Product Tanker Balvenie at a Thames Terminal

Aerial photography of the Singapore registered product tanker Balvenie alongside an oil terminal jetty on the lower Thames.

Most people picture the Thames as the stretch between Tower Bridge and Greenwich. The part that pays for itself is further down, where the river widens and the tank farms start, and where ships like this one work quietly all week. Balvenie is a product tanker registered in Singapore, running under Pioneer Tanker colours. We photographed her alongside a terminal jetty on the lower river with the loading arms connected and her manifold open. This is a hard subject from the ground and a straightforward one from the air. At deck level a jetty is a forest of pipework and gantry legs and you cannot see the ship. From above, the whole operation reads at once: hull, manifold, the run of arms across to the shore, the tank farm they feed and the berth she is lying against. For an operator or a terminal that is the photograph worth having, because it shows the asset doing its job rather than sitting at anchor. We stayed clear of the working area throughout. A live cargo transfer is not somewhere to be improvising, and everything here was shot from a standoff with the aircraft well outside the jetty limits.