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Many of us lament the ugly apartment-barge look of today's cruise ships & the loss of the elegant style of the ships of yore. It struck me that there cannot be anything afloat that is uglier than a freighter or a container ship, not that this would detract from the experience of course. Is there an appreciation for the look of these 'working' ships & is it something that crosses the mind of those who frequent these vessels?

 

Graham.

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Many of us lament the ugly apartment-barge look of today's cruise ships & the loss of the elegant style of the ships of yore. It struck me that there cannot be anything afloat that is uglier than a freighter or a container ship, not that this would detract from the experience of course. Is there an appreciation for the look of these 'working' ships & is it something that crosses the mind of those who frequent these vessels?

 

Graham.

Graham,

You are right about one thing, ships of yesteryear having so much more character than most of todays vessels. Having said that, for myself a freighter & / or container ship has so much more kudos than any cruise ship, in my opinion these vessels do have a beauty all of their own.

 

Some of the modern cruise ships now being built give no thought to good looks, any ship when viewed from a certain angle could look ugly, but some of the colour schemes painted on their hulls dose nothing for their appearance.

 

I will make my maiden cruise aboard P&O's Ventura this summer, and i chose this vessel as much for her looks ( a good looking ship imho ) as much as for the intinery or onboard facility's. So when thinking about travelling wether on a container ship or cruise ship, looks do come into it.

 

Mark :)

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I am quite keen to try a freighter trip. Even my wife is keen. She thinks that one of the French ships would be good, both for the food & the chance to learn a bit more French. We have learned to speak a bit of Indonesian while sailing with Holland America!

 

Graham.

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I am quite keen to try a freighter trip. Even my wife is keen. She thinks that one of the French ships would be good, both for the food & the chance to learn a bit more French. We have learned to speak a bit of Indonesian while sailing with Holland America!

 

Graham.

Graham, I was lucky enough to do a line voyage with CMA CGM, the food was indeed excellent, & served with silver service. Also the French crew were very friendly and pleasant throughout the trip, the captain even going as far as to lend me some of his dvd's to watch, i can wholeheartedly recommend them.

 

Mark :)

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Sounds great. I believe that CMA CGM is the direct successor of CGT, the 'French Line' of French Liner fame; the SS France etc, so they certainly have the pedigree!

 

I will put them on my list (it is a LONG list!).:)

Graham.

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I have taken several Carnival cruises with my wife in the last few years and would love to try a freighter voyage some day. I don't think she is quite as thrilled about the idea though. My mid-life crisis fantasy is to own a small freighter. No sea captain role for me though, I want to just own it and have a cabin to use whenever I want. I think a freighter voyage would allow me to experience this life a little. For me though the problem would be the time needed for a trip of this length. It would be hard at this point to get that kind of time off from work. I guess I will just keep this idea on the back burner and hope maybe someday I can manage to get the time off and try it out. In the meantime I will continue to keep an eye on this forum and enjoy the posts.

 

Bill

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I would think that Carnival to freighters would constitute culture shock!;)

 

Maybe you could tempt your wife with the French silver service & cuisine.

 

Like you, we would also like to try a shorter voyage first.

 

Graham.

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  • 3 months later...

My first shipboard experience came as a child in '53 thru '55 on a freighter, named the Hastings, run by the Waterman line. My parents had sailed from San Francisco to New York via the Panama Canal, and when the Hastings would call on the port city of Seattle, where we lived, I would be allowed to visit.

 

Then it was a cruise from Seattle to Portland. Very exciting. Then Seattle to San Francisco another year........and finally Seattle to Los Angeles with several stops. It was a wonderful introduction to the world of ships and the sea.

 

Rick

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  • 2 weeks later...

I agree most new cruise ships look like horizontal hotels with a small point on one end (so you can tell which way it's going:rolleyes: ). Many freighters (not container ships) have better looks.

I had the good fortune of spending 10 days on the five masted Royal Clipper :D .What a beautiful ship sailing out of each harbor we visited with 56,000 sq ft of sail overhead. They played a good musical number over loudspeakers so everybody in the port would know we were leaving.

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Im so trying to get my wife talked into A Royal clipper style of ship. Maybe someday. I'm in love with the sea and if i had discovered this earlier in my life I probably would have pursued a career.

I'm disgruntled with the new ships as well. Freighters are becoming a more intriguing idea everyday.

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My attitude is a bit different.

