Good old times: PLA Thames Pilots at Work

Many people wonder how ships made it across entire oceans without getting lost in the seventeenth century. Aaron introduces seventeenth century navigation to us today by beginning with piloting.

This documentary made in 1959 in the popular Look at Life series is from Volume 5 - Cultural History and takes a journey along the River Thames passing several famous buildings and monuments such as - County Hall, Royal Festival Hall, Shell Mex House which has the biggest clock face in London. Cleopatra's Needle, St Paul's Cathedral, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Port of London Authority, Prospect of London Pub, Port of London Docks.

Location: England Various shots following a river pilot. He is seen disembarking from one boat and climbing up a rope ladder onto a large ship. Various shots of another river pilot, dressed in a cap, woollen jumper and sea faring jacket. He is seen at the wheel of his boat. Various shots of two river police pilots on the River Thames in London. They are filmed in the cab and on the deck of their boat. They pull up alongside some riverboat houses and talk to a woman who owns one of the them....

Footage of Cosco Thailand, a container ship part of the largest class of vessels able to call at the Port of Melbourne, navigating through Port Phillip Heads en-route to the port.

This video seems to be slow and boring for non maritime people, but doing the job in a good way needs a lot of experience and knowledge. And it's the very the best job in the world.

The individual pilot operates as part of a pilotage organisation. And, as with so many things, the whole is (much) more than the sum of the parts ...

Lately there has been a considerable increase in opinions of seagoing ship´s masters complaining about pilotage services, expressed whether as LinkedIn articles and comments or in some reputable industry magazines.

Tampa Bay Pilot

She is destined for their pilotage operations at Jebel Ali in the UAE, the Worlds ninth busiest port and follows their first Pilot 60 ‘Murshid’ delivered last December.

Every ship transporting goods to, from or through the Arctic wants to find the fastest and safest way through or around the ice. Even service ice breakers save considerable amounts of time and fuel when they choose an easy path through the ice opposed to a straight path.