Europe
In Europe the main hub of short sea shipping is Rotterdam, also the largest European port, with Antwerp as a second. The Dutch play an important role in this. They have also developed a hybrid vessel, allowed to navigate the sea as well as the Rhine into the Ruhrgebiet. The Dutch and Belgian main waterways (Maas, Waal, Amsterdam-Rhine Canal, Scheldt) locks and bridges are built accordingly. Because of congestion in the larger ports, a number of smaller (container)ports have been developed, and the same goes for the Rhine-ports such as Duisburg and Dortmund in Germany. The ports of Hamburg, Felixstowe (now the largest port in the UK), Le Havre also play major roles.
In Holland the sector has seen rapid growth, aided by a tax enabled investment scheme. The traditional region for building coasters is the province of Groningen, where most wharfs have side-laying ship slides. The major trend is to have bare hulls cheaply made in Poland or Rumania and build them off in Holland.
Read more about this topic: Short Sea Shipping
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“The city is recruited from the country. In the year 1805, it is said, every legitimate monarch in Europe was imbecile. The city would have died out, rotted, and exploded, long ago, but that it was reinforced from the fields. It is only country which came to town day before yesterday, that is city and court today.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All the terrors of the French Republic, which held Austria in awe, were unable to command her diplomacy. But Napoleon sent to Vienna M. de Narbonne, one of the old noblesse, with the morals, manners, and name of that interest, saying, that it was indispensable to send to the old aristocracy of Europe men of the same connection, which, in fact, constitutes a sort of free- masonry. M. de Narbonne, in less than a fortnight, penetrated all the secrets of the imperial cabinet.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“That land is like an Eagle, whose young gaze
Feeds on the noontide beam, whose golden plume
Floats moveless on the storm, and in the blaze
Of sunrise gleams when Earth is wrapped in gloom;
An epitaph of glory for the tomb
Of murdered Europe may thy fame be made,
Great People! as the sands shalt thou become;
Thy growth is swift as morn, when night must fade;
The multitudinous Earth shall sleep beneath thy shade.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)