Maritime News and Comment
July 2008
IS
FINCANTIERI AFTER MARINETTE? My spies tell me that Fincantieri
is sniffing around Marinette Marine. They have been known to be interested
in a U.S. investment for years and the LCS 1 is their design. We shall
see. July
31,
2008.
FIRST
NSC TO BE COMMISSIONED. The USCGC "Bertholf", (WMSL 750), will
be commissioned on Monday, only three months after it was delivered but more than five
years after contract award. Read the Coast Guard's
announcement here. July
31,
2008.
AMBROSE
LIGHT DISMANTLED.
The
legendary Ambrose Light outside the entrance to New York Harbor, was dismantled
this week, after 41 years of service. If 41 years doesn't sound like
enough, you're right: the fixed station established in 1967 replaced the much
more legendary Ambrose lightship, which had been there since 1823, one of our
very first lightships. Apparently the light no longer serves any useful
purpose and ships keep hitting it. Read the Coast Guard's
announcement here. July
31,
2008.
MORE
TROUBLE FOR USS. US Shipping Partners said this morning that it
was still working on restructuring its debt and, a a result, would not be making
any distributions this quarter. Its stock, which had been showing some
small signs of recovery recently, promptly collapsed again. Read USS'
announcement
here. July
30,
2008.
RUSSIAN
SUB RAISED. In a bizarre echo of the Cold War, the Coast Guard
has announced the successful raising of a Russian submarine from the bottom of
the Providence River. Read the press release
here. No,
they didn't penetrate our harbor defenses: the sub - the K-77 - was acquired in
2002, to be a museum in Providence, but sank at its moorings last year. July
29,
2008.
LAST
LIBERTY LEAVES NDRF. The last Liberty ship in the NDRF, the
"Arthur M. Huddell", has been towed out, on the first leg of its journey to
become a museum ship in Greece. Read MARAD's press release
here. July
29,
2008.
LCS 1
OUT ON TRIALS. LCS 1, the future USS "Freedom", is out on
trials. Click here to see an excellent photograph
from Val Ihde Photography. She's not exactly tearing along but at least
she's not in the shipyard. All is reported to be going well. If
that's really so, and not just more Lockheed Martin PR, that's great.
I don't recall the last time that there were pictures of a
Navy ship on trials all over the internet: there's video on You-Tube, for
goodness sake. Is this just chance or is the LM PR machine working
overtime? July
29/30,
2008.
PICTURES
OF LCS 1. Click
here for some excellent photographs. July
28,
2008.
LAY-OFFS
AT MARINETTE. Now that LCS 1 is actually sort-of ready for sea
trials, which start on Monday, Marinette Marine has been forced to lay off about
20% of its workforce, despite its ongoing INLS and RB(M) programs. Tough,
but that's what happens when you're a sub to the dreaded Lockheed Martin.
If it were not for LM's incompetence, this would have been an ongoing program by
now too. July
25,
2008.
ACB
GETS CONTRACT FOR ERECTION BOATS. Aluminum Chambered Boats,
Inc., (ACB), of Bellingham WA, has been awarded a $13-million contract for 42
bridge erection boats, for the Marines, to be delivered in less than a year.
Read the DefenseLink announcement
here. July
25,
2008.
AUSSIE
NAVY SINKS U.S. DESTROYER.
The Collins-class submarine, HMAS Waller, sank a Spruance-class destroyer
recently. Read the Australian Government's press release
here. Relax, it was part of SinkEx 2008.
July
25,
2008.
TANK
BARGE AND TANKER COLLIDE ON MISSISSIPPI.
The towboat "Mel Oliver", pushing a loaded ACL tank barge, collided with the
46,000-dwt chemical carrier "Tintomara" in New Orleans early this morning,
resulting in the spilling of about 10,000 barrels of No. 6 fuel oil from the
barge and the closing of the river. Read the Coast Guard's announcement
here.
Now it turns out that nobody on the towboat was
licensed. Mind you, the word on the river is that the officer in charge
completed all the steps necessary to get his license several months ago but the
paperwork is still hung up in the poor old Coast Guard's underfunded admin.
system. The only good news from this incident is
that there does not seem to have been any spill from the chemical carrier, which
was said to be loaded with about 15,000 tons of biodiesel and about 4,000 tons
of styrene. July
23,
2008, expanded July 25.
DEATH
OF DDG 1000 CONFIRMED.
It's official: the "Zumwalt"-class of DDGs will consist of only two ships.
SECNAV advised the BIW and NGSB congressional delegations yesterday. Read
the report in the Portland Press-Herald
here.
