Port of registration

[Derek Warner]

Early on Saturday Morning KIWI time 24 July 2004 7:42 AM, Tony Mattson
wrote :


Or am I wrong in thinking that tugs were registered for, and
displayed the names of, ports they worked in? Is the registration
actually where the tug was built?

Hi Tony - I am sure that all British registered vessels which included
Australian & New Zealand vessels until perhaps the mid 1960s had the
vessel
registration displayed as the same as registered Office of the Company
that
owned the vessel - so if Seaham bore the registration of Sunderland I
suggest the owners had their head office registered in Sunderland

Oh & thanks for you comment about using known measurement references
for comparison & the reason I nominated a 375 ml empty beer can is that
in
Europe & other parts of the world smaller beer cans of 330 ml exist & we
would
not like to get our comparison dimensions mixed up would we!

Last but not least - I think that famous time meridian is spelt as in
green & wich
but joined as one word with a capital G - Derek

[Derek Warner]

PD's - just going backwards on previous comments

First 100,000 tonne bulk carrier vessel was built in Kobe Japan in 1966
Vessel name as built was "Chelsea Bridge"
Owners Ropner Shipping Company
Darlington [London] UK -

On completion she was chartered to & first sailed as "Sig Silver" -
port of registry - London

In 1968, the Australian BHP took over the charter of the vessel & she
was renamed Iron Sirius, but maintained
the port of registry as London & naturally her stern was emblazoned with
IRON SIRIUS - LONDON

Derek

[Stuart Badger]

Tony

Hope I can throw some light on the Port of Registry question you posed about
Reliant/Old Trafford.

Now, I may be wrong so don't quote me as they say! It is my belief that the
'port of registry' can depend on many things apart from where the ship was
built or operated from.

In many instances the ship was registered at the port of manufacture. This
usually happened when for some reason the shipyard had the ship on their
books for a while after completion, perhaps because the original orderee had
gone bust or in the case of a vessel going abroad due to political
instability etc. Many vessels kept this original port of manufacture
registry when they were sold on.

Some registrations were taken for commercial expediency. A tug insured at
Lloyds operating say in the Thames estuary would carry a far lower insurance
premium than one operating in a more dangerous area .

Old Trafford was originally registered at Manchester - not a Port! - but at
the end of the ship canal. Manchester is, I believe the only city allowed to
register ships that is not a bona fide 'Port'. I don't know when her
registry was changed to Newcastle but I am pretty sure she was never
registered officially at Seaham.

Hope this helps

Stuart Badger

[Tony Mattson]

Grateful thanks Stuart, Paul, Michael and Derek for your helpfulness
on this subject.

I'm busy beavering away on 'Reliant" as our club's annual static
competitions loom ever closer. She'll be going into the unfinished
mercantile class at this stage (lots of detailing to complete on the
decks) but I did want to complete the name on bow and stern and have
life-rings in progress as well - to be able to show elements of the
finished detail.

When I saw the 1964 photo of PT Seaham that I mentioned last week and
noticed that the port of reg. was Sunderland, my plans went into a
temporary tail spin. Hence the sudden urgency to get the port of
registration correct.

BTW well spotted Derek - Greenwich - tks mate. Good to see that your
sharp perception is unclouded by emptying all those 375ml dimensional
references! :-)

Cheers for now
Tony
Auckland, NZ