrubber which can be run at zero emissions. As previously noted it has a covered fore deck - a feature rarely incorporated in tankers.
Once it offloads at Irving Oil's Woodside termainal, it may head for the St.Lawrence River to supply other refiners.
Across the Basin from Rockingham at Wright's Cove, another CSL ship is loading at Gold Bond Gypsum. This time it is CSL Tarantau.
The view from the Africville Park on the south of the Basin gives a better look at the ship itself.
The ship was built for the Torvald Klaveness Selfunloaders and operated under the name Balto until 2015 when Klaveness withdrew from the CSL pool and its ships were taken over by CSL and Algoma. The red painted deck, hatch coamings and self-unloading gear is a carry over from Klaveness days.
The ship was built by Chengxi Shipyard in Jiangyin, China in 2013 to the ocean version of CSL's Trillium class design, so it was a natural fit in the CSL Americas roster. At 43,691 grt, 71,405 dwt it is too large to take a complete load at National Gypsum due to draft restrictions at the Bedford Basin pier.
The other busy spot in the Basin was the PSA Fairview Cove container terminal. At the east berth was NYK Demeter on the newly former Premier Alliance service.
Wires paralleling the CN rail main line are inevitable features of the view.
The Premier Alliance consists of Ocean Network Express (ONE), HMM (formerly Hyundai Merchant Marine) and Yang Ming as the survivors of THE Alliance after the withdrawal of Hapag-Lloyd. It is to be noted that the ship is still carrying many Hapag-Lloyd boxes.
NYK Demeter was built in 2007 by Hyundai, Ulsan, and is a 55,487 gt, 65,965 dwt ship with a capacity of 4922 TEU. It is owned by NYK Line, one of the partners, with MOL and K-Line, of Ocean Network Express.
At the east berth and RoRo ramp the Oceanex Sanderling is loading for its weekly trip to St.John's Newfoundland and Labrador.
More lines add to the view which is well above the rail lines.
Although I have told it several times before, it seems an appropriate time to repeat the history of the Oceanex Sanderling: