Shipping navigates a new tale of hardship, monsters and woe

The best tales are tales of the sea.
The Odyssey, Sinbad and The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, to name but three, recount long and troublesome voyages dogged by brushes with monsters, great hardship and woe.
In the course of these epic journeys immense lessons are learnt that transform their protagonists and in the telling of such tales the opportunity for transformation is passed on to all who hear or read them.
One such epic story that has been playing out for almost 500 years, and holds within it the power to transform the global economy, reached an important turn this week and may finally be reaching its climax.
Last Saturday the Chinese state news agency announced that cargo ships from the People's Republic were to attempt the country's first commercial transit of the Northeast Passage, the treacherous and narrow shipping lane through the Arctic Ocean above Russia.
The good ship Yong Sheng, a 19,000-tonne vessel operated by Cosco Group, a Chinese State-owned shipping company, set sail a week ago today from the port of Dalian in northeastern China, heading for the Dutch port of Rotterdam.
The route has become passable in summer months during recent years thanks to warming global temperatures that have melted much of the sea ice that previously made such shipping lanes a no-go area for all but the hardiest of icebreakers.
If the journey is successful, the Yong Sheng will reach Rotterdam some two weeks earlier than if it had taken the traditional route through the Suez Canal into the Mediterranean saving Cosco a fortune in fuel, time, wages and other costly expenses.
To go through the Strait of Malacca, across the Indian Ocean up into Suez and out across the Mediterranean, around the rock of Gibraltar and up the Atlantic coast and the English Channel to Rotterdam would ordinarily take a 19,000-tonne cargo vessel about 48 days.
But the Yong Sheng's manifest predicts an arrival in Holland on September 11, just 35 days after leaving its home port.
Financial savings aside, the Yong Sheng will be able to sail a little easier as it will avoid the pirate infested waters of the Indian Ocean and not worry too much about whether the Egyptian authorities have been able to keep Suez open as their revolution continues to rumble on. Insurance against delays and losses due to such eventualities on the southern route will also be unnecessary.
Trying to conquer the Northern sea routes, both east and west, has vexed adventurers, kings and presidents for 500 years.
Since about 1553 fabled mariners such as Sir Francis Drake and Henry Hudson have tried and failed to cut a swath through the northwest passage of the Arctic Ocean in Canadian waters.
Hudson lost his life doing it, thanks to a band of heartless mutineers, and so gave his name to the bay that welcomes all who try to follow the course he aimed to set.
Others have tried, with greater success to tackle the Northeast Passage above Russia.
It is longer than the Northwest passage but considerably straighter and less densely packed with incredibly thick icebergs known as multi-year ice that will sink a ship as soon as look at it.
The Northeast Passage was first crossed in 1879 by Baron Adolf Erik Nordenskiold a Swedish explorer, and in the last five years or so has become ever more popular with tankers and cargo ships during the warm summer months.
Russia, which controls access to the 5,400-kilometre route, granted more than 370 permits this year to ships planning to traverse the Northeast Passage. That compares with just four permits in 2010 and 46 last year.
The Northwest passage remained closed this summer, however, as weather patterns pushed more ice towards the arctic preventing breakaway icebergs from drifting south to melt.
Even though the record Arctic melt seen a few years ago seems to have abated few, expect the Northeast Passage to close up for the summer any time soon.
Indeed, results of a study published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science shows that the last time the Northeast Passage was as ice-free as it is this summer was about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago, when the Earth's natural orbital variation allowed more sunlight to reach the Arctic than today.
That said, nobody expects the northern routes to be flung wide open allowing all of Asia's cargo to change direction overnight, but we do appear to be at the beginning of a generational shift that may mean the Suez Canal - one of the world's busiest shipping lanes - might not be so busy in 30 or 40 years time.
More important than this, though, is the lesson to be learnt from the half millennial persistence that led mankind to finally conquer one of the fabled northern routes and the opportunity that awaits us on the other side.
And then, of course, there will be the stories. Tales of monsters, great hardship and woe told by what will most likely be the last generation of explorers to set sail on the seven seas.
 
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