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15_the_circle) wrote2010-08-19 11:37 pm
black ship
[OT from cottage renovations]
more than 150 years ago Commodore Matthew Perry's black ships went to Japan to secure trading rights for the US, an event commemorated by Shimoda's annual Kurofune Festival.
more than 400 years before that, the last of the Ming Dynasty's great treasure fleets sailed the Pacific and Indian oceans under the command of the legendary Admiral Cheng Ho.
nowadays the Yang Ming Line's black ship YM North is on the north Pacific run, laden with a treasure consisting of mass produced consumer goods serving a market whose trade balance now runs the other way. it is just one of many whose comings and goings may seem unremarkable to many and at 3,860 TEU it is not even in its owner's first or second tier by size. this may not matter in the current shipping market: though inbound it is clearly less than fully laden.
(click through this thumbnail for higher resolution image)
even so it made quite a sight from the deck of the Alameda ferry, seen under the Bay Bridge as it began the turn to round Yerba Buena Island on approach to the Port of Oakland's container terminal.
on arrival the containers of many colours will be lifted off, yarded, drayed and hauled to their market destinations, many of them by rail.
even out on the water one never is far from the railroad.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2010-10-11 11:54 pm (UTC)(link)