A Day in the Life
My role is Head of Promotions and Partnerships in the Maritime Directorate. On day one of the event, my team and I arranged for our Secretary of State for Transport, The Rt Hon Mark Harper MP, to take a trip down the Thames under the iconic Tower Bridge on an Artemis eFoiler – a fully electric vessel manufactured in Belfast that flies above the surface of the water on a hydrofoil. The development of the vessel has been partly funded by the UK Shipping Office for Reducing Emissions (UK SHORE) programme. Our Secretary of State used the opportunity to announce the next round of funding for UK SHORE, with an £80 million investment for Zero Emission Vessels and Infrastructure.
I later met the Secretary of State and the team at Number 10 Downing Street, where the Secretary of State chaired a roundtable on Artificial Intelligence in maritime with senior industry leaders, academics and Government Ministers. I then had to rush over to Lancaster House, where Baroness Vere, who was Maritime Minister at the time, chaired a Future Leaders Roundtable on driving technological change in the sector. That same morning, several events were also taking place aboard Trinity House Vessel Galatea, a buoy tender working vessel which is used to maintain maritime navigation aids for shipping. My team and I arranged for the vessel to be sailed down from Harwich, to be berthed alongside HMS Belfast for the week.