M/V Eleuthera Express working cargo Dunmore Town Harbour Island & sailing, July 2014

by Eric Wiberg

MAILBOAT NAME: M/V Eleuthera Express (second edition)
PAST NAMES: none
DIMENSIONS: 250 tons, 400 dead weight tons
CONSTRUCTION: built in Louisiana
YEAR BUILT: 1996/1997
EARLY CAREER: so far as is known she has been serving the Bahamas from 1997

BAHAMAS CAREER: serving Harbour Island, Spanish Wells, Rock Sound, Governor’s Harbour Eleuthera from Nassau
CAPTAINS: Captain Junior Pinder
FATE: A Finnish ship captain informed me in late 2014 that, having called Captain Pinder from Finland (!): “Anyway I gave them a call in Nassau and yes, as suspected the present Eleuthera Express is another vessel, built in Louisiana in 1996-97.”
OWNERS: not known, simply “Eleuthera Express,” PO Box 4201 Nassau, NP Bahamas is the address of the owner & manager according to IMO database www.equasis.org.
NOTES: The IMO site equasis.org shows that no updates have been made since 2011. The ship is listed on some sites as a “dead ship” indicating not all the paperwork is up to date. She is listed as “out of class” and no longer updated to 1 June 2010, however clearly the vessel is still sailing.

This is a different M/V Eleuthera Express chronicled in my post of 17 April 2014 on this blog entitled M/V Eleuthera Express, Capt. Junior Pinder, built Germany, serving Eleuthera. However there are some corrections to be made. A sea captain living in Finland, Jan Rautawaara, who knows the former owner of the 1962-built M/V Spiekeroog of the Netherlands claims that the modern Eleuthera Express is a different vessel, and I agree. He and I discovered that the modern Eleuthera Express was built in the US Gulf more recently. In this case actual readers corrected the record, as many reliable sources such as www.shipindex.org, www.equasis.org, and www.grosstonnage.com got it wrong and still list the ship as 1962-built.

He wrote: “My guess is that the Spiekeroog/ Wischhafen became the first Eleuthera Express long time ago but was then replaced with another vessel which got the same name. Somehow the records would have got confused and wrote two different vessels as one. But maybe I am wrong, sometimes ships are rebuilt from a mere bottom plate up as a new ship!

Me and my friends at the Museum would be very grateful if you could shed some light in this mystery. I also know the former German owner of the vessel as well, and he would be also delighted to know news from his old ship.”
He later added the following, having called Captain Pinder from Finland (!): “Anyway I gave them a call in Nassau and yes, as suspected the present Eleuthera Express is another vessel, built in Lousiana in 1996-97. The old German-built Eleuthera Express was sold already in 1980 to a group in Miami who renamed the vessel, but this name is unknown. She sank between Haiti and Cuba in late 80’s early 90’s. So all official sources including Equasis are therefore giving the wrong information. Case closed!”
With best regards and many thanks
Jan Rautawaara

Here the Eleuthera Express is seen working cargo. You can see the crane operator and someone on deck. This is at the Government Dock, Dunmore Town, Harbour Island, Eleuthera.

The M/V Eleuthera Express, Captain Junior Pinder, heading back to Nassau from Briland.
Eleuthera Express coming back to Nassau like a horse to the barn, with a bone in her teeth (waves off the bow).
Photo source; http://cdn2.shipspotting.com/photos/middle/2/5/7/1325752.jpg