All hands on deck for press movement

John R. Venneman, director of Risk Engineering / marine surveyor, Braemar Marine Inc, provides some additional information of the complex transportation required once the presses arrived in the USA.

Firth Rixson contracted Chartis Insurance to insure the cargo and hired Braemar Marine to act as surveyors to keep a watchful eye on the shipping activities from reviewing the integrity of the barge prior to loading, to discharge at destination.

Transport of containers and smaller items of cargo from the port of Savannah was undertaken by Superior Transportation of North Charleston to a lay down yard at the Georgia Port Authority's Ocean Terminal, and eventually onto a lay down yard in Midway.

As in Montenegro, the transport of the larger pieces required some innovative thinking and solutions. Due to the weights involved, road haulage was not a viable option due to some bridge issues between the port and the final lay down yard. Unlike Montenegro, inland waterway transport was an option here and that option was exercised.

Stevens Towing of Yonges Island provided deck barge and a skilled tug operator to position the barge to accept its cargo. Crane mats were used to distribute the load and add friction, and with the use of the ships gear, all of the heavier pieces (the lightest weighing 86 tonnes, the heaviest 235 tonnes) were landed on the barge and prepared for inland transit.

Following several weeks waiting for all the conditions to be just right, the barge, along with the 450 tonne-capacity floating crane, Charleston Giant, were pushed down to Midway to allow discharge onto Half Moon Landing. After a thorough check of the rigging, chains were broken on the barge and discharge began onto 10 and 12 axle hydraulic platform trailers operated by J.E. Oswalt and Sons.

As a result of some fairly swift tides and the precision that was required to move and hold the crane barge in place, discharge could only be affected during slack tides, and hence took two days to complete.