 

The ads for all the mega-ships always show a beautiful ship sailing in beautiful waters with beautiful scenic backgrounds. That's what sells the customers but the customers never get to see anything that remotely resembles the picture. Why? Because they are either in the ship or are on shore while the ship is in port.

 

On a freighter, ugly as it may apper in comparison, when you are in your stateroom, your view is the same as it would be on board a mega-liner (unless, of course, you have a panoramic view of a bunch of stacked containers).

 

The cruise experience is not the attractiveness of the ship but the content of the on board activities. On a cruise ship the energy of the Cruise Director is spent making sure that everyone has more choices of activities than they have time to do.

 

On a freighter, however, one can spend the entire day catching up on reading, beating someone at a game of Gin Rummy or just sunning ones self while taking in the wonderful feeling of sailing on the high sea.

 

As a kid I dreamt of a transcontinental train trip from New York to LA and SF. When I turned 30, and was scheduled to take a business trip from NY to San Jose, CA, I decided this was the time to do it, so I booked a roomette and checked out all the brochures that showed a beautiful train running through magnificent landscapes.

 

While on board, however, it didn't take me long to realize that my view was limited to a window looking out at a pair of steel rails, the backside of industrial buildings and, occasionally, trees passing by too quickly to see them clearly.

 

Don't get me wrong. The trip was wonderful and I enjoyed meeting many people and wandering around cities and towns where the train had long stops. And the train looked great from outside at those stops. But the bulk of the experience was inside.

 

The analogy:

 

The ads are like a view of the world from a helicopter. The reality is like a view of the world from a rabbit hole.

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Having just made my maiden cruise with P&O aboard Ventura, and having already competed two line voyages aboard container ships, from what i have experienced it's much more basic to seperate the two.

 

Firstly as i have said before elsewhere, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, & there are more than the odd cruise ships afloat that are ugly looking and do not compare in looks to a Freighter.

 

No a cruise is holiday aboard an entertainment complex which in reality as no real bearing on being on a ship at sea, the other is an authentic experience aboard a real ship, where you are in close contact daily with real sailors with free access to the bridge, & to me it is as simple as that.

 

Mark

 

No offence was meant by this post, just my own personal observations :D

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  • 2 months later...
The ads for all the mega-ships always show a beautiful ship sailing in beautiful waters with beautiful scenic backgrounds.
and you notice there are never tons of people behind the characters in the commercials. you'd think they were the only ones on the ship!!!!!!

 

 

 

On a freighter, however, one can spend the entire day catching up on reading, beating someone at a game of Gin Rummy or just sunning ones self while taking in the wonderful feeling of sailing on the high sea.
this is my idea of a cruise.;)
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  • 1 month later...

Hello all, My husband and I returned from Tilbury, London on the container ship CMA CGM "Matisse" recently. We sailed from Tilbury on the 6th September, 2008 and arrived in Botany Bay, Sydney Australia on 13th October, 2008, so my comments are very up to date.

I had carried out as much research as I could regarding what we could expect on this Company's ships and the information available led me to believe that we would have French Officers, european crew, 5 course at lunch and dinner with wine and buffet breakfast, all with silver service.

From the pictures the accomodation looked very nice and comments by previous passengers of their experiences sounded wonderful.

I first want to say that both my Husband and I have fantastic memories of our 6 weeks voyage and are so glad that we undertook it, but there are some aspects that need to be addressed realistically.

When Matisse was launched in approx. 1999, she was probably very smartly fitted out, but it seems to me that in the intervening years nothing has been spent to maintain her passenger accomodation in good order. These areas now look tired and grubby; the carpets in the cabins and lounge are dirty; the table and chairs chipped, dowling coming apart in the chairs; upholstery stained. Tiles and grout in our shower stained with black mould marks, shower curtain in need of replacement. The fitted bed sheets dont stay on the mattress overnight as the elastic has worn out. 1 pillow provided to each bed, no spares on board.

The "gymnasium" consists of a tabletennis table in the library and an old exercise bike and rowing machine in a small storage room. (a good range of reading material left behind by previous passengers)

There are no sunbeds or deck chairs on Matisse, just a couple of old vinyl and tubular steel dining chairs out on deck.

Breakfast consisted of, cold meats and sliced cheese and boiled eggs on the sideboard, juice and Milk. Make your own toast, eggs fried, and if you asked, 2 thin rashers of bacon. Coffee in a thermos and hot water in a thermos, tea bags. A bowl containing 4 pieces of fruit was usually available for passengers.

Lunch started with watery soup with a small bit of meat and maybe a couple of bits of vegetables, bread rolls, a casserole type meal with potato and usually a small serving of a vegetable.

