Arrecife is a veritable honey pot for cruise liners visiting the impressive volcanoes of Timanfaya National Park, as well as the many other island attractions of Lanzarote in the Canaries. I stayed for one month at the end of last year near Arrecife on the ‘Island of Fire’ of Lanzarote. Lanzarote is the most volcanic of the seven islands of the group, with the predominant colours being black ‘picon’ lava and the green fields and palm trees of the central part, the high cliffs of the northern part, and the brown, yellow and red sands of the southern part. Lanzarote takes its name from the Genoese navigator, Lancelotto Malocello, who landed in 1312 and built a fort near Teguise. Lanzarote is 38 miles long by fifteen miles at its widest point, with over three hundred sunny days per year warmed by the sun, the trade winds and warm coastal currents. The temperature is always between 25 and 30 degrees Centigrade all the year round.

History Of Lanzarote

Jean de Bethencourt of Normandy conquered the island in 1402 and subdued the aboriginal population known as Majos, similar to the Guanches of Tenerife. Lieut. Gadifer de la Salle, the priests Jean de Verrier and Pierre Bontier and some soldiers accompanied Bethencourt. Two captured Majos acted as interpreters and helped them to disembark on the island, then called Titeroyugatra under the rule of the Majo king Guadarfia. After a peaceful interlude, Jean de Bethencourt returned to Europe as he was in the service of the King of Spain. During his absence, a rebellion broke out and after fierce fighting between the Spanish soldiers and the Majos, the island was conquered by three hundred Spanish soldiers. By around 1423, the greater part of the primitive population of the Majos had been converted to Christianity.

The Majos had originally come from tribes similar to the Berbers of North Africa. The Berbers were uniquely the native guardians of the great wastelands of sand of the Sahara, and built up the enormously successful dynasties of the Almoravid and Almohad to give dominance of architecture over the whole region. The Canary islands were conceded to Spain by the Treaty of Alcacovas in 1479 after nearly fifty years of quarrelling between the Portuguese and Spanish. Lanzarote is still volcanic today with fire emanating from many lava holes in Timanfaya National Park, and the south of the island was devastated by seven years of numerous volcanic eruptions ending in 1736. Many islanders emigrated to America due to the volcanic severity of the island, its very harshness only suitable for growing onions, vegetables, and tobacco together with salt from salt lagoons and large catches of sardines and fish. Canneries for sardines became the predominant activity and the heart of island life.

Historic Teguise is the oldest town on the island, founded in the 15th century and was the capital until 1852. The main square is dominated by the great bulk of the Iglesia de Nuestra Senora de Guadeloupe (Church of Our Lady of Guadeloupe) constructed in the Plaza de San Miguel in 1680. The Castillo de Santa Barbara on the Montana de Guanapay overlooks Teguise from a nearby hill and provided refuge for the townspeople when five thousand Algerian pirates ransacked the town. The castle now houses the Piracy Museum, and the traditional devilish masks known as Los Diabletes date from this period and are worn on Carnival days.

Arrecife became the island capital in 1852 and the port was centred around two fortresses. The fortress of Castillo de San Gabriel dates from 1574 in the second half of the 16th century, soon after the notorious Algerian pirate, Dogali, looted and murdered the population. The fortress was burned down in July, 1586 when Morato Arraez attacked and captured it, however he only stayed for one month. The Italian engineer Leonardo Torriani strengthened the fort with crenellated walls and a new interior layout in 1590 to form the present building with bell tower and sentry post. The castle is reached on foot by two long embankments and currently houses various exhibitions. The Castillo de San Jose was ordered to be built by King Carlos III of Spain after English vessels under Lord Anson attacked Arrecife. It was built between 1774 and 1779 with an inner area of 700 square metres and occupies a cliff seventy metres high and is semi circular in shape with the main door looking north. It is situated above the fishing port of Puerto de Naos and was completed in 1779, again to protect against pirates. The castle was restored in 1988 by Cesar Manrique and a restaurant added below. The Museum of Contemporary Art is housed within its walls with paintings and treasures by Picasso, Miro, Tapies, Cesar Manrique and others.

