TUGS & SALVAGE

Towlines

17 years ago

Fairmount Expedition and Fairmount Glacier, two modern deepsea tugs from the fleet of Fairmount Marine, have been chartered by the French Government and dispatched to Brazil to participate in the search for the ‘ black box’ flight recorder from the French airliner lost recently over the Atlantic Ocean.

Immediately on arrival in Brazil search equipment and specialist personnel were taken on board. The sister vessels each have a large aft deck suitable for the search equipment, supplied by Phoenix International, and ample accommodation to house search specialists from Phoenix and the French and US Navies.

One of Europe’s unique double ended tugs, the seagoing Eerland 26 from Smit Transport Europe, has been offered for sale. Originally built in Germany in 1967 as the Janus for Ulrich Harms, the tug passed into Dutch hands in 1977 and has been modernised and re-engined several times. Eerland 26 is 24.25m in length, with a beam 8.52m and has Mitsubishi engines, Schottel drives and a bollard pull of 20 tons. The tug will shortly be replaced by one of the new DMPT 2500s currently under construction by Damen Shipyards.

Harms Bergung Transport & Heavylift Gmbh & Co. KG of Hamburg has added a seventh anchor handling tug to their growing fleet. Named Centaurus, the 8,078 horsepower, 100 tons bollard pull vessel follows sister ship Pegasus into service on the spot market. The entire fleet of vessels, with tugs of between 100 and 209 tons bollard pull, has been built at the Mützelfeldtwerft yard in Cuxhaven, Germany, on behalf of MAN Ferrostaal AG of Essen. Pegasus was completed in April of this year, Centaurus in June and two further tugs of a new 24,500 bhp, 280 tons bollard pull class, Uranus and Orcus, will enter service in August and September respectively.

It is with great sadness that we must report that Captain Fraser Forbes, General Manager of JP Knight (Caledonian) Ltd, passed away on 2 July after a short illness, at just 60 years of age. Fraser served with J P Knight in the early 1970s, rapidly rising to tugmaster. He left J P Knight to pursue a career in Oil Spill Prevention, first with Salvesen and later with Briggs Marine, and was involved in some high profile pollution incidents including ‘Sea Empress’ at Milford Haven. Capt Forbes returned to J P Knight 10 years ago as General Manager and has been heavily involved in the conversion of the Japanese tugs to comply UK Flag and class regulations.