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Displaying items by tag: Ardmore Corporation

#Appointments – Ardmore Shipping Corporation which has its Principal Operating Office at Cork City’s Albert Quay has made several appointments last month, writes Jehan Ashmore.

Ardmore is engaged in the ownership and operation of a fleet of 27 product and chemical tankers totalling in worldwide trade. The modern vessels on average are only five years in service. For further details of the mixed fleet, see further below.

The corporation’s executive office is based in Bermuda and has offices also located in Singapore and Houston, USA. The appointments made were for positions located in the latter two offices as outlined below:

Liwen Zhang joins the Ardmore financial team to work with the company’s financial team as Financial Accountant. Liwen is a Chartered Accountant with a strong background in shipping, having previously worked in various accounting and financial reporting roles within the industry.

She will be based in the Singapore office and will assist the financial team to meet its reporting requirements while reporting to Ardmore’s senior management team.

James (Jim) Monigan joins Ardmore as Regional Operations Manager based in Houston, USA, having had 20 years of experience in the maritime field. In his new role, Jim will be responsible for managing Ardmore’s spot trading vessels currently operating in the west region. 

He will also be working closely with Chartering Manager Holly Cummings, to provide support for Ardmore’s chartering activities in the US region.

Also recently joined Ardmore is Celia Kang to the team as Marine Personnel Manager. Kang holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering and Banking, and joins the operations team in Singapore with 10 years of experience in the maritime industry including Maersk Singapore and AP Moller.

In her previous role, Celia worked for Thome Ship Management holding various positions including Strategic Crewing, Assistant Manager (tanker fleet), and lastly Deputy Head of Crewing. Her positions within Thome enabled her to have a direct working relationship with Ardmore’s operations team.

The recent appointments follow that of Afloat's coverage last October of Jorge Lavin as the company's Financial Controller.

Ardmore also provides to customers, voyage charters, commercial pools and time charters. In recent years the company have engaged in a succession of orders from Asian shipyards, culminating with ten newbuilds completed in 2010 alone.

Afloat has examined the fleet list that totals 27 vessels. Those that perform both functions range from 25,217dwt up to 49,999dwt.

Of the above fleet total, a quartet of vessels are ‘product’ only ships that range from 45,000 to 49,999dwt. Overall the fleet are modern given the majority were built since 2013 and mostly built in South Korea, the balance at yards in Japan.

What they also share in common is the fleet are all flagged in the Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean.

Published in Ports & Shipping

Ireland's Trading Ketch Ilen

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

Designed by Limerick man Conor O’Brien and built in Baltimore in 1926, she was delivered by Munster men to the Falkland Islands where she served valiantly for seventy years, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties.

Returned now to Ireland and given a new breath of life, Ilen may be described as the last of Ireland’s timber-built ocean-going sailing ships, yet at a mere 56ft, it is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

Wooden Sailing Ship Ilen FAQs

The Ilen is the last of Ireland’s traditional wooden sailing ships.

The Ilen was designed by Conor O’Brien, the first Irish man to circumnavigate the world.

Ilen is named for the West Cork River which flows to the sea at Baltimore, her home port.

The Ilen was built by Baltimore Sea Fisheries School, West Cork in 1926. Tom Moynihan was foreman.

Ilen's wood construction is of oak ribs and planks of larch.

As-built initially, she is 56 feet in length overall with a beam of 14 feet and a displacement of 45 tonnes.

Conor O’Brien set sail in August 1926 with two Cadogan cousins from Cape Clear in West Cork, arriving at Port Stanley in January 1927 and handed it over to the new owners.

The Ilen was delivered to the Falkland Islands Company, in exchange for £1,500.

Ilen served for over 70 years as a cargo ship and a ferry in the Falkland Islands, enduring and enjoying the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, and Screaming Sixties. She stayed in service until the early 1990s.

Limerick sailor Gary McMahon and his team located Ilen. MacMahon started looking for her in 1996 and went out to the Falklands and struck a deal with the owner to bring her back to Ireland.

After a lifetime of hard work in the Falklands, Ilen required a ground-up rebuild.

A Russian cargo ship transported her back on a 12,000-mile trip from the Southern Oceans to Dublin. The Ilen was discharged at the Port of Dublin 1997, after an absence from Ireland of 70 years.

It was a collaboration between the Ilen Project in Limerick and Hegarty’s Boatyard in Old Court, near Skibbereen. Much of the heavy lifting, of frames, planking, deadwood & backbone, knees, floors, shelves and stringers, deck beams, and carlins, was done in Hegarty’s. The generally lighter work of preparing sole, bulkheads, deck‐houses fixed furniture, fixtures & fittings, deck fittings, machinery, systems, tanks, spar making and rigging is being done at the Ilen boat building school in Limerick.

Ten years. The boat was much the worse for wear when it returned to West Cork in May 1998, and it remained dormant for ten years before the start of a decade-long restoration.

Ilen now serves as a community floating classroom and cargo vessel – visiting 23 ports in 2019 and making a transatlantic crossing to Greenland as part of a relationship-building project to link youth in Limerick City with youth in Nuuk, west Greenland.

At a mere 56ft, Ilen is capable of visiting most of the small harbours of Ireland.

©Afloat 2020