mooring buoys used by Viking Venus to moor in the channel of the River Thames in London, UK 5/26/23
Channel: John Edwards
Date: 2024-03-18

This shows the 5 mooring buoys used to in effect "dock" our Viking cruise ship Viking Venus in the channel of the River Thames during our London stop on our British Isles Explorer Cruise. Use of the mooring buoys allows the ship to be in essence "firmly anchored" away from shore but without using the ship's own anchors and thereby avoiding any destruction or disturbance of the floor or bottom of the body of water--they are often used when ships need to moor near coral reefs for example.  Although we were close to Greenwich, we were still considerably out from the shore and were required to tender back and forth from the ship if we wanted to go ashore.  In order to dock or anchor such a large ship in the channel of a flowing, busy river like the Thames, they used 5 floating mooring buoys, one at each corner to and another one in the front center although as you can see, the center front one was not exactly centered and definitely off to the port side. I had not given any thought to how we were going to dock in London and have to say I was more or less amazed that ocean going cruise ships as large as Viking Venus can moor in the river as far upstream and in London as Greenwich is. The first :20 are filmed from our Uber Thames Clipper water taxi and the rest from our deck 5 veranda in our cabin. The date is 5/26/23. The mooring buoys are, as I understand, firmly attached to the river bottom and there are a number of excellent internet articles explaining in detail how these interesting marine devices work. They did an excellent job and I don't think the ship moved an inch, just like at a real dock or pier. The key aspect of this though, if not already clear, is that by mooring through use of these mooring buoys, which are already somehow firmly attached to the bottom, a ship can be firmly "moored" without use of its own anchors and any disturbance of the marine ecosystem by the anchor digging into the bottom. The bottom of the Thames is obviously no coral reef but avoiding further disturbance beyond what has already happened there I'm sure seems like a good idea.