Port view

That's all there is to it. A view of the harbour inside the Port of Chennai.

Port view

Was supposed to visit the Dare House today for a meeting. With the ODI between Australia and India happening at Chennai today, the traffic arrangements would have meant a roundabout route and having to spend more time on the road than usual.

Luckily, we agreed to have the meeting over video-conference. Which meant that I could not look out of the windows of the Dare House to the Chennai Port today. This photo from a couple of years ago, from the terrace of Dare House, will have to substitute!

Shipping line

It is highly unlikely that anyone reading this would get to travel in a train on this line. No, that's not meant as a challenge, for this is not a line meant to carry passenger traffic. It runs inside the Port of Chennai and is meant to carry freight. And that's rather unique, because there are very few railway lines that are operated outside the control of the Indian Railways, and this is one of them. 

Besides railway lines, but the Port of Chennai also has a Terminal Shunting Yard within it. The lines run for 41km within the harbour; there are designated sidings for specific kinds of cargo - apart from those for general dry bulk cargo and a dedicated sidings for container traffic. The tracks run for a few kilometres outside the harbour area as well - without that connect, how could goods ever get out of the port!

Pointed connection

That is the end of the Port of Chennai. We have seen this earlier, and I had wondered what connected Frederick Hamilton-Temple-Blackwood, 1st Marquess of Dufferin and Ava to the city of Madras. Yes, Lord Dufferin was the Viceroy of India between 1884 and 1888, but during his tenure, there does not seem to be any evident connection that he has to the city of Madras. One can stretch it a bit and say that the founding of the Indian National Congress was partly due to this man - even though it was his predecessor, Lord Ripon, who had okayed the proposal by A.O.Hume and others to set up the INC, Lord Dufferin was under some pressure to be the anti-thesis of Lord Ripon, which he seems to have resisted successfully.

Lord Dufferin had come to the public eye much before his career as a diplomat. He had voyaged to Iceland and written about his travels in a series of letters nominally addressed to his mother; these were published as "Letters from High Latitudes", an early example of the comic travelogue. That book seems to have been quite successful (the most recent edition was in 2006!), being translated into French and German as well. That success did not, however, tempt Lord Dufferin to become an author, though his writing as a diplomat continued to be well regarded.

Now, Dufferin Light in the Port of Chennai has nothing to do with either the book, or with the Viceroy - directly. India's first naval training ship, was called the RMIS Dufferin; over 2200 officers were trained on the ship, including the Indian Navy's first Indian Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Ramdas Katari (Roll No.1, and a man with other Chennai connects, which shall be explored later). Apart from the naval officers, the Dufferin also trained cadets of the merchant navy and many of them were worked in the country's ports. It was as a tribute to their alma mater (and maybe around the time of the decommissioning of the TS Dufferin, in 1972) that they named this the Dufferin Light!

Moored

In the days of the British, a trip to Andamans was usually a one-way ticket to the dreaded Kala-pani, the cellular jail at Port Blair. These days, the dread is reserved for the mode of transport, not the point of arrival. The Andaman & Nicobar Administration (with a well named website - and.nic.in) determines the schedules for the three ships that connect Port Blair with 3 points of mainland India: Kolkata, Visakhapatnam and Chennai. Those ships are MV Swaraj Deep, MV Campbell Bay and MV Nancowry. 

Of these, the Nancowry works the hardest. Swaraj Deep and Campbell Bay run two round-trips a month, the former alternating between Kolkata and Chennai and the latter running exclusively to Chennai. The task of connecting all three of these mainland ports to Port Blair is left to the Nancowry. The ship takes three days to run from Port Blair to Chennai and then has to spend four days catching its breath. It was in the dock yesterday, having arrived on Thursday. 

If there is anything that really put you off the idea of a sea-voyage, it is the sight of this rust-bucket. The Nancowry was built in 1992, which makes it close to the average age at which a passenger ship is decommissioned. Surely, no one will shed any tears at this rust-bucket's retirement!

