NO MORE BACO-LINERS

[Phil English]

After the scrapping of BACO-LINER 3 last year, BACO-LINER 1 and BACO-LINER 2 have now also been sold for demolition basis delivery India at arnd $451/LDT en-bloc - plus 80 barges of 120 t each at arnd $404/LDT each.

It essentially marks the end of a ship type that never really took off - barge carriers.

Brgds
Phil

[Julian]

Bad news...according to the Baco Liner schedule both vessels were planned for the shipyard...
http://www.baco-liner.de/sailings/sail.html

Is there any information if they will be replaced with new vessels?

[Tuomas Romu]

I was wondering if there are any barge carriers left in commercial service, but at least the category here in ShipSpotting.com seems to have some recent photographs of e.g. Eide Trader in Europe and some smaller Chinese barge carriers.

Still, a disappearing breed. US Military Sealift Command also maintains two or three SEABEE carriers in reserve status. Of the four SEABEE ships built in Vuosaari shipyard (Helsinki, Finland), two bigger ones (including Yulius Fuchik from the book "Red Storm Rising" by Tom Clancy) were scrapped a decade ago and two smaller ones have been converted into a pipelaying vessel and a floating power plant. The nuclear-powered LASH carrier Sevmorput is also facing decommissioning and demolition.

[Mohammed Alhassan]

 I had a dream of working on one of these ships that always come to Lagos port every month. Long blue ships with travelling Crane and always anchored midstream.  Baco-Liner boldly written on the hull. Is it true the owner was ones a Bosun ?

[samson46]

The ships were 34 qnd 33 years old respectively. They had a good life even though for many years they operated an obsolete system.