The vegetation of this very arid island, where rainfall only occurs in light showers during November, December and January, is helped by condensation of the night air. Vines are grown in low hemispherical or spherical stone walls to catch this condensation, which falls inwards to nourish the plants growing in the picon or pumice particles. Besides grapes, the very fertile island soil cultivates potatoes, tomatoes, corn on the cob, bananas, onions, papayas, avocados as well as cut flowers of sunflowers and strelitzias. The fields are very small in area and are irrigated with small rubber hosing passing through heaps of black volcanic soil, and there are still many subsistence farmers to be seen with their herds of two hundred goats. In former years, the cochineal bugs that live on the many prickly pear cactus plants on the island were dried and crushed for their bright red dye used in British textile factories, but this island product was replaced many years ago by modern aniline dyes.

Cesar Manrique (1919-1992) campaigned vigourously against property developers to prevent high concrete hotels and apartments being built as on the other Canary islands. The result was the preservation of the island’s landscape and flora and the promotion of its traditional architecture. He persuaded the authorities to impose strict conditions on the height of new buildings, restricting this to two or three storeys only. The only building which is taller than this is the Grand Hotel on the seafront at Arrecife at seventeen storeys, which predates the restrictions until it was closed by a fire, but happily has reopened as a luxury hotel. The art and great style of architecture of Manrique is now one of the great tourist attractions on the island, and his work can be seen at the Fundacion Cesar Manrique (Cesar Manrique Foundation), Campesino Monumento (Farmer Museum), Cueva de los Verdes (Green Cave), Jameos del Agua (Water Caverns), Jardin de Cactus (Cactus Garden), International Museum of Modern Art in the Castillo de San Jose near the cruise port, and his recently opened home at Haria, which is highly recommended for a visit to see how this great pioneer environmentalist and artist lived.

The Old Port

Arrecife began as a simple import port and gateway to the island and its capital of Teguise. The island only had one thousand inhabitants in 1495 of which only one hundred lived in Arrecife. After the devastating volcanic eruptions at Timanfaya between 1730 and 1736, and further eruptions around 1820, life became almost impossible on the island due to frequent earthquakes with many islanders emigrating to Venezuela. Arrecife benefitted from the Free Ports Decree of 1852 allowing it to trade in international markets and avoid most of the customs tax levied in mainland Spanish ports. It then became the capital of the island later that year, with the population growing to the present figure of 59,000 inhabitants out of a total island figure of 113,000. Life in the port in 1852 revolved around the fishing industry with the production of salt to allow salted and canned fish to be exported from the old port of Puerto de Naos. El Charco de San Gines is a seawater lagoon that leads from Puerto de Naos into the city, and has been much spruced up in recent years to become a tourist centre.

The charming island wooden windmills constructed on a tall wooden central tower and with four canvas sails were used at Puerto de Naos to lift seawater from Puerto de Naos to higher saltpans above the port, where the water evaporated to leave salt for the fishing industry. The windmills in other parts of the island were used in their traditional grape or grain crushing mode. Some of these windmills were engine driven to give an annual salt production of 2,500 tonnes for the enormous fishing industry. A braced wooden turret mill with its original canvas sails has been restored in Puerto de Naos, together with part of the terraced saltpans and is close to the fortress of Castillo de San Jose. The saltpan areas were remodelled in the 1920s, but the fishing industry declined heavily after 1975 with the occupation of Western Sahara by Morocco and a change in traditional fishing areas. Today, only a handful of tuna trawlers remain and the salt and canning industries have disappeared, with a yacht marina occupying part of the old port of Puerto de Naos.