Means of transport

One of the yards of the Port of Chennai. Of course it is a sea-port, which is why you can get to see a boat and a ship in this picture. Because some of the berths are just behind the Chennai Beach suburban railway station, you can see a passenger train passing by every once in a way. The port has a railway track running inside for goods trains; and there is one waiting here. There are also the container trucks bringing in the goods to be shipped out

Apart from all these, there is a batch of passenger cars in the yard, waiting to be loaded on to ships. From this distance, I'm unable to make out if they are made by Ford, or by Hyundai - or is there any other car making plant in Chennai that ships out its products through the Port?

A different view

The road along the Cooum just after the Napier Bridge leads to the establishments of the Coast Guard, the Navy - the INS Adyar - and the CISF. Also along the road are residential quarters for officers of the Chennai Port. With so many government establishments along the way, signs and barriers - not to mention the odd security guard as well - make one nervous about pulling out a camera anywhere on that stretch.

But the view from the end of the road gives you a fair approximation of what the Madras coast must have looked like in olden days. The sandy beach runs south for a fair distance. The buildings of the University of Madras, government offices along the coast, the TV tower and the multi-super-speciality hospital in the distance... that's quite an unusual view if you are not a resident of the naval quarters.

The Cooum was still - as it is most of the time - and therefore looking deceptively calm. It was reflective of the lazy Sunday morning that it was!

Ships at rest

When you are stuck for ideas, Chennai has a great solution. Go to the beach. Since it is not the sand there that clears your mind, I went to another place by the sea.

The Port of Chennai is 139 years old this year, going by the foundation stone. Or maybe even older, if you take into account previous attempts at building a harbour on this unforgiving seashore. Whichever way, it has seen it all.

Wonder if anyone has made any watercolours of it!

Not a memorial

It should have been, but it is not. But it is from this spot that a 25-year old Iyengar made preparations to lose his caste, trading it for a chance to do the one thing he loved. Srinivasa Ramanujan moved to this part of Triplicane, Hanumantharayan Koil Street, sometime in May 1913. He had been granted a scholarship by the University of Madras, and leave from the Madras Port Trust. All he had to do was mathematics, and to submit a quarterly report on his progress.

And progress he did. Even though correspondence between him and Prof. Hardy over at Cambridge was strained and infrequent, it was all part of a larger plan that Hardy had set in motion. By the new year, Hardy's 'agent', E.H. Neville, a young Fellow of Trinity College was in Madras for a series of lectures on differential geometry. Whether those letters were a success or not, he managed to overcome Ramanujan's apprehensions about travelling to England. 

And so it was that the morning of March 17, 1914, saw the now kudumi-less Ramanujan waiting to board the S.S. Nevasa, with a second class ticket sent by Binny & Co. To see him off were some of Madras' elite: members of the judiciary, bench and bar, professors, colleagues and officers from the Madras Port Trust and members of the press, including Kasturiranga Iyengar of The Hindu. Neither his mother nor his wife were present, having been bundled off to Kumbakonam a few days earlier. A century later, let alone a memorial, not even a memory remains. Even the plaque that was on the premises earlier has disappeared!

One of many

Tell me, do you know how many entrances are there to get into the Port of Chennai from the landward side? The one that most of Chennai's inhabitants would have seen is, in all probability, the gate near the War Memorial, just after Napier's Bridge. Those who have looked at that entrance closely would have noticed the sign saying "Gate No.10"; not having seen any other gate further south of Gate No. 10, they may very confidently say that the Port of Chennai has 10 entry points.

This one is Gate No.7. There is no obvious sign saying so, but we have always known this to be No.7. To get here, you will have to stay over the RBI Subway when you are northbound on Kamarajar Salai and then turn right to get this view. Your sharp eyes will see that this is actually a double entry - about a 100m beyond the gates, you will notice the boom barriers of a railway crossing. That's because the harbour line runs just inside these gates and it would spoil your day if you did not get across the rails in time. Once you get past both these, and then the security procedures, much of the Port is accessible to you. 

This gate is the one that is used by the public at large, for this is the way to get to the Port offices, the residential areas and the sailing / yachting / angling clubs that have their homes inside the port. The most busy gate for commercial and industrial traffic is however the the one that is at the northernmost end of the port, at Royapuram. Getting back to the initial question - you think there are 10? Ah, but the Royapuram gate is referred to as the Zero Gate, which means you can't be sure of the answer, even now!

Over at the City Daily Photo portal, it is Theme Day today. To see interpretations on the theme "Entry" from around the world, go to this site. 

