 On the St. Lawrence River |
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  Sailing from the icy St. Lawrence River to the warm Mediterranean Sea every four weeks as follows: Montreal, QC (Day 1), Gioia Tauro (12), Salerno (13) and Genoa (15), all in Italy; Marseille, Fos sur Mer terminal, France (16), Montreal (28). |
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Passengers: 5 DWT: 30,500 Containers: 2,017 Length: 202 m Speed: 19 knots Built: 1992 Owners/Managers: German/NSB Officers/Crew: German /Filipino |
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Accommodations & Fares: One deluxe twin-bedded suite, located on the 5th deck, with an aft view partially obstructed by the smokestack, consisting of a bedroom (bed size 2.00 x 1.00 m each), separate sitting room with TV/VCR and stereo and private facilities with shower, and a total area of 36 sqm - €90 pp double occupancy, €100 per day single occupancy. |
| One standard double-bed suite, located on the 5th deck, with aft and side unobstructed views, consisting of a bedroom (bed size 2.00 x 2.00 m), separate sitting room and private facilities with shower, and a total area of 30 sqm - €80 pp double occupancy, €90 per day single occupancy. |
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| Single suite, located on the 3rd deck, with unobstructed side views, consisting of a bedroom (bed size 2.00 x 1.20 m), separate sitting room and private facilities with shower, and a total area of 20 sqm - €85 per day. |
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Passengers: 5 Deadweight: 68,823 tons Containers: 5,618 Length: 278 m Speed: 27 knots Built: 1999/2001 Officers /Crew: German/Filipino Charterers: Hanjin, Korean Owners: NSB, German |
Crossing the line of coliding tides |
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Sailing every few weeks offering the following itineraries: Hanjin Ottawa, Seattle, WA (Day 1), Vancouver, BC (2), Yokohama, Japan (11), Hong Kong (15) and Yantian, China (17), Yokohama, 2nd call (20), Seattle (28). Hanjin Boston, Los Angeles, Long Beach terminal, (Day 1) and San Francisco, Oakland terminal, CA (4), Seattle, WA (6), Pusan, Korea (16), Yantian, China (19); Kaohsiung, Taiwan (20), Shanghai, China (22); Kwangyang, Korea (24) and Pusan, 2nd call (25), Los Angeles (35). |
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Two 30 sqm double bed suites (bed size 2.05 x 1.80 m), located on the 7th deck, front facing - €90 pp double, €105 per day single occupancy. One 18 sqm single cabin (bed size 2.05 x 1.25 m), located on the 6th deck, front facing - €85 per day. |
 
Double bed suite |
Canada Senator |
Passenger cabins and shared facilities, such as the dining room, lounges, exercise room and swimming pool are located on various decks. Passengers must be fully mobile and able to negotiate the stairs. Front views may be obstructed by the containers stowed on deck. |
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Self service laundry facilities are available. The electrical current is 220/50 AC. A two-prong round adapter and converter are needed for North American appliances. A steward will clean the cabin once a week, or more often if necessary. A small onboard shop provides a limited selection of beverages, cigarettes and toiletries at duty free prices. Onboard expenses may be paid for with cash in €/US$. Tipping is at the passenger’s discretion; $/€ 3-5 per person per day is recommended. Telephone, fax and email connections are available through the Captain’s office. The average port time is one day. |
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Reservations can be made by completing a Registration Form and providing a 25% deposit. The balance of the fare, plus an additional €255 for port and vessel fees, is payable 65 days before departure. The fare may be paid for by check or wire (by exception only, credit cards may be accepted) in either the basic tariff currency, as quoted by the steamship line, or $US at the prevailing exchange rate, subject to a final adjustment at the time the ticket is issued, a few weeks before departure. Passports must be valid for at least 6 months beyond the anticipated return date, and a visa for China must be obtained, depending on the citizenship and voyage. A Medical Statement of Good Health and International Health and Accident Insurance are required as is vaccination against yellow fever for voyages to the Far East. The age limit is 79. Cancellation fees are as follows: over 60 days, loss of deposit; 30-59 days, 50% of the fare. No refund will be made within 30 days of departure. To protect your investment, Cancellation and Interruption Insurance is highly recommended. Travelex Insurance packages, covering you from the moment you buy the policy - at no additional cost, are available to all our customers, worldwide, on our website page "Before You Sail". |