Thank goodness for that: the Navy actually made a smart decision for once.
How many billions of the taxpayers' money do you suppose they have managed to
piss away on DD-21, DD(X) and DDG-1000? And was anybody fired? July
23,
2008.
MORE
ON DDG 1000.
Excellent article in the Virginia Pilot. Read it
here. July
22,
2008.
DERECKTOR
CT FILES UNDER CHAPTER XI.
Derecktor Shipyards Connecticut has filed for bankruptcy protection under
Chapter XI. Read the report in the Connecticut Post
here. July
22,
2008.
HOUSE
HEARING ON JONES ACT REBUILDING.
The House Subcommittee on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation held a
hearing recently on the Jones Act rebuilding controversy. This issue is
very simple. Jones Act vessels must be rebuilt in U.S. shipyards.
Read the testimony
here. July 18,
2008.
HOUSE
HEARING ON ICEBREAKING.
The House Subcommittee on the Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation held a
hearing on Wednesday on our woefully inadequate icebreaking capabilities.
This issue is very simple. We need new polar icebreakers and we need them
now: get on with it. Read the testimony
here. July 18,
2008.
SECOND
WMSL LAUNCHED. In case
you hadn't heard, the second "National Security Cutter", the future USCGC "Waesche",
(WMSL 751), was launched last week. There was no press release from
Northrop Grumman, usually so quick to trumpet the most insignificant milestone.
No press release from the Coast Guard either, although it was reported on their
labyrinthine web site,
here. July 18,
2008.
TEXTRON
STILL IN BOAT BIZ.
Textron Marine & Land Systems has secured a contract with the Mexican Navy for
six 47-foot motorized lifeboats (MLBs). Its value is said to be $4 million
per boat: the first is to be delivered in 19 months, with the remainder to
follow at one-month intervals. (It takes them 19 months to build a 47-foot
lifeboat? Good grief!) Textron delivered the last of the 123 Coast
Guard MLBs in 2003 and followed it with three for Egypt in 2004, the same year
that it delivered its last LCAC, to the Japanese Defense Forces. The yard
has not built a new boat since then. July 18,
2008.
NAVY
DUMPS TWO EARLY PREPO SHIPS.
The first wave of prepositioning ships - the 13 T-AKs acquired by the Navy on
long-term charters in the early 1980s - are now coming to the end of their fifth
five-year terms and the Navy is faced with the choice of either exercising its
option to buy or returning them to their owners. Earlier this year,
Military Sealift Command, (MSC), returned the "PFC William B. Baugh" (T-AK 3001)
and the "PVT Franklin J. Phillips" (T-AK 3004) to their owners and those owners
have now sold the two ships to Maersk Line Limited, (MLL), who have renamed them
"Maersk Texas" and "Maersk Tennessee", respectively.
Read MLL's announcement
here. What MLL is
going to do with them is a mystery, as they no longer meet MSC's requirements
and they have
absolutely no commercial utility. The price was not revealed, but can
hardly be more than scrap value. Originally, the "Baugh" was the "Eleo
Maersk" and the "Phillips" was the "Evelyn Maersk": both were built by Odense in
1980 and converted to T-AKs by Bethlehem Steel. July 17,
2008.
SSNS
783 AND 784 NAMED.
The Navy has announced that the next two "Virginia"-class submarines, SSNs 783
and 784, will be named "Minnesota" and "North Dakota", respectively. Read the press release
here.
It's interesting to note that these names honor two states that have been
ignored by the Navy for a century: the preceding "Minnesota" was BB 22,
delivered by Newport News in 1907, and the preceding "North Dakota" was BB 29,
delivered by Quincy in 1910. July 17,
2008.
TOWBOAT
SINKS IN NEW ORLEANS.
The Coast Guard is restricting traffic on the Mississippi in New Orleans today
following the sinking of the towboat "Ruby E" off Westwego. Read the Coast
Guard's press release
here.
The 56-foot "Ruby E" was built in Krotz Springs in 1979, by Louis G. Ortiz Boat
Co., and is owned by Parish Towing. July 14,
2008.
ANOTHER
MASS MEETING IN MARINETTE.
If you are going to be needing a hotel room or a rental car in Northern
Wisconsin this week, forget it: there's another mass gathering of incompetent people
scheduled for
Marinette. This time, there will be even more of them than last time,
because this time it's not just all the people with some involvement in the LCS
1 program: there are gangs of Navy muckety-mucks going along to kibbitz.
Well, July in Wisconsin makes a pleasant break from July in Washington DC.