End point

This pier is just outside and parallel to the eastern boundary of the Bharati Dock. It juts out a long way to the northeast, and helps to form a channel through which ships enter and leave the Port of Chennai. This basically means that you cannot sail a ship in a straight line from Port Blair to enter the Port of Chennai; even though the course of that shipping route is a straight line, your ship will have to turn to the north and then make a U-turn to get into the city's harbour.

The light at this end of the pier is named after the eighth Viceroy of India, Lord Dufferin. Did he contribute to the extension of the port in any way? I don't have an answer to that, but I hope that someone will be able to come up with an explanation of why and how it came to be called the Dufferin Light. The only other nautical connection that I have been able to find is that the first dedicated training ship in India for marine engineering was the RMIS Dufferin! 

Quiet pond

Tucked away at a corner of the Chennai port is a little waterbody called the Timber Pond. It does not berth any of the ships coming in to the Chennai port, but it serves as the parking spot for private yachts as well as the port tugs. 

The Royal Madras Yacht Club has its office at the edge of the Timber Pond. First time sailors are let out into the Pond, where traffic is limited and, should the hull capsize, rescue can be quick. The kids in the picture are both out on their first sail all by themselves. They did topple out a couple of times, but kept their heads above water and right the hull. It all seemed so commonplace, that it was difficult to believe they had fallen off into some 40-foot deep waterbody!

Sailing out

That's the 'Tiger Bridge' getting out of the Chennai Port a few months ago. 

For more posts about Chennai's harbour, click here. And if you would like to know more about the ship itself, this is the place to go. And for its home port, Majuro - there is always Wikipedia!

Start harbour

By some estimates, 90% of the losses in goods between England and Madras occurred on the final stretch between the merchantman riding anchor on the Madras Roads and the sands of Madras. The boatmen of the masula boats bringing in the goods were notorious for knocking off quite a bit of their cargo. This was a situation that had gone on for literally hundreds of years, from the time of Francis Day until the foundation stone for the Madras Harbour Works was laid on December 15, 1875. 

The need for a harbour was felt very early on in Madras' life. But what with one thing or another, plans kept being made and dropped - including one proposed by a certain Warren Hastings, when he was the Export Warehouse Keeper of Madras. That was in 1770. Three-quarters of a century later, a plan for a thousand-foot pier to push out to the Madras Roads was put forward. It was approved in 1857 and finally the pier was open for business in 1861. Between 1868 and 1871, the pier was damaged by severe storms; a new plan made in 1873 thought of the harbour as a closed system, protected by a breakwater jutting out to sea. And so it was that construction began, with the Prince of Wales (later to be King George V) laying the commencement memorial stone on this date in 1875. 

It took about 5 years for the harbour to come up and it was operational in 1881. Unfortunately, the November rain and storms that year was so severe that the new harbour was almost completely destroyed, and had to be rebuilt from scratch. That, however, is another story! 

Clearwater?

Inside the Chennai Port. Those who have been to the world's large ports - Rotterdam, Singapore, Shanghai talk about how dirty the Port of Chennai is. But going back there after over 20 years, I found it cleaner than it was in my memory. 

If a picture like this had been taken in the 1990s, the water would have had a thick coating of oil on it - that would have made the picture more colourful, but I'm sure we'd prefer it this way!

Two - or three?

In August 2012, the Port of Chennai handled 158 cargo vessels, slightly less than the average for the current year. As you know, these vessels cannot coast into the harbour, or out of it, without being guided by the harbour tugs. The Chennai Port Trust used to have six tugs at the turn of the millenium, but they now have only five, according to their website. 

The older tugs among the five are named after freedom fighters. The oldest is 'Nethaji', which has been in service since 1995, followed by 'Singaravelar' (1996) and 'Bharatiyar' (2001). The other two are named after poets: 'Sundaranar' (2002) and 'Sekkizhar' (2003). In the picture are Sundaranar and Nethaji. There does not seem to be much difference between the two, except that Nethaji seems to have slightly duller colours. 

But wait a minute. Aren't there three masts visible in the picture? So which is that third tug?  Looks like it is hidden behind the Nethaji, so we shall have to let that mystery rest a long while!

