First ship through the Arctic carried coal

John McGarrity and Henning Gloystein in Reuters: A large sea freighter completed a voyage through the hazardous Arctic Northwest Passage for the first time on Friday as global warming opens routes that mariners have wanted for centuries.

The 75,000 deadweight-ton Nordic Orion, built in 2011, left the Canadian Pacific port of Vancouver in early September with a cargo of coking coal and is scheduled to arrive in the Finnish port of Pori on October 7, according to AIS shipping data.

"The Northwest Passage is more than 1,000 nautical miles shorter than the traditional shipping route through the Panama Canal and will save time, fuel and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but even more importantly increase the amount of cargo per transit 25 percent," said Nordic Bulk Carriers, the Danish owner of the ship...

A coal loading depot in Inverkeithing, shot by Richard Webb, Wikimedia Commons via Geograph UK, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license