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Elisabeth Schulte about to leave Shanghai |
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“I’ve just seen a sign over the door, saying ‘Owner’s Cabin’. So I assume I’m in the actual owner’s cabin, being one of the privileged few. It’s certainly a big cabin, with two double beds on opposite sides of the room. Lots of wardrobes. A toilet with sink and shower, blue-and-white tiles, modern and immaculately clean. Magnolia-coloured walls, a brand-new dark-blue carpet, a green four-seat settee, plus two matching armchairs and a coffee table. Spacious writing desk with four electrical sockets, including sockets for AM/FM radio and TV. Strip lighting above. So the cabin, at least for my purposes, is perfect. There are two big, rectangular portholes, both with curtains and blinds, overlooking the loading decks where the metal containers are stacked high. The containers come in many different colours and right now they’re floodlit. A spectacular sight. |
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| The Chinese seaman who carried my luggage up here just came back and took me in to meet the ship’s captain, whose cabin is right next door to mine. The cabin was packed with men, some wearing civilian clothes, others in white seamen’s uniforms, and there were lots of passports and documents on the coffee table. Captain Singh was small, slim, middle-aged and good-humoured. ‘Good to have you aboard, Mr. Harbinson’ he said while shaking my hand, ‘I’ve already sailed with your son, Shaun. He was fun to sail with.’ He then took my passport - he has to show it to immigration and I’ll get it back tomorrow, once we’ve sailed. So thinking of Shaun’s promise of an endless supply of free liquid refreshment, I asked if I could obtain wine on the ship. ‘Absolutely’ he said. ‘We’ll talk about all that tomorrow, when I’ll tell you everything you need to know’ ... |
Shanghai |
We’re on the move. The boat left at eleven this morning. I slept right through the night, but woke up just after seven, when I showered and then went down to the Officers’ Mess on A Deck for breakfast. I have to confess, I was pretty nervous going down there knowing that I’m the only passenger on board and wondering what the protocol is; wondering if I can think of something to say to the Indian officers seated around the table. I’ve always had a fear of entering rooms filled with strangers. |
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In any event, I needn’t have worried, because the Mess was empty. I was the only one there, but the table was set for about ten people. The Indian chef and Chinese waiter, or Mess man, came out after a while and shook my hand. He introduced himself as Zhan. Thin as a rake, moon-faced, always smiling, wearing a formal white jacket and black trousers, just like a waiter in a proper restaurant. The Indian chef, Ravi, has the build of a wrestler with glistening brown eyes, a bushy black moustache and an iron jaw. Both were really friendly, shaking my hand and patting my shoulder in an affectionate manner. Though they had a few problems with their English, especially Zhan, Ravi asked me if there was anything I couldn’t eat. When I said I could eat anything, he seemed quite pleased. Then he asked me what I’d like for breakfast, so I ordered fried eggs and toast. Over breakfast I asked Zhan what time the various meals were. Breakfast, he informed me, is between 7.30 and 8.00 am, lunch between noon and 1.00 pm, dinner between 6.00 and 7.00 pm, though the crewmen come and go at all times, depending on what shift they’re working. Ravi informed me that I’d find coffee and snacks in the pantry and could help myself any time. Then Zhan, speaking an amusing Peter Sellers kind of Chinese-English, said, ‘You don’t have a coffee maker in your cabin?’ When I said that I hadn’t, he grinned broadly and said, ‘Ah, I forget that! I bling one up to you. I bling one today.’ So I’m going to have my own coffee percolator. After leaving the Mess, I walked all over the ship. At the moment, we’re pulling away from Shanghai, into the East China Sea. I can see the whole of Shanghai stretched out there. This is an exceptionally busy port. The number of boats is truly impressive. Everything from sampans to big tankers and container ships like this one. We’re weaving between the many other boats and ships as we make our way out to open sea. It’s a beautiful day. The sun is blazing in a brilliant blue sky with only a few white clouds, but the water is the same muddy-brown that I saw yesterday in Shanghai. It looks bluer farther out. The walkways around the various deck levels are either L-shaped, going half way around the accommodation block, or, as with the deck below my own, go around the front, bridging the starboard and port sides. Either way, I can’t walk very far. They’re pretty high up, about fifty or sixty feet above the main deck. For a really long walk, you have to go all the way down to the main deck, which is where all the big containers are stacked, one on top of the other, rising to what certainly looks like being higher than thirty feet. You can then walk the whole length of the ship from bow to stern, along one side and back along the other. There are 21 crewmen on board. I’m number twenty-two. I have been warned that when the ship’s at sea, I’ll often find it, or think it, virtually empty. And that’s exactly what I discovered when I walked around. I’ve been all over it now, going along those narrow walkways down on the main deck, all the way from bow to stern, and saw only a few Chinese seamen in bright-blue boiler suits, white helmets, working at various maintenance jobs. I don’t think they speak much English, but they gave me big grins and waved in greeting. We have been on the move for nearly two hours and the land is now well behind us. I’m at the bow of the ship, in the middle of the forward deck, with the wind beating at me. I’m looking at what should be empty sea by now, though there are three or four ships coming toward us. Otherwise ... Absolute silence. No sound of human activity. Sometimes you hear the water drumming distantly against the hull and you hear the wind. But you hear nothing else. Not a sound. It’s so quiet. I must be hallucinating! Surely this must be a ghost ship! |
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... I’m at the stern again, wondering where the crewmen are. There are only twenty-one, I know, but where the hell are they? What are they doing? They seem to have vanished completely. Probably having lunch ... Now I think I’d better take my courage in my hand and go down for lunch. Brave the Mess and the Indian officers. Always assuming that someone’s down there, of course, and that’s certainly not guaranteed. As Shaun said, the only thing guaranteed is that nothing is guaranteed. I’ve just been to lunch and discovered all my anxieties about meeting the officers were for nought, because, once again, there was nobody there except Zhan. Still, I had chicken curry, rice, popadums and fresh pineapple, all delicious. And Zhan managed to say that he was bringing my ‘coffee maker’ up to my cabin at three this afternoon, so I can make my own coffee whenever I feel like it. I still don’t know what’s happening with regard to the wine - I only had water with my lunch - but they do keep wine and other goodies in the storeroom. I know this because Zhan showed me a list of things that the seamen can buy - gin, cigarettes, chocolate, and so on - and all the prices were in American dollars. So I don’t think I’m going to get free wine, as Shaun thought. I’ll have to buy my own, although wine’s the one item I didn’t see on that list. To wine or not to wine? I ask myself. I’ll just have to wait and see ... I’ve just stepped out onto my own walkway, where I can stand at the railings and view the scenery. We’re well out to sea now, but there’s still a remarkable number of boats heading for Shanghai as we leave. The sun’s blazing and it’s now very hot. The sea is still muddy-brown. And behind me I can see no sign of land. I see boats, but no land at all. My great adventure, possibly my last, has begun. I’ve just come back from my first dinner in the Officers’ Mess. Captain Singh first took me up to the control room on the bridge, which was mostly in darkness, to let me see how everything’s done with computers and radar. There was only the second officer and a seaman up there. During the night, the captain told me, everyone stops working, except for the men working 4-hour shifts on the bridge, two at a time. So when the lights went off as I was walking around the deck, it was an indication that most of the crew had stopped working. In fact, for the most