A bottle of red wine, a bottle of water.

Dinner could be chicken, pork or beef, (a couple of times fish was served) with boiled potato and 1 vegetable. bread rolls, water, red wine. dessert not much...say 1/2 a tinned pear, or a piece of cake.

a bowl containing lettuce and a few pieces of cucumber and a couple of slices of tomato.

In my opinion there has been drastic cost cutting by the company. The cooks did the best they could with the inferior quality meat and chicken and other ingredients but it was very simple and monotonous

There were always a selection of condiments on the table.

Starting in Le Harve, we supermarket shopped in every port and supplimented and embelished our meals.

The Officers are no longer of French Nationality, but now are Romanian, the crew are Phillipino.

Approx. one month before our departure from Australia (12 weeks before expected departure of Matisse) I discovered that the schedule for her departure from Tilbury had been brought forward by two weeks, drastically affecting our independant travel plans. I became aware of the alteration because I had been following her schedule on the internet. I was not advised of the change by the Company or the Sydney Travel agency who have the monopoly in Australia as Agents for CMA CGM. In my dealings with the Sydney agent I had the impression that she thought she was doing me a favour!

Fortunately, we were able to alter our travel plans, so that we could still make the voyage. In reading the fine print there does not seem to be any way a passenger could claim a refund of deposit, if the ships schedule is brought forward and it is quite possible that they would be responsible for the full fare if they cancelled so close to departure.

In the days preceeding the new departure date from Tilbury, the schedule was again altered and Matisse went from Philadelphia direct to Rotterdam and then Dunkirk before arriving in Tilbury. This meant that we missed these two previously included Ports and necessitating extra nights in a London Hotel. So the message here is that intending passengers MUST BE FLEXIBLE.

We were fortunate in that at every port we had sufficient time to go ashore during daylight hours. This might not always be the case. The four of us usually took a taxi from the Wharf and shared the cost of hiring the cab and driver for a few hours. The Captain and/or the ship's agent supplied the phone number of approved cabs in a couple of Ports, otherwise the gatekeeper phoned a cab for us.

The above is not written to put anyone off container ship travel, but I have read here on this forum and in other publications glowing reports of 5 course meals, superior accomodation etc. that are so obviously out of date, and in fairness to intending travellers hope to have put the record straight.

This is a quickly written report of our experiences and I will be happy to elaborate and answer any questions in relation to our experience, posed on this forum .

Abarb.

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Abarb,

Thanks for the overview, perhaps it should be directed to the travel agent to forward on to the shipping company who still insist there is no cost cutting and that the service is fine - with no compalints from passengers about accommodation, food or relationships with ship's crew.

Pies

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thanks for the response, Pies.

On the night before departure, the Captain gave we passengers a form to complete with set questions briefly regarding our experience on the ship.

I found the questions too narrow, so filled the plain reverse side of the form with details of the shortcomings as I saw them.

I spoke to the Captain when returning the form and got the impression that he doesnt send the actual form to CMA CGM, but instead writes up a report made up from all the passenger reviews, on each voyage.

I think I will give contacting the Sydney Agent a miss. If we ever decided to do another freighter cruise I will use an agent from N.Z. or U.K.

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Abarb,

I've been waiting with eager anticipation, your report of your voyage aboard a container ship from Tibury to Sydney. So it was good to see you have posted a breif over view of your trip.

 

What is of interest to me is your views on the ships interior & catering, and how it seems to conflict with other reports, and views you have read. From my own personal experiences, my opionion would be the the same as yours, as for the 1st vessel i travelled on, (except for the catering which was silver service) as she was nearly 30yrs old, we even broke down 3 times & on one occasion in danger of going on the rocks.

 

The 2nd vessel being a CMA CGM ship would be easier to compare, 'Nabucco' at the time was less than 3 months old & in tip top condition. Again silver service was enjoyed, as i was lucky enough to share the same table as the Master & his Officers. The ship had a fully fitted gymnasium and passenger lounge & the crew was French officers with Romainian crew.

 

Possibly the difference between my voyage and yours, would be that 'Nabucco' was deployed on the lucrative FAL route between europe & asia, were the ships are the latest in the fleet, 6 new ships this year with another 6 planned for next, each bigger than their predessesor ( CMA CGM operate i believe around 20 ships on this line FAL 1-4) & 'Matisse' is deployed on their round the world route, which maybe not so profitable.

