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FREIGHT BREAK

Gone AWOL

Has anyone in Europe any information on the whereabouts of our publisher and chief advert salesman, John Saunders? John had the misfortune to be on Malta, about 200 miles out in the Med when the cloud of doom shut down European airspace. His visit actually coincided with that of his Holiness Pope Benedict. I’m not sure

if he managed to get an audience with him, but even John’s legendary powers of persuasion evidently weren’t enough to get him a lift on the Papal transport out of the island, because the next news we had was that he was on a Grimaldi Line boat heading for Livorno in Northern Italy, a 36-hour trip. Last I heard, I think he was trying to blag his way on board a coachload of Irish nuns returning home by way of Calais and Fishguard. So if you have any news, please let us know. We’re deeply concerned for his welfare – not to mention ad sales in our next issue.

Welcome to Britain

Forget what I just said – he’s just walked through the door, all in one piece. Apparently, he got deposited in Dover late on Wednesday night and his son drove down to pick him up for the final few hours drive back to Liverpool. Only they’d reckoned without the Highways Agency. Son took a wrong turn leaving a motorway services and they found themselves heading back south down the M6. The next exit was closed and a trip via the NE and Birmingham city centre ensured. They wandered through more inadequately signed diversions, in the company of hundreds of other very tired and equally lost drivers, many of them with left- hand-drive hire cars. The whole M6 between Birmingham and Stafford was up for repairs. They finally made it back to Liverpool by 5am.

Gunboat diplomacy

FBJ crossword

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FBJ cROSSWORd No. 1

Winner drawn Friday 28th May 2010. Send entries to: FBJ CROSSWORD Freight Business Journal Saunders Associates Ltd Station House Mersey Road Liverpool UK L17 6AG

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With ferry operators pressing freighters into service to carry foot passengers, coach operators scouring the country for spare vehicles to carry people from the Channel ports and Eurostar laying on extra services, transport experts were a little puzzled by PM Gordon brown’s decision to send two Royal Navy warships to evacuate stranded Brits from northern France.

With the ferry operators keeping well on top of the problem, what exactly was the point in sending two huge warships that would take ages to load up and, I’d guess, little in the way of creature comforts when you got on board. If Messerschmidt 109s were strafing the beach with machine-gun fire, you might consider it, but otherwise why forsake the comforts of P&O Ferries’ finest freight ship for the dark, dank bowels of a Royal Navy ship?

“I think perhaps the Government wanted to be seen to be doing something to help,” said a very diplomatic P&O Ferries spokeswoman. Nothing to do with the election, then, Gordon...

Misunderstanding on Merseyside

Brush up on your maritime history before you venture into Liverpool pubs. Your editor was at FBJ’s HQ to put together the first issue. In the evening, I grabbed a few pages to proof-read and headed for the nearest decent-looking boozer, in Toxteth.

I was barely half-way through the first page when a well-refreshed gentleman sat next to me. “What’s your paper about, then? “Shipping and freight and stuff like that.”

“Oh, alright. My great-grandfather used to work for Bibby Line.” I must have looked at him a bit blankly as he reeled off the names of every one of that company’s ships since about 1910 along with the various misadventures that befell Grandpops in his naval career. As the conversation rambled on, he also let slip that a close relative was about to end a long spell at Her Majesty’s Pleasure, on licence. Eventually he staggered off, and I carried on with my proofreading.

AcROSS

2 Multimodal venue (10) 3 Very bored truck? (5) 6 Often found in bellies (3) 7 Key shipping term (3) 9 Frozen lorry, but no sea, we hear (5)

12 Northwest port (10) 14 Vessel (4)

15 African port city (7) 17 European river (5) 18 No passengers (9) 20 Suffolk gateway (10) 21 Freight carrier, comes before main feature (7) 23 Part of ship, in Yorkshire (4) 24 No ships, but moves freight (5)

dOWN

1 Freight area in US back garden? (4)

2 Carrier? (3) 4 River’s end (5) 5 River, half of US duo (5) 8 West African port (4)

10 German ferry terminal (7)

11 Truckstop (8) 13 Long train ride (12) 16 Belgian Port (7) 19 Fuel (6) 21 Get the measure in shipping? (3)

22 Initially, a freight centre (3)

Relief was short-lived. He reeled back over to me . “You’re a ‘busy’, aren’t you?” “Yes, I suppose I am quite busy. Press day tomorrow and all that.” “No – A busy. A policeman, a detective. You’re trying to find out about what my nephew’s up to. I told you, he’s giving up being a gangster. He’s going straight.” “No, I’m not a policeman. What makes you think that?” “I know you don’t edit a shipping paper - when I told you the names of all them Bibby Line ships, you didn’t know a single one. You can’t fool me...” Can anybody lend me a Merseyside shipping history? I need to do a bit of reading before I go back there...

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