Departure point

To you and me, in this day and age, this black block of a building would appear foreboding, maybe even an ill-omen. But a century ago, this would have represented excitement, hope and the thrill of setting out to new worlds and civilizations. It is one of the original buildings of the Port of Chennai and used to house the embarkation offices, along with its twin. Together, they would have been terrifying sights for at least one set of travellers: those bound for transport to Kala Pani, that dreaded cellular jail in the Andamans, who would also have set sail from the quay here.

That other half of this building was demolished during a modernisation drive in the 1980s, but for some reason, this one was spared. Sitting on the Western Quay of the harbour, this building appears to have fallen out of regular use. Built with chunks of Pallavaram gneiss, it has stood up to the salty sea air for all these years showing little signs of wear. It could well survive for a few centuries more and can be put to better use than being a storage facility. In its comedown, it today evokes more pity than awe!

Proud employer

Imagine you are the foremost mathematician of your time, living in Cambridge, England. Imagine you get a letter from Madras, postmarked January 16, 1913, which starts off,

"Dear Sir, 

I beg to introduce myself to you as a clerk in the Accounts Department of the Port Trust Office at Madras on a salary of only £20 per annum. I am now about 23 years of age. I have had no University education but I have undergone the ordinary school course...."

What would you do?

G.H. Hardy was intrigued by the letter and the 9 pages of theorems appended with it. Some were familiar, many were not. At the end of it, Hardy concludes, "They must be true because, if they were not true, no one would have the imagination to invent them". Thus began a great collaboration in the world of mathematics, one that has been described several times over (most brilliantly by Robert Kanigel in 'The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan'). 

Ramanujan was encouraged to write that letter by Sir Francis Spring, the Chairman of the Madras Port Trust and S. Narayana Iyer, the Chief Accountant. That they had taken such an interest in the non-official activities of a Class III Grade IV clerk was because that post was a sinecure, procured by the efforts of R. Ramachandra Rao, the district collector of Nellore and secretary of the Indian Mathematical Society. Ramanujan had been introduced to Ramachandra Rao in 1910 and had requested Rao for "leisure" to work on his mathematics. Rao arranged to bear his expenses, at the same time looking out for a more stable arrangement.

That arrangement was worked out in early 1912. Ramanujan joined the Madras Port Trust on March 1 that year. His tenure at the Port Trust was short; but it was the only formal employment he ever had. So it is that this bust is placed in the foyer of the Port Trust's Conference Hall - a proud employer honouring its most famous employee!

Port gate

For a long, long time, I had assumed that there was only one entry point into the Port of Madras. Far from being the only gate, it is one of the minor gates, the one through which children on a school trip, going to see ships berthed in the docks, were allowed.

Almost at the southern tip of the Port, this gate is probably the most visible one to the common Chennai-ite. I'm willing to take a bet that any city resident who is not required to visit the port for his or her livelihood will tell us that this is the 'main' entrance to the Port - all the others are well hidden, I guess!

Stranded containers

Though the first marine container landed in India in 1973 at the Cochin Port, the first container terminals took some time to come into being. Until 1988, the Indian Railways had the maximum experience in container shipment operations, so when the Container Corporation of India (ConCor) was established, almost all its employees were drawn from the Railways. The railways had by then set up a few inland container depots, but full fledged container terminals came into being only after ConCor was set up. The Chennai Container Terminal's website claims that it is the oldest container terminal in India: there is not enough data to back up this claim, but there doesn't seem to be any counter claim either.

The Chennai Container Terminal is located inside the Port of Chennai itself and since 2001, has been managed by DP World (the original licence was awarded to P&O Ports, which was taken over by DP World in 2006). Business - as measured by throughput - has grown almost threefold over the past 6 years; oddly enough, this measure is only approximate, for the volume of cargo in containers is measured by a something called Twenty-foot Equivalent Units (TEUs). A standard TEU is the capacity equivalent of a 20' x 8' container, without considering the height, which could either be 4'3" or 9'; and then there is the 45' long container, which is considered as equivalent to 2 TEUs!

Whatever the actual volume may be, the containers at the Chennai Container Terminal began piling up portside during the last week of 2008. The container truck operators, who had to move these to the forwarding and transhipment stations at Tondiarpet and from there to other parts of India, mostly by the northbound roads from Chennai, refused to do so until the roads of North Chennai were relaid!