Exhaling The Past

There are times when you have to travel very far to find your way back to where you started.  As we race towards the future, we often have to reflect back on what brought us to this point. I came face to face with that past earlier today and in an unexpected place. 

It would certainly be easy enough to miss - essentially floating on the wall; mounted behind a sheet of clear plastic - a bit yellowed and looking as if it had been handled regularly in its day.  It hangs on the wall of the office of the manager of Seatrade Peru/AnkaSea in a busy neighborhood in Lima, Peru. 

Where it is or more exactly how it got here, likely has a somewhat logical explanation. There is a connection between this document and Seatrade and consequently, between Seatrade and the representative office in Lima.  My guess is that it was given as a gift to the local office, when it opened some 5-6 years ago. 

What it is exactly is a technical drawing of a ship's plan. This particular drawing is of the m/v Honolulu. A reefer ship built around 1979 by Dammers & van der Heide as one of the Honolulu-class vessels (together with sisters Christina, Lanai and Rio Frio), these ladies were first built for employment in Dole's vessel fleet. At the time, they were the state-of-the-art in design and carriage of bananas. By 1984-85, sisters Peggy Dow and Tineke joined the family. By 1989, Dammers was purchased by Seatrade and the fleet and staff joined the Seatrade family. 

For me personally, the connection is linked to the later of the Honolulu sisters. The ladies, mv Peggy Dow and mv Tineke were annual visitors to Tampa, Florida in the late 80's when Florida was exporting enough fresh grapefruit to Japan to actually have multiple, weekly vessel calls out of both Tampa and Port Canaveral through the November/May season. At the peak, easily 10 million cartons of fruit loaded from these ports to expectant receivers in Kanto and Kansai. My first taste of reefer shipping started as a employee for the Tampa terminal (Harborside Refrigerated Services). Believe it or not, we (well, not me personally) used to load upwards of 300,000 4/5 bushel cartons box-by-box hand-stowed by ILA union labor - sorting the cargo meticulously by brand, color and fruit size.  The Japanese preferred hand-stowage of the cargo, as they could achieve better intake on the vessels and reduce their shipping costs.  

The mv Peggy Dow held the record for single largest loading, with something on the order of 324,000 cartons loaded (the equivalent of about 5100 pallets) on one of her voyages. It was such a momentous occasion that Harborside's management commissioned a very large sign commemorating the event and posting it proudly on the vessel-facing side of the building so that every other vessel calling the terminal and all the clients who visited would be reminded of the feat.  

In addition to the conventional reefer vessels that called upon the terminal, we had the pleasure of multiple annual calls by the mv Sunbelt Dixie. The Sunbelt was a sight to be seen. A car carrier built to carry Toyotas from Japan to the USA, but one with a unique twist. The owners recognized the demand for reefer ships to service Japan and had the vessel designed with a number of refrigerated decks. Because she was operated by side elevators, she was the only palletized service to Japan in those days - making for a very efficient two-way trade. This was before the days of minivans and SUVs, when Japanese cars were designed to be small and fuel efficient  That meant low deck heights, which meant any longshoreman over 6' tall would have to walk with head stooped while working on the vessel. 

Invariably, the Sunbelt would show up at Christmas and we would have to hustle to get her out in two days and allow her to maintain her exceptionally tight schedule. Her height cast a formidable shadow over the entire terminal and her calls would always draw crowds. Hitching a ride on one of the elevators was always a special treat.

Much has changed in the past 30 odd years. These ships have long since retired to the beaches - as did Harborside. The Florida grapefruit crop is certainly not as big as it used to be, facing daunting challenges with disease and changing consumer preference and global competiton. Many of the companies who shipped on those "charter" programs in the 70's and 80's - companies like Dole, Chiquita, DNE and Seald-Sweet - have either divested themselves of their citrus holdings in Florida or dived head-first into the international marketplace by establishing off-shore supply of citrus year-round and in the process evolved from simple packing and sales operations to global trading companies - and in recent years becoming parts of even larger global entities.

And so today, I find myself in Peru vividly remembering the past, while fervently chasing the future. A future that has already arrived in the guise of the new Seatrade colour class vessels and the start of the Meridian Service. The mv Seatrade Blue - today's state-of-the-art in reefer cargo transport - departed New Zealand not much more than a week ago and will arrive into Peru next week. From Peru, she continues on the Gloucester (Philadelphia) eight days later - and so we begin the next chapter.  Interestingly, some of those same companies who used to load Florida citrus on reefer ships to Japan are today importing citrus from Peru. The world continues to get smaller.