The Modern Port

The Port of Arrecife is situated at latitude 28-57 N, longitude 13- 32 W and is administered by the Delegacion Puerto de Arrecife, the sub authority of the Puerto de Las Palmas de Gran Canarias. It is a small port that began as a fishing port then developed into a modern port for the tourist industry. It is the third biggest port of the Canaries, and the second largest cruise port after Santa Cruz de Tenerife. The long Muelle de los Marmoles (The Marble Quay) can accommodate three large cruise ships with an inter-island ferry at the inner berth. The port has 120 hectares of open water and 450,000 square metres of land area. A throughput of 60,000 TEU of containers is achieved by three container cranes of 24 tonne capacity, mobile cranes and six straddle carriers, and a smaller crane with a hopper discharge is available for bulk cargo. The Muelle de los Marmoles has an alongside depth of between 12.5 and 13.7 metres, and the container terminal has an alongside depth of five to six metres. The port has gained permission from the EEC to build a large marina in the future.

The port can accommodate a maximum of five cruise ships in one day during the six month cruise season from October to April when the island is cooler. It is thus considered to be a winter cruising port similar to the Caribbean where American cruise passengers prefer the cooler six months. A handful of cruise ships turn up during the other warmer six months at Arrecife. During my stay, five cruise ships turned up on two days, with three berthed on the Muelle de los Marmoles, one directly opposite on the container berth, and one on the seaward side of the new breakwater at the old port of Puerto de Naos. Braemar and Balmoral of Fred .Olsen Cruises, and Oriana, Aurora and Oceana of P. & O. Cruises, as well as the new Mein Schiff 1 of Tui Cruises were all berthed on this seaward berth at Puerto de Naos on these days.

Arrecife Port has been criticised in the past when heavy weather and strong southerly winds blow in, making it very difficult for the Master of a very large cruise ship to actually enter or then have to make the decision to cancel the visit. This happened on Wednesday, 27th November when Norwegian Spirit cancelled her visit and remained in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and Aidastella reorganised her schedule to call at Arrecife one day later than planned. There is one tug in the port, Sertosa Nueve 192grt, 1966 built at Vigo and owned by Servicios Auxiliares de Puertos S.A., but is only used for the berthing of feeder container ships on the container berth or for an older cruise ship without or with less powerful thrusters. Very large cruise ships up to 160,000 grt e,g. Independence of the Seas of 154,407 gt of Royal Caribbean International (RCI) would normally reverse in and then are able to sail using thrusters at the end of the day.

I was fortunate to see the much loved Saga Ruby for the last time on 30th November. She arrived at 0700 hours and sailed at 1400 hours, and I was able to speak to her Cruise Director and a party of two dozen cruise passengers at the Castillo de San Jose. All were full of praise for the ship, with the Cruise Director extremely proud of her, and she reversed out from the seaward end of the Muelle de los Marmoles and turned around outside the port to head northwards to Agadir and Lisbon and a homeward passage to Southampton. She had also visited Funchal on Madeira, Santa Cruz de La Palma, La Gomera and Santa Cruz de Tenerife on that voyage. She was of course completed on the Tyne in 1973 as Vistafjord for Norwegian America Line by Swan Hunter Shipbuilders Ltd., and was withdrawn from service in January 2014 after a last 31 day cruise.

The reason why Aida Cruises call so frequently is that they are based in the Canaries on fly/cruises around the islands, and Agadir and Madeira, and do not return to Germany until the end of the six month fly/cruise season. German passengers fly out to join the sisters Aidablu and Aidastella of 71,304 gt or the sisters Aidavita and Aidaaura of 42,289 gt, and Aidacara of 38,557 gt. All have white funnels with a blue ‘A’, red ‘I’, yellow ‘D’ and green ‘A’ to form ‘AIDA’ in capital letters, and striking red and orange ‘lips’ around the front of the bow, an ‘eye’ on both sides of the hull with a long snakelike tail abaft of the ‘eye’. Aidablu and Aidastella have tall ‘see through’ netting behind their streamlined funnels so that passengers can enjoy volleyball, trampolining and mini golf, in addition to high walkways around and abaft of their tall central atriums, and a blue line on the outside of the second deck below the bridge. Norwegian Spirit of Norwegian Cruise Line has a much decorated hull featuring dolphins and mermaids. In contrast the black hull of the German cruise ship Mein Schiff 1 of 76,998 gt was covered in graffiti and her white slatted funnel bore the red ‘Tui’ logo.

