THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 12, 1995 TAG: 9503110195
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
If the shipping line Evergreen has a lucky charm, it's Capt. Ma-li Chen. Y.F. Chang, the Taiwanese tycoon who owns the Evergreen Group, believes Chen is blessed with luck because he was born in the Chinese calendar's year of the tiger.
Chen's record appears to bear out Chang's belief.
The captain has mastered several new Evergreen ships on their maiden voyages, took over one that burned and, most recently, safely navigated another through the Jan. 17 earthquake that devastated Kobe, Japan.
That ship, the Ever Result, arrived at the port of Hampton Roads a week ago for the first time. The giant container ship, with its bright green hull, unloaded and loaded cargo March 3 at Norfolk International Terminals.
The Ever Result is the eighth of 10 ``R''-class container ships that Evergreen has bought recently. The ship can carry 4,429 20-foot-long containers, ranking it among the largest vessels of its kind plying world trade routes. Hampton Roads, with its deep-water access, huge cranes and access to the sea, is one of the few U.S. ports that can handle the ships.
The Ever Result travels from Southeast Asia to India, through the Suez Canal, to the ports of the Mediterranean and Europe before coming to New York, Norfolk and Charleston. Just small enough to eke through the Panama Canal, the ship will cross Central America and sail on to Asia. Ships in the service call at Hampton Roads weekly, circling the globe in 70 days with a maximum speed of nearly 23 knots.
The Ever Result was built by Japanese shipbuilders Onomichi and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. The ship had been delivered to Evergreen Jan. 16 at Mitsubishi's shipyard in Kobe.
Chen and his crew were planning to take the ship out of Kobe the following day. They were awakened by the earthquake at 5:45 a.m., 15 minutes before they planned to get up.
The quake, with a magnitude of 7.2, killed more than 5,400 people and caused $100 billion in damage. Companies lost another $100 billion in missed business opportunities, the Kobe Chamber of Commerce estimates.
A videotape of the scene Chen played recently showed great walls of smoke billowing in the background. The tape shows a Nedlloyd ship at the shipyard that had been smashed by a giant crane.
Damage to the Kobe region, home to many steel, shipbuilding and electronics enterprises as well as one of Japan's largest ports, had spillover effects in other areas by disrupting transportation and distribution networks.
But the Ever Result sailed unscathed at 3:45 that afternoon.
Chen's videotape shows the Ever Result's partially collapsed pier. The thick ropes lashing the ship to land reach down from the ship's bow to where some of the pier's big cleats lie submerged. A crane similar to the one that fell on the Nedlloyd ship was unmoved on the Ever Result.
``The shipyard was destroyed,'' Chen said. ``The Ever Result was one of the few ships in the shipyard not damaged.''
The effusive Chen is tall and thin, almost gangly. He's quick with a smile and a laugh and loves to tell a story. Over lunch, he told a tale of how the Chinese eat monkey brains, considered a delicacy there, that left several people at the table feeling about the color of his ship's hull.
Before anything else, he's a company man who runs a spotless ship. But he's not reserved. He showed a videotape of a Feb. 20 ceremony aboard the Ever Result in London. He presented a gift to former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who had christened the vessel in October, and made a brief speech before a sizable crowd. When the tape ended, his Norfolk friends cheered his performance, and Chen rose, grinning and pumping his fists.
The Ever Result is the third ``R''-class ship that Chen has captained for Evergreen. He'd brought the Ever Racer, the sixth of the 10 ships, to Hampton Roads in September.
Evergreen also called on him to master a container ship that had been substantially damaged in a fire. Without further mishap, he guided the ship to a shipyard for repairs.
A festive Chen laughs off references to his luck. He'd rather talk about the Evergreen team and how good his company is. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Capt. Ma-li Chen has guided several of the line's container ships
through thick and thin - including the earthquake that rocked Kobe,
Japan.
by CNB