A Fresh Ship in the Near Silent 5am Snows

5:30 am and out of the house a few minutes earlier than normal for a new ship, or at least new to me! FWN Atlantide arriving with roughly 8,000 tons of Quartz bags, which she unloaded at the Port Terminal. The ship itself has been here before, under the name Stade in 2016, now freshly renamed and rebranded along with her entire company after several mergers and expansion efforts in 2024, joining together under the name Forest Wave. The company now operates 36 vessels, interestingly many of which have forward pilothouses and look quite a bit like John D Leitch, except with cranes instead of an unloading boom. She received her new colors this summer, a black hull with a bright green deck, cranes and accents which is very unique. Those bright green cranes towering over the port as she unloaded certainly stood out, especially against the near solid white background. She was one of two ships in the new fleet to come into the Lakes this week, the other being FWN Sky. None of the other vessels in her fleet are familiar, so maybe this is the start of something! Fingers crossed!

The 477ft saltie was built in 2011, a small multi-purpose vessel capable of carrying a wide variety of cargoes to just about any port on the planet, granted in relatively small quantities. With a capacity of just 8,000 tons, she is far smaller than most ships we see here. Much of her history is unknown, as her previous name “Stade” is also the name of a German port town, so trying to look her up gives a mess of answers. She has however made some news since her name change, in January of this year she collided with a set of already damaged locks in Germany’s Kiel Canal. From records shown the investigation of the incident was brief and the ship quickly released within hours, indicating the issue wasn’t the ship’s fault.

Hopefully we see her again, and maybe some of her sisters as well! Forward pilothouse salites becoming regular visitors would be a dream, hopefully it can happen!

Hope you all enjoy!