SS Lagos Palm

Lagos Palm - Robert G. Lloyd

The is the 1961 version of the Lagos Palm. It was the second ship of that name working for the Palm Line:

The Palm Line was a UK-owned shipping line that was engaged in the West African trade from 1949, primarily servicing the ports along 5,000 miles of coastline from Morocco in the north to Angola in the far south. It ceased trading in 1986.

Navigating the Niger Delta required certain accommodations:

It is notable that all Palm Line ships, with the exception of Kano Palm and Katsina Palm, built before 1970, had to be less than 500 feet long in order to navigate the creeks of Nigeria. Draught is another important feature. The coast of West Africa is extremely flat, and the slow-moving rivers and tidal currents have combined to build up long sand bars a mile or two off the coast. To enter most of the rivers, ships must pass over these bars; 27 feet being the maximum draught to serve all ports. Even so, to enter many rivers, - for example the Escravos River which leads to Sapele - ships cannot carry more than 4,000 tons since the maximum draught to successfully make it over the Escravos Bar is limited to 17 feet (5.2 m), so vessels would often cross over the bar at the entrance to the adjacent Forcados River, then take the connecting creek to the Escravos River. 

Here are some maps of the Niger Delta. I'm not real happy with any of them:

• the space shot doesn't have a scale, 
• the one labeled estuaries doesn't name any of the rivers,
• the admiralty chart is too zoomed in, so much so that I don't know what I am looking at,
• the last one is pretty good, it has a scale anyway, it has a bunch of names but leaves out the names of the big rivers.

Oh well, they're free, I should be happy with what I've got. It's not like I'm going on a voyage to Nigeria any time soon.

View of the Niger Delta from space (north/land at top).

Map showing Escravos and Qua Iboe Estuaries

ADMIRALTY Chart - 3321 Entrances to Escravos and Forcados Rivers

The Niger Delta with the Forcados (middle left)

Just for completeness, here's a link to Google Maps map of the Niger Delta.

Funny Quote of the Day

Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar. ©  Christian Marquardt/Getty Images

From RT: 

The country’s foreign minister has said religious persecution is “impossible,” given constitutional guarantees on freedom of faith - Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar

Lagos, Not Lagos

Lagos

Lagos, Nigeria*

In the last episode of Sky High: The Series, our gang flies to Lagos, Nigeria for a meeting with a bunch of other gangsters. It opens with the above shot of the Third Mainland Bridge across Lagos Lagoon. It's kind of a weird bridge, it follows the shore line due north from Lagos Island, the essential center of the city and the government.

Third Mainland Bridge, Lagos, Nigeria

We also get some street scenes that look like you might expect Lagos to look. Here our gang has bailed out of a tuk-tuk and are hustling to the airport terminal. That building in the background looks very distinctive, and it is:

Nawair-ru-deen Central Mosque, Lagos, Nigeria*

It was a little hard to track down because there are at least three mosques with that name in Lagos, and Google Maps doesn't know where all of them are. Even given the address, it isn't sure. The Streetview hasn't recorded the street it's on, but I was able to get a couple of shots from nearby streets:

Nawair-ru-deen Central Mosque, Lagos, Nigeria

Nawair-ru-deen Central Mosque, Lagos, Nigeria

Not Lagos

Then there's the hotel. It seems plausible that it's in Lagos. The performance by the 'native dancers' was a little over the top. I dunno, maybe that's what fancy hotels in Africa do.

Hotel*

I was able to pick out the name of the hotel from a couple of scenes: NAU Hotels & Resorts. They are in  Algarve, the southernmost province of Portugal. Problem is there are several of them, however with a little pointing and clicking I was able to find it:

NAU Hotels & Resorts Algarve Portugal

The meeting with all the other gangsters takes place in this fancy building:

Fancy Meeting Place on Breakwater*

Looking at Google Maps I couldn't find any sign of a building on a breakwater. Breakwaters do tend to stand out. An inquiry on reddit turned up the answer.

Building of control CCS of the outer harbour of Ferrol, Spain

Ferrol is on the northwestern corner of Spain.

When our gang finally makes their getaway, they board a Pilatus PC-12 Turboprop.

Pilatus PC-12 Turboprop*

You can't see the registration number here, but is does show up for a second, so now we have it.

Pilatus PC-12 NGX

From FlightAware, this plane operates mostly in eastern Europe. Then I got to wondering - could it even fly all the way from Madrid to Lagos? Not quite. It's 2,400 miles and the PC-12 only has a range of about 2,100 miles. Stopping in Morocco for fuel would knock 400 miles off the trip, so Morocco to Lagos would only be 2,000 miles, which would be doable.  The PC-12 cruises at 325 MPH so it would take about eight hours. There is no restroom, so you might want to make a couple of pit stops. Me, I wouldn't survive.

* images are screen shots from Netflix. Looking over this post I noticed all the screenshots have a yellow tint. I wondered if maybe that was Google's doing, but no, that's just the way the show looks, though I didn't notice it while we were watching it.

Super Mushshak Nigerian Air Force

Super Mushshak

A Super Mushshak airplane crashed in Nigeria recently killing both people on board. Never heard of this airplane before, so I do a little digging.

The Super Mushshak is a French design that is currently being built in Pakistan under license. It was originally developed for military pilot training, but has since been adapted for use as light duty ground attack aircraft. Seems to be a sturdy little airplane, it's aerobatic, a label eschewed by companies building airplanes for the civilian market.

The article that got me started also mentioned that there have been 4 military airplane crashes in the last couple of years, so I do a little more digging.

Beechcraft King Air NAF203
Crashed May 2021

Two of the crashes were Beechcraft King Air twin engine airplanes. Both happened in early 2021, one in February and the other in May. Found an incident report for the one that happened in May that gives the registration number. Then I found a story from War Is Boring about Nigeria's air war campaign against Boko Haram that has a photo of that same airplane (above).

Beechcraft King Air NAF201
Crashed February 2021

NAF Alpha Fighter Jet

Then I found a story about the Nigerian Alpha-Jet crash on a BBC webpage that's written in Pidgin. That was a surprise. The pilot survived that crash. That story also mentions the King Air crashes. Like the Super Mushshak, the Alpha Jet also started life as a trainer and was then adapted for ground attack operations. War is Boring has good story about Alpha Jets in Africa.

Nigeria Oil

Black Snow: Nigeria’s Oil Catastrophe
Bloomberg Quicktake
Is anyone surprised that Nigeria is having problems dealing with their oil? In the last half of the video they spend some time taking about cleaning up the mess. Seems to me if you are in a deep hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging, i.e. stop making a mess. Any attempts to clean up the mess are going to be pointless until you can find something better to do for all those who are currently engaged in stealing oil and illegal refining. 

I wonder if you could build a small scale refinery. It might not be efficient as a big one, and it might not be as environmentally 'friendly', but almost anything would be better than the chaotic methods being used now. Are there small scale refineries? Of course there are. There are several companies that make complete, self contained systems for processing small amounts of oil. Seems like you ought to be able to make something like that work in Nigeria. Notice I said you, not me. I don't know who that mythical 'you' might be. 

Meanwhile, the theft of crude oil in Nigeria has skyrocketed:

Business Insider Africa understands that only 5% of all the crude oil that were pumped through the pipeline between October 2021 and February 2022 were received by producers. The rest were lost to illegal oil bunkering, a problem that seems to have taken a turn for the worse since global oil prices skyrocketed.