Pasha is reactivating the Horizon Spirit to aid Puerto Rico hurricane relief efforts. Photo credit: Bill Abbott.
The Horizon Spirit will be loaded at Long Beach and will transit the Panama Canal en route to Puerto Rico by the end of October. The vessel will be available for additional Puerto Rico relief service afterward, Pasha said.
Delta Lines used to build ships with that “Starship Enterprise” bridge look too. Merchant ships had a brief period in time where builders tried to make something aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Hell, even ships built in the 80’s had accommodations rivaling a posh hotel. Not so much anymore.
Is is an old Waterman LASH ship, converted to containers.
I was 2nd mate there some time ago.
Year 1980
Original Name Benjamin Harrison
Original Owner Waterman Line
Shipbuilder Avondale
Hull # 2307
O.N. 624457
MA hull # 336
MA Design C9-S-81f
GT 30,500
DWT 41,500
Price ($mm) 70
Notes Sea-Land Spirit 1990, CSX Spirit 2000, Horizon Spirit 2003, Spirit 2015
Isn’t this the sister ship to Horizon Reliance? Which is active and I see her every month. Beautiful ships. Got to love the open top lifeboats, but god damn, there is nothing that I wish more right now than to just do one hitch on one of them before they’re gone forever.
Yeah, I’m the same way when I see a ship like that… Back when I was working tankers, I would see some of the old mid-house tankers in mothball fleets and feel that same way for them too (and yes, I know they were stupid dangerous with that setup).
I really hate you, but this is the one contribution to the forum where I have to thank you. I love that ship and I only see her out there, never been on it.
If it’s the ships I’m thinking of they are not fond memories. Top fired boilers, spent some weeks with achy arms from using a bricko gun overhead to beat the superplastic in place around the burner throats. We also had to hand mix all of the castable refractory with a shovel and pan inside the firebox.
I was told that the LASH was designed to connect the U.S. river system to Europe river system. Barges would be used in the rivers, loaded, then hauled across by ship and discharged for use on the other river system.
I don’t think it caught on like they hoped. They were used U.S. to India.
The military liked them for a time for ready reserve, there were a couple in Diego Garcia for a while.
The two converted to container are still around. I think I saw one in Tacoma.
I did a C/M relief on one in DGAR for a few days so that’s where I was told by the crew about the use of barges.
The APL version (C8s Hoover, Tyler, Grant were identical in appearance (but not sure of the plant) and were great ships. We ran them on a 35 day Far East run out of Seattle. It was one of the best runs going.
PHTL’s ships are a mix of AMO and MEBA/MMP. The Marjorie C and Jean Anne are AMO, the Spirit, Reliance, Enterprise and Pacific are MEBA/MMP. Pretty sure all of the unlicensed are SIU but not positive. It’s not certain which union the two newbuilds are going to be crewed by.
One of the last must have been the Atlantic Forest. On one of the last trips they had a serious E/R fire. No one hurt as far as I know but I’m not sure. It was called the “Forest Fire”.
I’ve had a few engineers from the Forest, nothing shook those guys. No matter what the situation they’d seen far worse on the Forest.