Docks

ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT II

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I last photographed this tall ship as she left Dublin 26th. August 2022.

Alexander von Humboldt II is a German sailing ship built as a replacement for the ship Alexander von Humboldt, which had been launched in 1906 and used for sail training since 1988. Constructed by Brennund Verformtechnik (BVT) in Bremen, the new ship was launched in 2011. Just like her predecessor, the Alexander von Humboldt II is operated by Deutsche Stiftung Sail Training in Bremerhaven which offers sail training for people between 14 and 75 years of age.

Friedrich Wilhelm Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (14 September 1769 – 6 May 1859) was a German polymath, geographer, naturalist, explorer, and proponent of Romantic philosophy and science. He was the younger brother of the Prussian minister, philosopher, and linguist Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767–1835). Humboldt’s quantitative work on botanical geography laid the foundation for the field of biogeography. Humboldt’s advocacy of long-term systematic geophysical measurement laid the foundation for modern geomagnetic and meteorological monitoring.

Between 1799 and 1804, Humboldt travelled extensively in the Americas, exploring and describing them for the first time from a modern Western scientific point of view. His description of the journey was written up and published in several volumes over 21 years. Humboldt was one of the first people to propose that the lands bordering the Atlantic Ocean were once joined (South America and Africa in particular).

Humboldt resurrected the use of the word cosmos from the ancient Greek and assigned it to his multivolume treatise, Kosmos, in which he sought to unify diverse branches of scientific knowledge and culture. This important work also motivated a holistic perception of the universe as one interacting entity, which introduced concepts of ecology leading to ideas of environmentalism. In 1800, and again in 1831, he described scientifically, on the basis of observations generated during his travels, local impacts of development causing human-induced climate change.

Humboldt is seen as “the father of ecology” and “the father of environmentalism”.

Three-Masted, Sailing Ship, Tall Ship, Dublin, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay,Alexander von Humboldt, Alexander von Humboldt II, Brennund Verformtechnik (BVT), Deutsche Stiftung Sail Training, William Murphy, Infomatique, Fotonique, Apple, iPhone, 12 Pro max,

TheLinesmanSculptureBuDodyMacManusOnCityQuay25March2023
THE LINESMAN BY DONY MacMANUS ON CITY QUAY [THIS IS A FAVOURITE OF MINE]

This bronze sculpture, by Irish artist Dony MacManus, commemorates the tradition of docking in the area, which disappeared with the containerisation of shipping cargo. Located on City Quay, it was the winning entry in a public art competition organised by the Dublin Docklands Development Authority to celebrate the new life of the quayside or campshires, along the River Liffey.

I worked for a shipping company back in the late 1960s and we employed people to do this sort of work but I not sure that we referred to them as linesmen and it may surprise many to learn that they were better paid than other dockers.

At the time we were in the process of switching to containerisation and reducing the number of casual workers which was bad news for many living in the area and it was especially difficult as nearly all the dockers employed by the company were, to some degree.family members [I was the only exception].