The Mersey’s proud pathfinders

Jun 29 2008 by Peter Elson, Liverpool Daily Post

Peter Elson speaks to the river pilots

WHEN he brought one of the world’s biggest cruise liners, the 109,000 tonne Grand Princess, into the Mersey earlier this summer, Liverpool senior pilot Stuart Wood called it “a piece of cake”.

Guiding the tall ships into Liverpool, however, will be a different kind of food for thought altogether, as Stuart well knows, having entered the service in 1961.

Unlike Princess Cruises’ luxury megaliner, with her enormously powerful engines and mechanical thrusters to turn her round in her own length, unsurprisingly the tall ships handle like the vessels from an entirely different era.

“Many of these tall ships are some 50 to 100 years old and were built in days when there was no mechanical power,” says Stuart.

“This poses two problems: The sailing ship's hull design is generally sublime, enabling it to pass through the water with just the slightest breeze.

“This means that they are, of course, easily driven with as little sail as possible. But to make them easier to handle in docks and restricted areas, the owners have retro-installed engines.

“These are usually under-powered as they have to fit into a hull not designed to accommodate them. It also means that the propellers and rudder spoil the underwater flow-lines.

“There is a lot more of a tall ship out of the water than in it. They are also quite fragile, through age, the use they were originally required for and the building methods of their day.

“Modern tall ships are still lightly-built, but these days the level of crew competence is higher than the usual requirements, as they have to go through such stringent safety hoops to qualify.

“As long as we all know what the limitations of these ships are, there will be few problems.”

Without the co-operation of the Liverpool Pilot Service, the city’s involvement in the Tall Ships’ Race could not happen.

The pilot service has invested £50,000 in the event to ensure that all the participants will be safely guided in and out of port on their Mersey visit.

Each of the 50 working Liverpool pilots and a further 15 recently retired pilots will be on duty rotas for the four days that the tall ships are in Liverpool.

“All through this very busy period of extra traffic, none of our commercial commitments to the Port of Liverpool will be compromised,” says Stuart.

The pilots also have to deal with the July 21 Parade of Sail, when the entire fleet sails in line up and down the river.

It is likely many ships will arrive ahead of the official dates of July 18 - 21, but Stuart adds: “They'll probably take us by surprise and all suddenly arrive together at the last minute!”