Slovene Ships

<p>The ocean-going cargo vessel Piran was the first brandnew<br>ship to be custom-built for the shipping company<br>Splošna Plovba (“General Navigation Company”). It joined<br>the company’s fleet in 1959. For a time it was not only<br>the largest Slovene cargo ship but the largest ship in the<br>Yugoslav merchant fleet. Splošna Plovba initially used it in<br>the tramp trade but the Piran also became the company’s<br>first ship to operate a new round-the-world line.</p><p><br>It was built in 1959 by the Hakodate Dock Co. Ltd of<br>Hakodate, Japan, in the same shipyard where the Rog,<br>badly damaged in a storm, was repaired in February 1956,<br>and with which Splošna Plovba had maintained good<br>business contacts.</p><p><br>The Piran was 158.2 m long with a beam of 19.7 m and a<br>deadweight tonnage of 16,076 tonnes (10,562 BRT, 6,136<br>NRT). It was powered by a 5,295 kW (7,101 hp) engine and<br>had a top speed of 13.5 knots (nautical miles per hour).<br>Splošna Plovba continued to use the Piran to transport<br>general cargo and bulk cargo until 1986, when the ship<br>was sold for scrap to the steelworks group Slovenske<br>Železarne and scrapped in Split, Croatia that same year.<br>The arrival of a brand-new ship of modern design in the<br>Bay of Piran in the summer of 1959, off the coast of the<br>town in which Splošna Plovba had its registered office,<br>was a historic event and an important day not only for the<br>Socialist Republic of Slovenia (as it was then), but for the<br>Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as a whole. The<br>scene has been immortalised in numerous photographs<br>and film recordings.</p><p>&#160;</p><p><br>Duška Žitko</p>