A new promenade and cycle lane was completed between April 2009 and March, 2010 to allow cruise passengers to cycle or walk from the new Puerto de Marmoles past the Castillo de San Jose and the old port of Puerto de Naos into Arrecife town. The Museum of Contemporary International Art is located on the two lower floors of the Castillo de San Jose, and below that is a lovely restaurant with wide vistas through large glass panels to view all of the cruise ships in port. This is much recommended as a viewing point and the service and food on offer is of a high quality and is a useful stopping point for tired cruise passengers. Those passengers that do not fancy a walk use the regular shuttle buses connecting the port and the town.

Several other cruise liners caught my eye, including Seven Seas Mariner of Regent Seven Seas Cruises on 24th November. She had arrived on an 18 night cruise from Barcelona calling at Cartagena and Malaga, and she sailed that evening for Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Porto Grande in the Cape Verde Islands, and Recife, Salvador de Bahia, Buzios and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. Saga Sapphire with a black hull and a blue funnel arrived with British passengers. Marina of 66,084 gt completed in 2010 for Oceania Cruises and registered at Majuro arrived on a Brazilian cruise from Barcelona with a white funnel bearing a blue ‘O’ through which two lines were cut on the reverse of the ‘O’ for Oceania. Oceana, Oriana, Aurora, Azura and Crown Princess of P. & O./Princess Cruises made a total of eight arrivals in the port on twelve to fourteen day cruises from Southampton, calling at La Coruna, Vigo, Oporto, Lisbon, Cadiz, and Madeira en route.

Queen Victoria of Cunard Line called in twice, the first occasion was on 12th November while on a twelve night Canaries cruise from Southampton calling at Funchal, Santa Cruz de La Palma, Santa Cruz de Tenerife and she sailed homeward via Lisbon. The second occasion was on Boxing Day on a same length Canaries cruise calling at La Coruna, Arrecife, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, and Funchal and returning via Lisbon. Thomson Sprit of Thomson/Tui cruises called in four times while operating eight day fly cruises from Santa Cruz de Tenerife around the Canaries, Funchal and Agadir. Braemar of Fred Olsen cruises called in three times while operating ten day fly cruises from Santa Cruz de Tenerife around the Canaries, Funchal and Agadir, while Balmoral called in on a thirteen night ‘Agatha Christie Canaries Cruise’ from Southampton. MSC Armonia was operating many eight day fly cruises based at Santa Cruz de Tenerife calling at Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Arrecife, Agadir and Casablanca, while the much larger MSC Preziosa with accommodation for 4,345 passengers was on a sixteen day cruise to San Salvador de Bahia, Buzios and Santos in Brazil from Genoa. The twin funnelled Seabourn Quest called at Arrecife on 31st October on a cruise southwards to Brazil and Argentina before beginning a 21 day Antarctica and Patagonia cruise from Buenos Aires on 20th November.

The twin funnelled Celebrity Eclipse of 121,878 gt with accommodation for 2,850 passengers and Celebrity Constellation of 90,280 gt with accommodation for 2,034 passengers also caught my eye, the latter ship having no fewer than six satellite radomes abaft her twin funnels on her Top Deck. They arrived from Southampton on ten to fourteen night cruises with calls at Vigo, Lisbon, Madeira or Ponta Delgada in the Azores. Costa Deliziosa of Costa Lines was on a week long cruise from Civitavecchia to Funchal and the Canaries. Marco Polo of Cruise & Maritime Voyages called on 28th December and is a veteran cruise ship completed in 1965 as the Russian cruise ship Aleksandr Pushkin. Albatros of Phoenix Reisen Cruises arrived from Monaco on three occasions and is the former Royal Viking Sea completed in 1973 for Royal Viking Line, and is the sister of Boudicca and Black Watch of Fred. Olsen Lines. Columbus 2 of Hapag Lloyd Cruises made their only call of the last quarter of 2013, she is of 30,277 gt and was completed in 1998 as R One for Renaissance Cruises with accommodation for 698 passengers. The ultra five star luxury Crystal Serenity called once, remarkably she has a waterfall in her spacious lobby.

