Tag Archives: container

Container Ships Arriving in the Bay Area

Another selection of old images from a trip to Alcatraz with the family before we actually moved to the Bay Area. We were on the ferry coming back from the island and there were some large container ships entering the bay heading, presumably, to Oakland to offload. The Bay Area got some sizable container ships having the capability to handle the largest of the ships in use. These were not that large, but they were still chunky beasts. Seeing them from the water helps you to appreciate their size a little more.

Container Crane in the Mist

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As I was looking out over the water from Fort Casey, there was a lot of haze which was obscuring some of the more distant sights. Through this, I could just make out a container crane. I couldn’t see lots of them so I wasn’t sure it was a major port. Instead, it seemed like it was a lone crane. I’m not sure what it could be but I liked the slightly mysterious nature of it.

Arriving Container Ship

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Nancy and I were walking along the shore in Stanley Park in Vancouver during our visit over the Thanksgiving weekend. As we got closer to the lighthouse, I saw the prow of a ship start to come into view. A quick switch to video and I recorded the arrival of a container ship to the harbor. Large vessels like that coming through a narrow entrance to a harbor look cool to me. Once the harbor opens out a bit, it is just another large ship in open water so the scale is lost. In that phase when it comes into view, though, it looks as substantial as it really is. Get close and you are left in no doubt about these ships.

Container Terminal Evening

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Evening light can make many things look better than they do in the middle of the day. The warm evening light just makes things look better with the warm color and the softer shadows. In those conditions, even a container terminal looks interesting. From the roof of the hotel we were staying in downtown last year, we got a good view across Elliott Bay towards the terminal.

Container Ships

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I was in Alameda recently and, as I started to head back towards Oakland, I came along the channel that separates Alameda from the container port. One of the large container ships was just making its way out of the port with some tugs in support. As a kid, I grew up by the sea and used to watch the container ships coming out of Southampton. Those ships looked huge at the time. Now, they are lightweights in comparison to the modern ships. The one I saw on this day was not big compared to the very latest mega ships but it was still pretty substantial. While it had plenty of containers onboard, I am guessing that a lot of them were empty as she was riding quite high in the water. Even so, it was still cool to appreciate just how big these things are.

Later, while we were up on the Marin headlands, I saw another ship making its way in under the Golden Gate Bridge. That was another comparison of sizes in which the ship suddenly looks rather insignificant compared to the bridge!