part, they work a normal day, from eight in the morning to five in the evening, then they pack up entirely. The only crewmen who work at night are the people doing shift work on the bridge, because everything else is computerized. Which explains why this huge ship only has a 21-man crew. Like flying a big jet plane, I guess. After the captain showed me all that he led me down to the Officers’ Mess for dinner and I had to walk in with him. God, this dread I have of opening doors and seeing people, strangers, sitting at tables! But there was only one other man there, the electrician as I recall ... He stood up to shake my hand, introducing himself only as Donald. Then we all sat down to dinner, a spicy, Indian-styled pizza with chips that I, being a common man, loved. Even better, the captain ordered up a bottle of red wine. Then another Indian officer, the chief engineer, Venkata Mopur, entered the Mess with his wife and their 3-year old son. So they do let women and children on board, but only the wives and children of officers. Venkata’s wife, whose name I didn’t quite catch, was wearing a white-and-silver salwar kameez, a typical Indian and Pakistani dress, while her son, extremely handsome with big, bold brown eyes, looked, in his starched white shirt, polka-dot bow-tie and shorts, like the child star of a Bollywood movie. More officers arrived a few minutes later and, initially, the conversation was awkward, with too many uneasy silences. I assumed this was because of the presence of the woman - and, perhaps, also the child - until, with hindsight, I realized that it might have been because of my novel presence. Eventually, however, when they started talking about Indian politics, the conversation became livelier. Later, when everyone had left, except me and Captain Singh, he told me that some of the officers had just boarded the ship, so they didn’t know the other officers, which also explained the initially strained conversation. It wasn’t, he assured me, just the presence of the woman and her child. However, he then added that although his own wife used to come with him on certain voyages, he basically didn’t approve of having women and children aboard, because the relative isolation isn’t good for the little ones ... |
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It’s morning in Hong Kong. A beautiful, sunny day. I’ve just left the ship and I have to somehow find my way out of this immense dock area. Right now I’m going towards what I believe is the Terminal Building. Once there, I’ll have to find my way to the train station and jot down the name of it to ensure that I’ll know where to get off when I come back. I was walking to what I assumed to be the Terminal Building when a Chinese man wearing some kind of official shirt came up to me and asked me where I was going. When I told him, he said that I should wait here for the shuttle van that would take me to the Terminal Building, and that I’d find the Metro station just outside it. The shuttle van did drop me off at the Terminal Building, but I ended up wandering around blindly trying to find the Metro station, until a Chinese youth pointed me in the right direction ... |
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I came out of the Metro station at Tsim Sha Tsui East, described in the Lonely Planet Website, which I printed out for free, as Hong Kong’s ‘tourist ghetto’. Just what I needed! It must be noted that most of the Chinese people in the Metro looked exactly like commuters in any other station at rush hour, namely, pretty miserable. The underground system is quite easy to understand, even for me. There’s a ticket machine with a computerised map of the whole system on it. Simply press your finger on the name of the station you want, the screen will tell you how much money you need to put in, then feed the required coins into the slot and your one-way ticket pops out ... And when you get to the end of your journey, you put the ticket in again and the machine simply swallows it. The one-way ticket cost me ten Hong Kong dollars, which is pretty cheap, really.
Tsim Sha Tsui East certainly looks like a tourist area. Endless billboards and signs, cars and buses bumper to bumper, cyclists and motorbike riders weaving in between them. Right now, I’m walking along the main street trying to get a good angle for a photograph. Then I’ll have stroll around the tourist area and maybe buy some sun protection cream as well as more film for the camera. Even this early in the morning, the pavements are packed.
