MV Rostrum Hedonist nationality Danish

[John King]

By chance I was out on my motorcycle on the 24th April in the evening when the vessel was leaving the River Tyne for Denmark. Danish owned, but flagged with Liberia and with a Deadweight of 82,178 tonnes. A general cargo vessel but principally transporting coal.
There was only a light wind in a cloudless sky and the river only with a few ripples. This is the biggest ship I have seen in the Tyne since the days of Esso Northumbria with a deadweight of 250,000 tones leaving the river in the 1960's on test after just being completed.

To put size into perspective, in the last picture the gap between the two lighthouses is over1/4 of a mile you can see how big it is.

The camera was a Nikon D90 with a Nikon 24/120 lens

 

[Oldbones]

Is it bigger than the DFDS

 

[John King]

Probably not as tall but almost certainly longer and heavier The DFDS ferries are only about 36000 tons according to the plaque attached to the side of the ships model displayed on board.

 

[Kevin Allan]

I remember seeing the Esso Northumbria being launched as a seven-year old. I must have been impressed by the spectacle to remember it all this time.

 

[John King]

In have checked their dimensions and both ships that leave the Tyne for Holland are the same length as each other -about 3/4 as long as the Rostrum. But the biggest difference being the the actual weights:-

• 31,788 Gross tonnage. Deadweight 82,178 tonnes (Rostrum)
• Deadweight: 4,110 DWT–5,765 DWT and163 meters in length and 28 meters wide (DFDS}

It is vastly less than the Rostrum Hedonist. Also, and this is mostly a guess, because the Rostrum is mainly steel, where the Passenger ships do have a lot of aluminium in the construction. It is also significantly newer than the DFDS vessels, being built in 2023