Suez Canal?

 Shipping Limitations!

We have a new problem developing with these new super sized container ships in that of weight, once three to four vessels were required to carry this amount of containers but no more?

The Suez canal is over crowded and despite being widened it is still not enough, with plans for another to be built, to make a two way lanes this option will improve safety and increase speed! 

With ships now only getting bigger, many of the current canals may not be able to take them. unless they are enlarged?

New designs for shipping will have to be produced, as well as better training for the crews to deal with navigation?

Warships. Part-One.

The need For!

Every nation that has a coast, even a lake border needs some kind of Navy. Armed vessels from little patrol boats to the ocean plying aircraft carriers or deep water submarines. 

The British Royal navy has been shrinking over the last seventy years from being a world power, 'Britannia Rules the Waves.'

Today the United States of America, the Russian Federation and the Republic of China, with France are the biggest navies of the world. Britain is part of N.A.T.O. (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) and is also a member of the European Union which is building its own joint forces programme.

EU Warships now patrol the Suez Canal in northern-Egypt, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, between war struck Yemen and Somalia. they are involved in protection oil and gas tankers travelling from the Persian Gulf to Europe. 

Meanwhile apart from local waters, some ships may be assigned from time to time to the Mediterranean to counter illegal seafaring immigration to southern-Europe.

Sail Ships. Part-One.

Knowing the basics.

Living by the sea one see's loads of yachts and boats, including the odd sail ship. Over the years I have missed quite a few of them either in Swansea Bay, and the Bristol Channel and many other parts of the UK and Ireland.

There are a few films on classic yachts and some of them may be original trawlers, since the trawler started life in this part of the world anyway. Sail ship deign is strange enough still improving, but it was in the early 19th Century, that the Clipper came to its fore. Ships like the 'Cutty Sark, which has now been restored and is at Greenwich in London by the River Thames.

She was built in Dumbarton Scotland in 1869, weighing 921 tons and was 212 feet long. Her hey day was in carrying tea from China to the Port of London in 100 days and at a speed of about average 16 knots. 

The basic sail layout of these ships had developed from one main sail and a few smaller one to the three-four mast tall riggers. Ships like the Cutty Sark ended their days in the wool industry from Australia and the introduction of steam power and the opening of the Suez canal in Egypt.