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The year 2005 marks the Tenth Anniversary of "Irish
Sea Shipping - The Online Shipping Magazine".
The web site began as a text only newsletter known as
"Mersey Shipping News" which was uploaded to the UK Forums of the then online
service CompuServe appearing for the first time in autumn / winter 1994-5.
Generally the newsletter comprised notes and news about the Mersey Shipping
scene compiled on a roughly weekly basis.
It is lost in the mists of time when Mersey Shipping
News transferred to the World Wide Web, but I recall the transfer took place
shortly after CompuServe provided a gateway from their system to the web and
granted 5mb of free web space to subscribers.
A very basic HTML upload facility was also provided
for the pages which were composed using the Microsoft Word HTML facility.
Microsoft Front Page 98 was obtained and the web site
increased in size considerably in 1998 being transferred to a proper web domain
www.merseyshipping.co.uk.
Unfortunately between 1998 and summer
2000 the site had to endure two less than reliable ISPs based in Bristol. These
companies provided office hours only technical support. This was very
inconvenient if the server Front Page Extensions on their servers became
deranged at a weekend as it would render it impossible to upload the web site
and then take several days for the matter to be resolved.
Following a significant down time of around ten days
in June 2000 a move was made to a new London based ISP - Ram Jam Multimedia -
this company has provided an excellent service offering as they do 24/7
technical support. Since then, despite the odd gremlin usually caused by your
web master, the web site has been available with out a break.
Around the time of the move to Ram Jam the web site
name was changed to Mersey & Irish Sea Shipping to reflect the greater area of
coverage which had by now extended into the western reaches of the English
Channel as far as Dartmouth to the south and as far north as South West
Scotland and Northern Ireland in the north.
However, as the Mersey feeds into the Irish Sea, it
was soon felt appropriate to modify the name to "Irish Sea Shipping - The
Online Shipping Magazine" the name change being effected in 2001 with a new web
address
www.irishseashipping.com being
acquired. Though the original
www.merseyshipping.co.uk has
been retained.
"Irish Sea Shipping - The Online Shipping Magazine"
has gone from strength to strength over the past ten years. During this time
technology has marched on. Expensive dial - up access has given way to cheap,
fast broadband. Photography has switched from film to digital. Prior to 2000
when I obtained a digital camera, it could still take several days to
illustrate a news story. Now it takes minutes. The digital photographic
revolution has enabled Irish Sea Shipping to illustrate many happenings
literally months before they have appeared in the printed press.
"Irish Sea Shipping - The Online Shipping Magazine"
has been responsible for bringing developments, speculation and rumours to the
attention of many with nautical interests long before a hard news story has
developed. Now whilst sometimes it hasn't been possible to get everything right
in this area, there have been more successes than failures. Remember, you
probably read it here first!
Over the years "Irish Sea Shipping - The Online
Shipping Magazine" has grown in size from 5 megabytes in the 1990s to around
200 megabytes or more today.
However, the success of Irish Sea Shipping has not
been due entirely to my efforts. I look on my part as merely that of a
facilitator and editor. The success of Irish Sea Shipping has been due to
the active participation of many, many people with both professional and
amateur interests in shipping from around these islands. A number of these
people I have still yet to meet in person, though we may have correspond by
email for some time.
To these people, who have sent, reports, information,
articles, photographs etc. I would like to express deep and sincere gratitude
as I am sure would many other regular visitors to "Irish Sea Shipping - The
Online Shipping Magazine". You have helped make this site the success it is.
I would like to express my grateful thanks for
everyone's support.
Here's two the next ten years!
John H. Luxton
Webmaster
January 02, 2025 |