 

Kind Regards

Mark:)

Edited by Yarco
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Hello Yarco,

Good to hear from you and read your comments and comparisons.

No doubt you are correct in what you say but it still comes down to a difference at the present time from what it started out as.

It would seem to me, that none of the profits from passengers fares are being returned in upkeep and quality of food.

Ron and I went prepared that we were travelling on a working vessel and all that that entailed. I dont want to make a big deal out of the fact that the service and food and state of accomodation did not live up to previous reports, I just think that intending travellers should be aware of the current situation so that they will not be disappointed.

We were fortunate to share the voyage with two other really nice people.

The four of us had a lot of fun and and an added bonus was that one passenger was moving from France to New Calendonia so came with a projector, a hundred or so movies, and some wonderful music on CD's.

It sure helped to pass the time and enhance the ambiance.

 

Abarb

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Hi, Abarb,

 

It may sound strange (but for me strange is the norm ;)) but your review made me more interested in going on a freighter trip. Now, as for my wife, that's a completely different matter.

 

The departure timing nonsense you had to endure at the outset was uncalled for and would likely cause me to be a bit more snarly than I usually am, but the rest of your report, including the condition of the lounge chairs and the limited menu, says to me that I should be able to personalize the experience by bringing aboard all the accoutrements - such as my favorite lounge chair and provisons such as a few "bugs" (the shellfish one can find in Cairns) without offending the culinary team.

 

And the fact that you accepted the situation as you did means that I suspect I would very much have enjoyed being a shipmate with you.

 

Anyway, thanks so much for posting your experiences. It was much more interesting to me than the usual stuff I read on the main cruise boards. You know, the gripes about people waering blue jeans on formal night, the complaints about tipping for room service, and my favorite, the extebnded discussions about reserving deck chairs.

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Hello Walt,

How very much I appreciate your positive and complimentary feedback.

You are on the same wavelength re the food; we certainly did embelish the meals, cut out the lunch provided and made sandwiches from ingredients bought ashore, Improved the salad with extras such as onion, exta tomato and cucumber, made our own salad dressing etc. Bought extra fruit ashore, biscuits and coffee grains. Some mornings at breakfast, the cook would poach eggs for us and with the addition of sliced smoked salmon, and packaged hollandaise sauce bought at the last port, and warmed in the microwave, we had eggs benedict. We usually had a supply of nice cheeses and biscuits for happy hour.

Wine and beer on board was very cheap; Californian chardonnay and Merlot for $US4.20 a bottle. Heiniken 375 ml bottles, by the carton of 24 cost under $US20carton.

So you can see we didn't do it too badly.

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Hello Yarco,

Good to hear from you and read your comments and comparisons.

No doubt you are correct in what you say but it still comes down to a difference at the present time from what it started out as.

It would seem to me, that none of the profits from passengers fares are being returned in upkeep and quality of food.

Ron and I went prepared that we were travelling on a working vessel and all that that entailed. I dont want to make a big deal out of the fact that the service and food and state of accomodation did not live up to previous reports, I just think that intending travellers should be aware of the current situation so that they will not be disappointed.

We were fortunate to share the voyage with two other really nice people.

The four of us had a lot of fun and and an added bonus was that one passenger was moving from France to New Calendonia so came with a projector, a hundred or so movies, and some wonderful music on CD's.

It sure helped to pass the time and enhance the ambiance.

 

Abarb

Hi again Abarb,

i would love to hear a more detailed report of your voyage, regarding relations with the officers & crew. Weather and sea conditions, transversing the Panama Canal as well as the Pacific Ocean, ( i'm totally envious of that fact ) as well as other aspects of the ship. Would it also be possible for you to post a few photo's i personally would love to see them.

 

Best Wishes

Mark :)

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Good morning (my time) Yarco ,

I will write in more detail, but can I postpone it for a week as our daughter flies in today from London and will be home for only a week before returning there for possibly a few years. My mind will obviously be very occupied for the next week.

regards

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A Very Good Evening Abarb, (UK time lol)

Yes it sounds like you will have other things on your mind next week, so i will look forward to your voyage report in the near future.

 

Best Regards

Mark :)

Edited by Yarco
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Do it! Once upon a time I did Around the World on the Oriental Carnavale, (and several other trips) long, long before containers mucked up the decks and cut shore time from days to about 8 hours. Still you meet extraordinary travelers and visit exotic ports.

Search the freighter sites, read newsletters and forums, then call the agents.

If I weren't restricted by age limit, I'd be on a freighter right now.

MMC

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