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Over the past day or so, there has been an article going around to different news sources about the hundreds of idle ships off the coast of Singapore as a result of the “steep slump in trade.” Here is a snippet of the article.

One of the largest fleets of ships ever gathered idles here, near one of the world’s busiest ports, marooned by the receding tide of trade. There may be tentative signs of economic recovery in spots around the globe, but few here.

Hundreds of cargo ships — 100,000 to 300,000 tonnes each, with the larger ones weighing more than the 130-ship Spanish Armada — seem to perch on the water rather than in it, their red rudders and bulbous noses, submerged when the vessels are loaded, sticking a few metres out of the water.

So many ships have congregated here — 735, weighing a total of more than 41 million tonnes — that shipping lines are concerned about near misses and collisions in the congested Strait of Malacca, the main shipping channel between the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The root of the problem lies in an unusually steep slump in trade, confirmed by statistics announced on Tuesday. READ FULL ARTICLE

After reading it I was thinking to myself – “Wow, hundreds of ships! Must be quite a site.”  So in standard gCaptain fashion, I turned to the internet to find pictures and thanks to Web 2.0 and the photo sharing site Flickr, I was able to find these along with a good video recently post on YouTube.

Click on image to go back to its source

Taken on March 16, 2009

Take on March 23, 2009

Taken on February 25, 2009

Taken on May 5, 2009

Taken on Dec. 1, 2008

Taken on April 20, 2009

Skip to about 02:45

While I really didn’t find the gem I was looking for, these photos give a pretty good idea of how it looks.  If you happen to have any or know of where any are, we’d be happy to share them here on the blog.  Just leave the link in the comments or send the images to info@gcaptain.com.

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