Ships That Pass

This morning fellow blipper Grapefruits1100 published a photograph of Latchford Locks on the Manchester Ship Canal. I commented that I had never seen any large vessels going through the locks and he replied that there was a ship due to go through in 15 minutes time. As the locks are only about 5 minutes from here I hopped on my bike and headed over there.

Sure enough as I looked towards the west I could see in the distance a ship approaching. As it got nearer the swing bridge opened to allow it through. There seemed to be a problem with one of the lock gates and an engineer disappeared down a manhole, poked around a bit and hey presto the gate started to open

The ship Arklow Field slipped into the lock, tied up and then started to rise the 14 feet height of the lock. In the distance, from the other direction, another vessel could be seen approaching having just come under the Thelwall viaduct which carries the M6 motorway over the Ship Canal at this point.

It was a sister ship of Arklow Field, this one named Arklow Freedom. Aklow Freedom pulled over to the right in front of the locks, where there are mooring berths, to allow Arklow Field to exit the lock and continue her journey towards Manchester. Then Arklow Freedom backed up slightly and headed into the recently vacated lock.

Apart from the little hitch with the gate it was a very smooth operation.

Thanks to Grapefruit1100 for the heads up.

You can see the whole process here. I shot some in black and white and some in colour.