The latest developments include the cancellation of machinery trials -
apparently they think that all the necessary machinery trials can be completed
dockside. Clearly, they are desperate to get the ship out before it's iced
in, regardless of how incomplete it is. Then it will linger around Norfolk
for a couple of years, running up cost-plus expense, until all the deficiencies
are fixed, just like the first LPD 17, the "San Antonio". The Navy never
learns, does it? July 13,
2008.
FRC-B
AWARD DELAYED. The
Coast Guard is reported to have delayed award of the FRC-B contract until
September or October. Since they have already completed the technical
evaluation, what could be the problem? July
12, 2008.
DDG
1000 PROGRAM DEAD? Inside the Navy is reporting that the Navy
has given up on the insanely expensive DDG 1000 and will just build the two
ships it has already ordered, one from BIW and the other from Ingalls, although,
if they have really given up, why don't they bite the bullet and cancel them
too? The logical thing to do next, as has been obvious for ages, is to
build more DDG-51s. July
12, 2008.
WASHBURN
& DOUGHTY ON FIRE. The Washburn & Doughty shipyard in East
Boothbay, Maine, is on fire. See dramatic pictures at
WGME.com and read the report in the Portland
Press-Herald here.
None of the shipyard's 85 employees was hurt, but it looks as though the main
building is gone. The yard is currently building a series of tugs for
Moran Towing: see it from the air on Google
here.
This is a real tragedy. W&D is one of our best small shipyards.
Let's hope they are back in business soon. July
11, 2008.
MORE
PROBLEMS AT USS. US Shipping's share price hit the new low of
only $1.50 today and their Chief Accounting Officer quit. Not good.
How much longer can they carry on? July
8, 2008.
FAST
FERRY "FLYING CLOUD" SOLD.
The Woods Hole, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Steamship Authority has sold the
fast ferry "Flying Cloud" to a Venezuelan company for $3.9 million. Read the report in the
Cape Cod Times
here.
The boat was built in 2000 by Derecktor Shipyards, at a cost of $8 million, for
the Hyannis-Nantucket service, but proved to be nothing but trouble and had to
be re-engined in 2006. July
7, 2008.
PEO
SHIPS RELIEVED.
RADM Goddard, the PEO Ships, has been relieved of his duties, for personal
misconduct. Read the report in the Navy Times
here. July
4, 2008.
TIDEWATER
REPAIR FIRMS MERGE.
Two long-established ship repair firms in the Tidewater area of Virginia, Marine
Hydraulics International (MHI) and Tecnico, have agreed to merge, becoming
American Maritime Holdings. Read the report in the Virginia Pilot
here. July
3, 2008.
NEWPORT
NEWS UNION TAKEN OVER BY BRITS.
The United Steelworkers of America, (USW), which has 850,000 members, including
the production workforce at Newport News Shipbuilding, has merged with two of
Britain's biggest unions - the Transport & General Workers Union and Amicus,
which is itself the result of the recent mergers of all Britain's principal
engineering unions. The British unions have, together, over two million
members. Read the USW's
announcement here. July
3, 2008.
COAST
GUARD TUG IN COLLISION.
The 140-foot icebreaking tug "Morro Bay", (WTGB 106), with 18 people on board,
apparently rammed the 187-foot ferry "Block Island", with 257 people on board,
near Block Island, in Narragansett Bay, today. Read the Coast Guard's
announcement here
and the much more informative report in the Providence Journal
here. No one seems to have been hurt but this sounds like an
embarrassment for the Coast Guard. The "Morro Bay" was built
by Tacoma Boat in 1980 and is currently assigned as a training vessel at the
U.S. Coast Guard Academy. The "Block Island" was built by Eastern
Shipbuilding in 1997. July 2, 2008.
READ
IT AND BUY.
The IEA has just published its Medium-Term Oil Market Report. Read the
press release, which summarizes its findings,
here. Now buy stock in offshore drilling and exploration companies,
equipment manufacturers and offshore service providers, etc. If there's
one sector of the marine industry that's NOT going to turn down any time soon,
it's the offshore sector.
July 2, 2008.
MANITOWOC
BUYS LARGE NON-MARINE FIRM.
Manitowoc Corp. was high bidder yesterday in the auction of Enodis PLC, a
manufacturer of fast-food fryers, and will pay the equivalent of about $2.7
billion to close the deal. Read their press release
here. With Enodis, Manitowoc's annual revenues should approach $6
billion: this makes Manitowoc's Marine Group, with sales of around $300 million,
even more irrelevant to its core businesses and hence even more likely to
be spun off. I'll take it: anyone got a few bucks to lend me?
July 1, 2008.
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