I like Hong Kong. It has an almost palpable buzz. I think I could have some fun here ... I’m now walking along the unspeakably gaudy Nathan Road because I want to go to Eastern Boulevard, which apparently provides great views of Victoria Harbour. It’s unspeakably gaudy because of the countless billboards and posters. Of course, this road is packed with every conceivable kind of shop, as are the many side streets running off it, so I should be able to make my purchases here. I’ve walked down to the Eastern Boulevard. En route, I passed the Space Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, neither of which I went into, not having the time to spare. I didn’t really know where I was going, but my instincts told me where the Boulevard would be. I have such good instincts for the city. And, lo and behold, without even a map, I did indeed find the Boulevard, which runs along one side of the harbour and is a big tourist attraction. The harbour is pretty impressive. It’s filled with passenger ferries heading every which way, churning up white-capped waves. At the opposite side, on Hong Kong Island, are the skyscrapers of Victoria, the capital city. A lot of these skyscrapers have unusual structures - triangular and so on - with names like “Phillips” and “Toshiba” proudly displayed. I’ve always been partial to skyscraper landscapes and this one, I think, is made even more spectacular by the hills of volcanic rock soaring in the background, drenched in sunlight and reaching up to a radiant sky, forming Victoria Peak. It really is impressive. And I finally did get hold of a much needed map, however in a very unusual way. Once I came out of the Metro station I was approached by a very pretty oriental girl, probably in her late teens or early twenties, who was giving out advertising leaflets. She offered me one, but I didn’t take it. Then I walked up and down, went to the bank for some local currency and, as I was coming down the street heading for the Boulevard, there she was again at another street corner a good half mile away. She offered me a leaflet for the second time. I laughed and said ‘No, thanks,’ and continued on my way. So I get down here, a good distance away, and here she is standing on the Boulevard. And, of course, she once more offers me a leaflet. ‘I don’t believe this!’ I said. ‘Are you following me?’ She giggled and said. ‘No’, then added, ‘I have to walk all over the area handing out these leaflets and you just happened to be going to the same places. Here, please take one. Make my day.’ So I finally took a leaflet from her, which turned out to be a good thing, since the leaflet’s details included a useful black-and-white map of the whole Tsim Sha Tsui area, with the shop it was advertising - the Ascot Tailor Workshop on Granville Road, Kowloon, next door to the Kowloon Park Mosque - indicated by a pen-and-ink drawing of a silhouetted, dapper English gentleman in tails, holding a walking stick. So at last I have a map and, with a little luck, I can find my way back to the train station. I’m just going to the western tip of the Boulevard where, according to this little map, the Hong Kong Culture Centre and the Ferry Terminal are located. Once I’ve done that, I’ll circle back and explore that web of busy side streets off Nathan Road ... I’m now at the northern end of the Boulevard, where there’s a raised section that gives a good view of the harbour. The ferry’s port is located here as well. According to the signs, some of the ferries cross the harbour to Hong Kong Central, others to the Wanchai, wherever that is. And there’s also a big ship docked there. |
 Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong |
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I really like it here. It’s attractive and relaxing. The blue water of the harbour, the white wakes of the ferries, the banyan and palm and pine trees. And there’s a man-made pool as well as a clock tower, surrounded by tropical plants, flowers and eucalyptus trees. Yes, it’s all very nice, indeed ... And although it’s mostly for tourists, there certainly aren’t many around this early in the morning. Maybe it’s because they’re still in their warm hotel beds. I knew I liked Hong Kong - or that Hong Kong likes me. I stepped quickly into the first bookshop I saw and found two Shaun Clarke novels: Operation Millennium and The Opium Road. Shaun Clarke! That’s me, folks! The book readers of Hong Kong have such good taste. And right next door to the bookshop was a shop selling my suntan cream, so I picked up a tube of it. No microcassettes or film alas, but at least my tender nose is protected from the rising heat. Now I have to be making tracks ... Well, I’ve just returned to Lai King station, after another enjoyable trip on the Metro. I’m so quite pleased. I have to say that the stations are remarkably clean, well organized, and clearly geared to help the English-speaking foreigner. Even when you put your ticket in the gate a little sign says in English, ‘Please proceed.’ In that sense, despite the Chinese takeover, Hong Kong is still ‘Anglified’. Indeed, to the extent where even the woman on the public address system in the Metro trains, that ubiquitous voice telling you what the next stop is and what side to disembark from, speaks English. So Hong Kong is still pretty much an English, or strongly Anglified, city, at least in the sense that English is used everywhere. Anyway, here I am back where I can catch the shuttle service that will take me to the ship ...” |
Extracted with permission from W. A. Harbinson’s
All at Sea on the Ghost Ship,
available at $17.99 from
www.amazon.com or www.booksurge.com.
| We are most grateful for the support, including comments such as the following, which we have been receiving from our valued customers and club members as well as from the steamship lines and media over the years: |
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