32


Issue 5 2013


///FREIGHT BREAK Life’s a gas


The idea of using airships to carry freight is nothing new, but it has always been something of a niche area. But now California- based Aeroscraſt are working on a revolutionary lighter-than-air craſt that could revolutionise heavyliſt transport. Aeroscraſt says that its ML866


will use ground-breaking ideas that will get round many of the disadvantages of this technology. Like an airship, the ML866 is filled with helium but a new system somehow allows the density of the gas inside to be increased to bring the craſt gently and safely


~Is Spain receiving another stimulus? ~No it’s Gareth Bale’s wages, he won’t take a cheque


to the ground without having to use tethering lines which need to be anchored firmly into the ground. This means that, unlike an airship, the craſt can land literally anywhere there is space for it. It would be ideal for getting aid cargo or oil and gas gear across rough terrain. It can fly at 17,000ſt which would allow it to get above most weather systems and has the range to cross oceans as well as continents, at a steady 100 knots. This beast is really huge.


Aeroscraſt has developed a prototype which seems to fill a large aircraſt hangar quite


comfortably but the planned


production models, with their


66-tonne and 250-tonne


capacities measure 550ſt and 700ſt respectively. The company is in the process


of getting a licence to allow it to fly its prototype in the US and is planning a production fleet of 24 of the ships which could go into service by around 2016. I do hope warn tell any locals


of their craſt’s arrival, though. Anyone waking up to find a 700- foot long craſt obliterating the sky is liable to think the aliens really have landed.


Rallying to the flag Wine on the ocean wave


Corks popped when a former French langoustine fishing boat arrived at St Katharine Docks in London to deliver a six-tonne cargo, including 3,000 bottles of natural wine destined for a leading London


show, aſter a 40-hour


voyage from Brittany under sail. It was less a case of ‘yo-ho-ho


and a bottle of rum’ than a bottle of vin as the 1962-built Michel Patrick led a French invasion of natural, organic and biodynamic wines destined for the RAW wine fair at the Old Truman Brewery in London. The voyage was masterminded


by TOWT (TransOceanic Wind Transport) which is spearheading commercial


sail-powered


shipping as a means of cutting global


carbon emissions. Last


summer, it delivered French wine by sail to top Copenhagen


the ship to Tilbury Docks where the bulk of the wine cargo was unloaded for Customs clearance in a bonded warehouse. Work stopped at the Essex port as stevedores were taken aback by the sight of the traditional Breton Malamok among the bulk-carriers and car carriers lined up at the quayside. Aſter a five-hour voyage from


restaurant Noma. Founder Guillaume Le Grand “This is not a stunt. The


says:


voyage saved up to 230kg of CO2, equivalent to the burning of some 420 litres of diesel. “This is a natural way to move


natural wine. Last year we sailed 8,000 bottles of wine to Copenhagen and this year we’re going to sail some 15,000.” Captain Lionel Brousse steered


Tilbury to the Pool of London, the remaining wine was unloaded by human chain as the party of winemakers, bloggers, journalists and sailors who had powered the Michel Patrick took to the quayside. RAW organiser Isabelle Legeron


says: “RAW’s plan is to develop a long-term partnership with TOWT so that eventually most of RAW’s wines will be picked up by sailboat from ports around Europe.”


Freight Business Journal’s publisher negotiated his usual corporate sponsorship deal at this year’s Glastonbury festival. As well as featuring several times in this year’s TV coverage of the mud-and-music get- together, our banner apparently proved to be quite a rallying point if festival-goers’ overheard mobile phone conversations are anything to go by - “Meet us under the FBJ flag.” But it also caused some consternation


among those who thought it read FBI, expecting a drugs bust at any moment. And quite a few people from the freight industry came up to


us who actually knew what FBJ actually was. Please could the gentlemen involved in project freight shipping get in touch again? John’s lost your details.


Could Monty scupper Boris?


Fans of Heathrow airport have gained a boost from an unlikely quarter – a World War II munitions ship, according to a BBC report. Plans to build a replacement ‘Boris Island’ airport in the Thames Estuary could be scuppered by the SS Richard Montgomery, a US ship that grounded and broke up while at anchor in Sheerness in 1944. The vessel is still full of explosives – no doubt by now very unstable - and protected by a 500-metre exclusion zone. The shipping industry has


learned to live with this bomb waiting to go off – the ship is


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monitored 24 hours a day – but do you really want to take such a risk with a major international air hub, especially as detonating the ship and its deadly contents might also appeal to terrorists? According to the BBC,


local historian Colin Harvey occasionally screens his film, A Disaster Waiting to Happen to residents on the Isle of Sheppey, which must cheer everybody up a whole bunch. According to Mr Harvey, the blast could cause a tidal wave, flooding large parts of the area. A 2004 report in the New Scientist magazine said the


explosion would be one of the biggest non-nuclear explosions ever seen. The Montgomery isn’t the only


problem wreck in UK waters. There is also the SS Castilian, which sank off Anglesey, North Wales, in 1943. Current Marine and Coastguard Agency policy is


to leave well


alone – ever since an attempt to remove munitions from a World War II Polish ship lying in the English Channel resulted in a huge explosion. Fortunately there were no serious injuries, except to a few roof slates in Folkestone.


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