Rotary

RETIRED sea captain, and club member Lind-say Fletcher, at this week’s meeting, spoke of his career and the evolution of container ships which were developed in 1956 from converted tankers. Lindsay spent 44 years at sea, the last 20 in command of container ships which now rival tankers for size. He experienced an attack by pirates, a collision in the Mississippi, arrested in Japan for a harbour oil spill, engine room fires, medical evacuation from the Pitcairn islands and rescuing sailors from sinking ships. Sea-faring, rather than mining is the most dangerous occupation with burns the most common injury.An American, Malcom McLean in 1956, bought two Second World War tankers which he converted to carry containers on and under deck. In April of that year, one of the ships — the SS Ideal-X — was loaded and sailed from Newark, New Jersey to Houston, Texas carrying 58 35- foot containers along with liquid tank cargo — containerisation was born !Since then there have been seven generations of container ships, usually with a seven year gap between development. Maersk Line with whom Lindsay finished his career, have been a major force in container ship design. The increase in size has been to meet a 10 per cent per annum growth demand driven mainly by the far East trade — the more containers a ship can carry the lower the slot cost. Container ship capacity is measured in 20-foot equivalent units or TEU. Nominal capacity is the maximum number of container slots on the ship, generally only 80 per cent can be used by loaded containers. The SS Ideal-X was 800 teu, the next generation, started in 1970, was up to 2,900 teu with the containers fitting into cells below deck and four to five high above deck secured by wires and rods. The next generation ships, up to 4,000 teu with beam size of 32.3m, were the first to reach the maximum width for transiting the Panama canal. Larger ships labelled Post Panamax class and New Panamax class are up to 15,000 teu and 49 mtrs wide are too large to use the canal and will have to wait until the larger locks are com-pleted by 2016.In January, MSC took delivery of MSC Oscar — capacity 19,224 teu — to become the worlds’s largest with even bigger vessels being planned. Other limiting factors could be the Singapore Strait, a relatively shallow channel that all vessels transit from Europe to the Far East and the number of ports these giants can enter. The only UK ports available are Felixstowe, Southampton and the recently-constructed Thames Gateway.Club president John Harries thanked Lindsay for a fascinating talk which showed the scale of the industry and the evolution of the vessels which carry a large proportion of the world’s goods.

Parkinsons UK

THE CHAIRMAN welcomed everybody to the monthly meeting at the rugby club of the Aberystwyth Parkinson group, and he welcomed Dawn McGuinness from Llandudno who was visiting.He presented to our treasurer Liz Nicol, proceeds of a raffle from Philippa Davies, Llangeitho who was to hold a sheepdog trials which was cancelled because of illness to the sheep.The trip last Wednesday to Abbey Cwm Hir was a great success and everybody enjoyed it, and the dinner at the village hall was excellent.Final details of the Christmas dinner were discussed and the names and menu of members was completed, the bus to leave the rugby club at 11.30am. Members were reminded of the panto on 9 January, to see Beauty and the Beast at the mati-nee at 2.30pm. The programme for 2016 was completed and given to the secretary to produce the member-ship cards.The speaker for the afternoon was Iestyn Hughes of Bow Street who works as a producer at Caernarfon. He was in Paris on 13 November — him and his wife went for food while Siriol, his son, went to the football match where the bombs started. Iestyn showed slides of different places, and angles of taking the photos. He kept the group interested with a varied selection of south Ceredigion and Cardigan Bay, photographs because of his skill with the cam-era, he’s been fortumnatre with his work. Pat Davies thanked Iestyn for a very interest-ing selection of photographs. The next meeting is the Christmas dinner at Llanina Arms, and the next meeting at the rugby club will be on 23 January 23, when Pat Davies, one of the group’s own members will talk and show slides of Borneo where he has a family member living. The meting closed with tea and mince pies.

St Mair’s Church

ST MAIR’S church (above) will be open during the days leading up to Christmas for anybody who would like to come to pray, meditate, see the church’s Christmas tree, or just to have a quiet moment to rest their feet after shopping in town. All are most welcome. The church is a fine 150-year-old example of the work of the renowned 19th century archi-tect, William Butterworth — well worth a visit. The church will be open between 5pm and 7pm on 21, 23 and 24 December. Welcome to all visitors and pilgrims to come and go as they please. St Mair’s church is in Grey’s Inn Road, off Bridge St, or up from the Central chip shop.