There's something fitting about a Liverpool-built ship being lifted to its final resting place by a Liverpool crane company.
Yesterday morning in Birkenhead, John Sutch Cranes played its part in a quiet piece of Mersey history - the final voyage of the Sterling Steel.
Built at Cammell Laird in 1974, the Sterling Steel spent decades doing what steel-hulled boats do best: working hard and asking for little. But somewhere along the way, her owner vanished from the marine industry, and the vessel was left behind - abandoned on the docks, going nowhere.
Rather than see her scrapped where she sat, she was recovered and stored for years as a goodwill gesture. Just kept safe until the right moment came to finally move it from the yard.
That moment was yesterday at 9.30am.
Working across our Liverpool and Manchester depots, our teams put together a carefully planned lift using the GMK5200-1, backed up by our charity crane from Manchester; 31 tonnes of steel history, lifted clean and steady into position.
Phil Miller, Technical Sales Representative at John Sutch Cranes, who oversaw the lift and rigging plans, said:
"There's no room for guesswork on a lift like this. We're talking about a 50-year-old hull where you don't know exactly what state the steel's in until you're under load. Every rigging point, every angle, every tonne had to be right before the crane even turned up. It's a big responsibility bringing a ship like that to the end of her journey, and I'm proud of how the team handled it - textbook stuff from start to finish. The police were on hand at the end to escort her to her final destination."
We've got deep roots in the marine industry on the Mersey, and it meant something to be the ones closing this chapter, taking a locally built vessel on her last journey, done properly, done safely.
31 tonnes. All done the John Sutch way.
A huge thank you to everyone involved in another safe and successful operation.
