History: Lightship (1950)

Many people wonder how ships made it across entire oceans without getting lost in the seventeenth century. Aaron introduces seventeenth century navigation to us today by beginning with piloting.

Look at Life - City of Sailors - Portsmouth - 1965
Portsmouth is no longer the sea-faring city it once was; this film from the Documentary Series "Look At Life" Volume 5 - Cultural Heritage in 1965 looks at its changing face.

Let us start a journey back in time. Back to the black and white films of history. The times have changed, but it is good to know what kind of things have changed and where are the roots of pilotage.

Since 2019, the German Federal Pilotage Chamber (Bundeslotsenkammer, BLK), in cooperation with Hamburg Port Services GmbH (HPS), has been offering a three-day safety training course specifically designed for maritime pilots and pilot boat crews at a training center in Bremerhaven, Germany.

According to many training experts, including Malcom Gladwell, from his book Outliers: Story of Success, 10.000 hours is the point in which a standard professional acquires the qualities necessary to perform any work with master skill.

Southampton, Hampshire. L/S of the ships and boats in a busy harbour. C/U shot of a nice looking old ship. Camera pans to a couple of little ships - tugs. M/S of one of the tugs "Flying Kestrel" with its Captain Collingwood observing. M/S of "Queen Elizabeth" - the largest passenger liner in the world. "Seven tugs go into action when "Queen Elizabeth" leaves Southampton" - tells a voiceover. M/S of Captain Collingwood giving instructions on the bridge of "Flying Kestrel". M/S of the tug...

The last month Jan Tiedemann from Alphaliner (BRS) in Hamburg has reported, that DNV GL has awarded Hudong Zhonghua Shipbuilding (group) Co., Ltd. an approval in principle for the design of an LNG-powered 25,000 TEU container vessel. Based upon the reported vessel dimensions, he reckons that the ship could actually have a capacity closer to 26,000 TEU.

Tug power has increased considerably over recent decades. Today, some ship handling tugs have a bollard pull of more than 100 tons. In addition, high tug power can be installed in ever smaller compact hulls.

Safehaven Marine build a range of vessels for many different operational roles such as patrol, survey, crew transfer to name a few, but what makes Safehaven unique is that we specialize in pilot boats, with 80% of our production dedicated to just this area, and have supplied over 50 pilot craft all around the world over the last 17 years.