Every taxi on the island is called to the port when five cruise liners are in the port as well over ten thousand cruise passengers require transportation if not already signed up for the shore excursions provided by the cruise line and the local coach operators. This is usually only one or two pilots available in the port on these days, and the tiny ‘Practicos’ pilot boat quickly moves the pilots from the lower boarding point on the ships to the next cruise ship before the first is even tied up. A vantage point for photography of the cruise ships is provided opposite the Puerto de los Marmoles at the landward end of the container berth.

Arrecife Ferry Services

Naviera Armas

A modern fleet of eight ferries is operated by this Canaries island based operator, all with ‘Volcan’ prefixes to their names e.g. Volcan de Tijerafe and white hulls bearing ‘ARMAS’ in red large letters. They operate five sailings weekly from Arrecife to both Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, with crossing times of five hours 30 minutes and nine hours respectively. Volcan de Tijerafe, Volcan de Timanfaya, Volcan de Tamasite and Volcan de Tamadaba all have passenger capacities for around 966 passengers and were built between 2005 and 2008 by the Hijos de J. Barreras yard at Vigo. Service speeds of 21 knots are obtained from four stroke Wartsila diesels, and they have considerable lane capacity for lorries and cars. This quartet have sloping streamlined bridge fronts, and canvas ‘sails’ above the verandahs abaft their streamlined funnels, and twin stern doors/ramps.

The small twin funnelled Volcan de Tindaya of 3,715 gt operates seven sailings daily from the southern Lanzarote port of Playa Blanca to Corralejo in Northern Fuerteventura. She was completed in June 2003 by the Hijos de J. Barreras yard at Vigo and has capacity for 682 passengers and 140 cars with a service speed of 16 knots from twin six cylinder four stroke Wartsila diesels of 3,500 bhp. She has three decks and an open viewing point at the stern. A shuttle bus service operates from the port to the town of Corralejo.

The flagship of the fleet, Volcan del Teide of 29,757 gt, in addition to her other services, operates a single weekly service on Thursdays from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Arrecife to Huelva in mainland Spain on a 28 hour crossing. She was completed in January 2011 by the Hijos de J. Barreras yard at Vigo and has capacity for 1,500 passengers and 350 cars. She has hull dimensions of 175.7 metres length, 26.4 metres beam with a draft of 6.4 metres, a service speed of 25 knots from four seven cylinder four stroke MAN-B&W diesels. A sister was completed by the same yard five months later as Volcan de Tinamar. The public rooms of these sisters have panoramic vistas, which show outwardly over three decks as four window ‘bulges’, two to starboard and two to port. Naviera Armas have begun these ferry services to link Gran Canaria and Lanzarote with Huelva, as well as from the Portuguese port of Portimao to Funchal on Madeira, since 2008.

Fred. Olsen Ferries

A fast twin funnelled ferry named Bocayna Express with a service speed of 31 knots and accommodation for 450 passengers and 69 cars on a lane length of 330 metres and operates six sailings daily on the twenty minute crossing from Playa Blanca on Lanzarote to Corralejo in Fuerteventura. The service reduces to five daily sailings on Saturday and Sunday, and Bocayna Express reverses into the small port of Playa Blanca with adept skill and speed for a vessel of only 66.3 metres in length, 18.65 metres wide with a draft of 2.5 metres. Her aluminium alloy twin hull was completed in September 2003 at Fremantle by Austal Ships Pty Ltd., and she has a service speed of 33 knots from four 12-cylinder four stroke Paxman diesels. A Fred. Olsen ferry bus connects Arrecife with Playa Blanca.

