This is the "car-carrier" portion of the enormous Antwerp Belgium cargo port. And this is only 1/3rd of the parking area for vehicles waiting to be loaded on the shops. You can see in the distance another "ro/ro" (roll-on/roll-off) ship from a German shipping line. And in the front of the cars is a line of backhoes, and behind it is a line of trucks and buses. But mostly the area was filled with cars, mostly new. There was a large section of used cars going to West Africa, and the interesting thing about them was that every available space in them was filled with used matteresses and other consumer goods. Kind of a four-wheel container!
As you can tell from this photo, sailing on the Grande Ellade was like going to sea in a parking garage! This photo was taken after we left Antwerp where we completely filled up with cars, all 4720 of them on 8 decks. Most of them were going for some reason to Cyprus, and about half the ones on this top deck were used Mercedes from England. Cyprus is a favorite destination of UK residents who are fed up with the high cost of living in Britain and the cold, wet weather most of the year. But on the lower more protected decks there were thousands of new cars, Fords, Jaguars, Opels, Fiats, Hundais, Kias, and Volvos.
Most of the car decks were just high enough for a person to walk through. This was deck #5 and you actually had to duck to walk under those steel beams. Some of the lower decks can be raised or lowered to fit the requirements of the roll-on/roll-off cargo that was taken aboard. What surprised us was the small size of the nylon straps that held each car in place. Every so often in the deck was a place to hook a strap on, and the strap then went to the wheels of the car. But the strap was only about 1 inch wide and very thin. Nevertheless, even in the gales in the North Atantic, we never saw any movement of the cars across the decks.
This is the "car-carrier" portion of the enormous Antwerp Belgium cargo port. And this is only 1/3rd of the parking area for vehicles waiting to be loaded on the shops. You can see in the distance another "ro/ro" (roll-on/roll-off) ship from a German shipping line. And in the front of the cars is a line of backhoes, and behind it is a line of trucks and buses. But mostly the area was filled with cars, mostly new. There was a large section of used cars going to West Africa, and the interesting thing about them was that every available space in them was filled with used matteresses and other consumer goods. Kind of a four-wheel container! 
As you can tell from this photo, sailing on the Grande Ellade was like going to sea in a parking garage! This photo was taken after we left Antwerp where we completely filled up with cars, all 4720 of them on 8 decks. Most of them were going for some reason to Cyprus, and about half the ones on this top deck were used Mercedes from England. Cyprus is a favorite destination of UK residents who are fed up with the high cost of living in Britain and the cold, wet weather most of the year. But on the lower more protected decks there were thousands of new cars, Fords, Jaguars, Opels, Fiats, Hundais, Kias, and Volvos.
Most of the car decks were just high enough for a person to walk through. This was deck #5 and you actually had to duck to walk under those steel beams. Some of the lower decks can be raised or lowered to fit the requirements of the roll-on/roll-off cargo that was taken aboard. What surprised us was the small size of the nylon straps that held each car in place. Every so often in the deck was a place to hook a strap on, and the strap then went to the wheels of the car. But the strap was only about 1 inch wide and very thin. Nevertheless, even in the gales in the North Atantic, we never saw any movement of the cars across the decks.
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