10/21/2004
Port of Call
Last spring I ventured to the Far East including Singapore. I told you in my “Week in Review” columns of a boat trip out into the Strait of Malacca to get a better idea of the tanker traffic passing through this critical waterway and I also took a cable car over the Port of Singapore.
The port is by various accounts the world’s largest in terms of tonnage and normally it’s ranked #2 behind Hong Kong in container traffic. [Los Angeles – Long Beach is usually #3 in such rankings.]
When I was over there I saved a piece from a business newspaper, the Shipping Times, which had a schedule of the various destinations out of Singapore. Picture there are usually about 1,000 ships in port at any one time, representing 200 shipping lines and more than 600 ports in over 120 countries.
This is obviously a security nightmare these days and the United States and Singapore, working with Indonesia and Malaysia, are doing their best to buck up the system in the region. A large tanker sunk in the right spot in the narrow Strait, for example, could tie up the flow of oil for weeks, while Singapore officials have warned of “floating bombs” crashing into critical infrastructure such as oil refineries.
None of this is easy to pull off, mind you, and at least Singapore is as focused as any nation in the world on the threats it faces. It’s a good ally of the U.S.
That said I kept this shipping schedule for a reason. It’s quiz time! [Or rather, quiz your mate.] Picture trying to track the cargo from places like the following. [I’m leaving out more obvious destinations, with a few exceptions. Also, I double- checked some of these. In one or two cases I’m assuming the cargo goes upriver or by rail from the sea when you’re dealing with what appear to be landlocked countries.]
Abidjan (Cote D’Ivoire), Antofagasata (Chile), Apapa (Nigeria), Balingasag / Cagay (Philippines), Bandar Abbas (Iran), Banjarmasin (Indonesia), Batam (Indonesia I went here), Beira (Mozambique), Bintulu (Malaysia), Buenaventura (Colombia), Callao (Peru), Chah-Bahar (Iran), Chittagong (Bangladesh), Cochin (India worked here in 1985), Colombo (Sri Lanka), Concepcion Bay (Chile), Cotonou (Benin).
Da-Nang (Vietnam), Dalian (China), Daman (India), Damietta (Egypt), Damman (Saudi Arabia), Dampier (Australia), Dar Es Salaam (Tanzania), Douala (Cameroon), Felixstowe (U.K.), Fos- Sur-Mer (France), Guayaquil (Ecuador), Honiara (Solomon Islands), Inchon (South Korea), Itajai (Brazil), Jambi (Indonesia), Jebel Ali (United Arab Emirates).
Kaohsiung (Taiwan 2nd largest city), Karachi (Pakistan), Khorramshahr (Iran), Koh Sichang (Thailand), Kopervik (Norway), Kota Kinabalu (Malaysia), Kuala Belait (Brunei), La Spezia (Italy), Labuan (Malaysia), Lae (Papua New Guinea), Laem Chabang (Thailand), Latakia (Syria), Lautoka (Fiji), Libreville (Gabon), Lome (Togo), Luanda (Angola), Male (Maldives), Manaus (Brazil), Manzanillo (Panama), Matadi (Zaire), Mombasa (Kenya).
Napier (New Zealand), Nhava Sheva (India), Ningbo (China), Nouakchott (Mauritania), Noumea (New Caledonia), Odessa (Ukraine), Papeete (French Polynesia Tahiti), Paranagua (Brazil), Pasir Gudang (Malaysia), Piraeus (Greece), Pointe Noire (Congo yes, it has a port), Port Elizabeth (South Africa), Port Harcourt (Nigeria), Port Moresby (Papua New Guinea), Port Osim (Saudi Arabia), Pusan (South Korea).
Quinhon (Vietnam), Rio Grande (Argentina), Rotterdam (Netherlands just put this obvious one for the heck of it), Saipan (N. Mariana Islands famous WW II battle here toured it in the mid-90s), Salalah (Oman), Sampit (Indonesia), Savona (Italy), Semarang (Indonesia), Sharjah (UAE), Sokhna (Egypt), Sriracha (Thailand), Taichung (Taiwan), Takoradi (Ghana), Tanga (Tanzania), Tartous (Syria), Tema (Ghana), Tilbury (U.K.), Tincan (Nigeria hope the ship isn’t), Truk (Micronesia), Ulsan (North Korea), Valparaiso (Chile), Victoria (Cameroon), Yangon (Myanmar i.e., Rangoon / Burma), Yantian (China), Zeebrugge (Belgium).
If your child knows where 50% of these places are, get them to apply ‘early admission’ as soon as possible. And can you imagine spending weeks traveling on some of them? These aren’t exactly luxury liners.
Hott Spotts returns October 28.
Brian Trumbore
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