Lineas Maritimas Romero

This small operator with four small ferries carrying up to two hundred passengers is providing a third link between Playa Blanca and Corralejo with four daily services, and operates the only passenger service between Órzola in northern Lanzarote and the island of Graciosa to the north of Lanzarote with seven daily services and an extra sailing on this northern route in summer. One of the Graciosa ferries, Las Palmas, has a red and white ‘sharks mouth and teeth’ around her bow.

Arrecife Port Cargoes

Around forty feeder container ships and a dozen small tankers arrive at the port monthly, with Avgas also supplied to Lanzarote airport. Chartered ro-ro and feeder container ships of German short sea box operator OPDR Lines (Oldenburg Portugiesische D/S Rederei of Hamburg, established in 1882) predominate with a weekly service, the ro-ros OPDR Andalucia and OPDR Canarias of 7,300 dwt have overall lengths of 145 metres, lane lengths of 1,509 metres, cabins for a dozen drivers, capacity for 625 TEU of containers, and service speeds of 16.5 knots from a twelve cylinder four stroke Caterpillar diesel of 8,158 bhp. The pair have their bridges forward with a wide stern door/ramp of 100 tonnes capacity, and containers and trailers are loaded on the Main deck and Upper Deck. OPDR also operates feeder container ships of 700 TEU capacity on other routes, but they may call at Arrecife as OPDR Cadiz, OPDR Las Palmas, OPDR Lisboa, OPDR Tanger and OPDR Tenerife.

Chartered feeder container ships include BF Euphoria of 868 TEU, Huelva of 812 TEU, the sisters Jork Reliance and Jork Rover of 803 TEU capacity, and any of twenty ‘E’ class managed by JR Ship Management of Harlingen in Holland in Echo, Eclips, Elation, Electra, Electron, Elevation, Elite, Elusive, Elysee, Emotion, Empire, Encounter, Endeavour, Endurance, Energizer, Evidence ex twin funelled Maersk Rauma, and Evolution, all of around 1,050 TEU capacity. Many other containers owned or leased by Pinillos Lines and Boluda Lines of Spain were visible in the ground storage areas. Fishing vessels, both local e.g. Playa de Pedrena 314/66 and Nuevo Quimar 177/01 both owned by Gonzalez Salvador Toledo, and international, land tuna fish, and some bulk cargo is also discharged.

Cement cargoes for the island construction industry arrive in vessels such as Islas Dos of 5,500 dwt, Cementador of 3,010 dwt, Cementos Cantabrico of 5,550 dwt and Encofrador of 6,530 dwt, all owned by Cementos Especiales de Las Islas S.A., and discharge their cargoes into cement silos at the landward end of the container terminal. The oil supplies for the Disa oil storage terminal and the oil fired power station just to the north of the port arrive in yellow hulled tankers with yellow funnels and a red and blue logo, and berth at the seaward end of the Muelle de los Marmoles. Oil pipelines then run the full length of the long breakwater to these two main oil storage points, with Disa, Repsol and Cepsa brands of petrol and diesel available at the main petrol stations on Lanzarote. Tankers such as Mencey of 6,940 dwt, Guanarteme of 4,222 dwt, Herbania of 7,066 dwt, Hesperides of 9,750 dwt and Nivaria of 4,250 dwt, all owned by Distribuidora Maritima Petrogas S.A. of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (established in 1967) bring in the oil supplies.

Avgas for the airport at Lanzarote is supplied from an offshore three point mooring system for one of these yellow hulled tankers. The double hulled tanker Faycan of 6,525 dwt is allotted this task as she is least likely to spill Avgas if she inadvertently touches bottom during the tricky discharge. She was built at Masan in Korea in 1996 and is owned by the same company as the other tankers, and she grapples for the seaward end of the pipeline that connects her manifold and twin cargo pumps directly into the airport tanks, and then when firmly moored she pumps her cargo along the seabed pipeline. Faycan also performs the same Avgas supply operation at the Reina Sofia International airport in Southern Tenerife off the nearby La Tejita beach near El Medano, and in the Bay of Gando for Gran Canaria Airport. Oil and Avgas supplies are sourced from the Cepsa refinery in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, opened in 1930 with a current production of 4.8 million tonnes per year. Larger cargoes arrive in the double hull tanker Tinerfe of 17,540 dwt built by Samho Shipbuilding Co. Ltd. in Korea in 2009 from any of ten refineries in mainland Spain, five owned by Repsol, three by Cepsa, one by BP, and one bitumen refinery in Tarragona. She has fourteen wing tanks and two wing slop tanks, and a service speed of 15 knots from a two stroke 8- cylinder MAN-B&W diesel of 7,273 bhp.

