A few weeks ago (4 Oct at 10:30 am) I was sitting on the front at Hythe looking across Southampton Water when a small ship appeared heading downstream. It was an odd little thing so I took a quick picture with my phone intending to trawl the ship movements logs when I got home. Of course I forgot until a week or so later by which time the log was gone (they display about 36 hours worth I think). I did a bit of searching but got nothing near and now it's driving me nuts, so I'll try some crowd-sourcing.
The first picture below is an enlargement of the relevant part of the picture. The bridge is at the bow end. I thought at the time it might be a small tanker/fuel tender, but looking at this it appears to be carrying cargo - what looks like a couple of nuclear flasks near the stern, though I somehow doubt they are that. It also looks to me a bit delicate to be even a coastal vessel round the UK, so it may even be off to the Med or even a river somewhere; but I’m probably completely wrong there.
The second picture is the whole that I took to put it in context, the third is one from the same place, different day, with one of the Red Funnel IoW ferries in the same place to give a better idea of the scales (the range is about 900m I think). The IoW ferry is about 93m (305ft) long, so scaling between the pictures the 'carrier' is about 83m (270ft).
So the question is - what is this ship?