Mentioning a proposed Solent Sulk in my reply to Bob in another thread, I was reminded of something that has come up again today.
Southampton, presumably as a port and as a city, are throwing their toys out of the pram yet again over the attempt by the city of Liverpool to commence a cruise ship business.
At the moment, Liverpool takes cruise ships as passing trade; passengers get off, explore the city and get back on. A bit like being a Caribbean island but with cold weather.
The current passenger facilities were refurbished with a grant from the EU with this strict condition that they could not use the terminal as a cruise terminal, starting and ending cruises in Liverpool. This was due to some serious lobbying from Southampton, crying that all the cruise ship business in the world belongs to them so all you others get out! Well, something like that.
Liverpool have decided to lobby the government to get the terms changed to allow more cruise ship business and this has got Southampton in a major sulk. Crying, moaning etc.
Just to make things worse, the sworn enemy of Southampton, Portsmouth, has joined in the argument, supporting Liverpool.
What a surprise! Recently Southampton managed to persuade the Channel Islands traffic by Huelin Renouf to move operations from Portsmouth to Southampton. Then they tried to get all the reefer trade from Portsmouth to switch to Southampton too. This went wrong when Dole recently signed a new agreement for a long term commitment to Portsmouth.
5 or 6 years ago, Southampton were ever so happy when they persuaded Maersk and Hapag Lloyd to abandon Thames Port and to use Southampton instead.
Maersk tried it for a couple of years and headed off for Felixstowe.
Hapag Lloyd are less frequent visitors than previously and MOL are hardly ever seen here these days.
The promised new container berths have not materialised and may never happen as it has been reported that merely dredging alongside berths 201 & 202 is not as simple as they first thought. And if that can't be done, there goes their only hope of building new container terminals.
So, Southampton really is in a Southampton Sulk at the moment and it looks as if it might get a little more lively.
Kelvin