Postscript

The Port of Arrecife is a very modern port and well designed to cope with over two hundred cruise ships calling annually. Arrecife is a very interesting port of call for many big cruise liners such as those of Aida Cruises of Germany, Thomson Cruises, and MSC Cruises of Italy and others based in the Canary Islands for fly/cruises. Thomson Cruises are part of the German Tui group which recently announced pre-tax profits of £473 million, selling 60% of its advertised cruise capacity and winter sun package holidays. During my stay, the feeder container ships were busy transporting extra special containers containing the big RC44 sailing yachts of a dozen nations competing in the World Sailing Championships at the attractive yacht marina of Puerto Salero, just to the south of the main resort of Puerto del Carmen. Once the winner was decided, the yachts were dismasted, canted and replaced in their special black very long open containers and taken back to Arrecife port for reshipment. Lanzarote is a marvellous holiday destination, with especial mention going to the ‘Fire Mountains of Timanfaya’ that changed the island for ever and buried one quarter of it under a thick layer of lava and ash, but which also draw tourists in their thousands every day to marvel at the spectacle.

The Wreck Of The Temple Hall

Temple Hall was one of three motor tramps of 10,500 dwt built during 1954/58 in British yards for Lambert Brothers Ltd. of London, the others being Temple Lane and Temple Main. Temple Hall was powered by a four cylinder Doxford 2SA oil engine of 3,600 bhp to give a service speed of thirteen knots, and sailed from her builders yard of Caledon Shipbuilders Ltd. at Dundee on 9th February 1954 on her maiden voyage on a five month charter to South and East African ports. She then made around fifty more tramping voyages around the world for Lambert Brothers carrying grain, iron ore, coal and other bulk cargoes until sold to Greek owners at the end of 1969 and was renamed Pantelis. She was managed from the Piraeus office of Michalinos Maritime and Commercial Co. Ltd. for eight years until sold to the Telamon Navigation Co. Ltd. of Monrovia but owned by Greeks and was renamed Telamon.

She then traded regularly to Apapa/Lagos and San Pedro in the Ivory Coast as well as other West African ports to Thessaloniki in Greece. She sailed from the Ivory Coast port of San Pedro de Costa de Marfil with a cargo of tree trunks and logs for Thessaloniki in October 1981, but got no further than the east coast of Lanzarote, suffering bad hull leaks. In order to avoid sinking in Arrecife harbour, a tuna fishing boat towed her to beach her on 31st October at Las Caletas, a small fishing port one mile north of the present port. A salvage company tried to refloat her to no avail, and her cargo of tree trunks was offloaded and stored at the port. She remains where she was beached to this day minus her forward three holds, with the sea washing through her engine room and aft holds.

Temple Hall provides a strange sight of half of a 1954 built British tramp with all of her superstructure ‘midships plus funnel, and even pulleys and loose wires hanging from the ‘crosstrees’ of her mainmast. Some of the tall tree trunks were later painted in bright colours and used by the Spanish town planner Jose Maria Perez Sanchez for his sculptures ‘La hoguera de San Juan’ or ‘San Juan’s bonfire’. These tall vertical painted tree trunks can be seen at roundabouts in the tourist resort of Costa Teguise to the north of the port, the sculptures having been unveiled on the evening of 23rd June 2009 to celebrate one of the sixteen fiesta days held annually on Lanzarote.