Anyone Interested in Ships

[KeithMacdonald]

What happened to the container shipping? Was it a lack of demand for express freight?

[Kingzance]

55 minutes ago, steve W said:

Yes, certainly was a good place for ships, not so much these days and Truro Harbour masters are no longer reaping the fees they used too. Tolverne cafe (Newmans Cottage) is no longer operating.

As a teenager I visited several of the BP ships (Grandad was a watchman) and later, for my sins found myself on the 'Methane Princess' at King Harry Ferry during the first Gulf war with a film crew hurriedly making a safety film on poison gas attacks. On that exercise I asked the lighting tech what power he needed from the ship and the answer was along the lines of 'enough for n  'Thickies' and n 'Thinnies' - being the two sizes of cables used depending on the size of lights connected. He had no idea of the actual load or the cable size, but knew which cable to use for each light. We calculated the power and temporary supply cable fromthe emergency generator based on the quantity and approximate current ratings for each! 

Ah, Princess and sister ship Progress operated as gas carriers mainly from Algeria to Canvey Island. They were commissioned in '64 with Princess lasting until '97 and Progress until '86. I worked for Shell during 60s and 70s when these were in their prime. Both were laid up in the River Fal for a while in '81. Here are a few pics of her from the Helderline ship site.

Methane Progress.pdf

[Kingzance]

Following NewHavenNeil's posting of a twisted ship's connecting rod on the Early Risers thread, I was reminded of the tragic series of tanker explosions late 60's and early 70's. Here is the British flagged tanker SS Mactra, built in Kiel and commissioned 1969. She went to The Gulf and loaded her first cargo of crude. She returned to Europe and discharged this in more than one location I believe. As she steamed towards the Cape of Good Hope on 29th December 1969, she suffered a massive explosion in No4 centre tank whilst tank cleaning (in the days before Shell fitted Inert Gas systems to their oil tankers). Sadly she did not receive a company-wide radio message broadcast the previous day to stop all tank cleaning, a message that had been sent out after another of the company's ships, the Dutch flagged Marpessa, blew up whilst tank cleaning and subsequently sank a little further north of where Mactra exploded. The Mactra explosion cost the lives of two people and a number of others were severely burnt. To give you an idea of the size of this ship, she was 325m in length and 47m in the beam. Subsequently, she was repaired at Durban to allow her to steam to Japan where she was fully repaired and put back into service in 1970. She was scrapped around 1980. 

Pic 1 is of her arriving under her own power at Durban.

Pic 2 is of her alongside giving a better impression of the damage.

Pic 3 shows the hole in the deck before they cut it off. There are reinforcing beams running along both sides of the damaged deck and you can see someone sitting in the lower left corner of the picture from which you can gauge the scale. 

[SHMD]

There isn't a gob-smacked emoji!

 

 

Kev.

 

[steve W]

Considering that Inert Gas systems had been around for several decades, the uptake by the tanker industry was poor, but a spate of explosions around the time of the Mactra changed that with big programmes of retrofitting systems taking place in the mid late 70's

The  Mactra had a major part of the hull replaced at MHI in Yokohama and a section of the original vessel was retained by the yard and turned into a heavy work barge. When not in use it was moored alongside the quay just below the superintendents offices.  IIt always caused a moment of reflection each time I saw it and was still there in 2007 and seen lower left in the picture. 

The LNG ship is the 'Belanak' departing the yard after refit.

 

 

Steve W

[Kingzance]

8 minutes ago, steve W said:

Considering that Inert Gas systems had been around for several decades, the uptake by the tanker industry was poor, but a spate of explosions around the time of the Mactra changed that with big programmes of retrofitting systems taking place in the mid late 70's

The  Mactra had a major part of the hull replaced at MHI in Yokohama and a section of the original vessel was retained by the yard and turned into a heavy work barge. When not in use it was moored alongside the quay just below the superintendents offices.  IIt always caused a moment of reflection each time I saw it and was still there in 2007 and seen lower left in the picture. 

The LNG ship is the 'Belanak' departing the yard after refit.

 

 

Steve W

And just to close the loop so to say, Belanak was built in 1975 as the Gouldia operated by Shell UK on the Japanese gas trade. In 1986, she was transferred to Brunei Shell and renamed Belanak. She was sent to Jiangyin, China, to be demolished in June 2018. Many of those ex-Shell UK G-Boats built in the 70s gave forty years of service whereas the Ms such as Mactra rarely made fifteen!

[New Haven Neil]

I didn't sail on a non IG fitted tanker thankfully, but these reminders are never a bad thing.  Our OBO Ocean Bridge had an explosion, the details of which escape me at the moment as it was just before my time in Bibbys, but that caused to loss of two lives IIRC.  Pump room explosion I think.   

 

My ol dad sailed on old tankers, T2's and the like, and was a great supporter of the introduction of IG.  

 

The Derbyshire as the Liverpool Bridge had a boiler explosion also causing two deaths on her maiden voyage, a ship that was obviously cursed with bad luck.  The cause of what happened, whilst known, the reason why they did what they did died with the two victims.  

 

All reminders of how dangerous the trade can be, thank you KZ for your post - terrifying outcome.

[62613]

23 hours ago, Kingzance said:

Following NewHavenNeil's posting of a twisted ship's connecting rod on the Early Risers thread, I was reminded of the tragic series of tanker explosions late 60's and early 70's. Here is the British flagged tanker SS Mactra, built in Kiel and commissioned 1969. She went to The Gulf and loaded her first cargo of crude. She returned to Europe and discharged this in more than one location I believe. As she steamed towards the Cape of Good Hope on 29th December 1969, she suffered a massive explosion in No4 centre tank whilst tank cleaning (in the days before Shell fitted Inert Gas systems to their oil tankers). Sadly she did not receive a company-wide radio message broadcast the previous day to stop all tank cleaning, a message that had been sent out after another of the company's ships, the Dutch flagged Marpessa, blew up whilst tank cleaning and subsequently sank a little further north of where Mactra exploded. The Mactra explosion cost the lives of two people and a number of others were severely burnt. To give you an idea of the size of this ship, she was 325m in length and 47m in the beam. Subsequently, she was repaired at Durban to allow her to steam to Japan where she was fully repaired and put back into service in 1970. She was scrapped around 1980. 

Pic 1 is of her arriving under her own power at Durban.

Pic 2 is of her alongside giving a better impression of the damage.

Pic 3 shows the hole in the deck before they cut it off. There are reinforcing beams running along both sides of the damaged deck and you can see someone sitting in the lower left corner of the picture from which you can gauge the scale. 

 

As I recall, Shell Tankers used to tank clean with an "Over-Rich" atmosphere in the cargo tanks; petroleum vapour will explode with a concentration of between 5% and 15% in air, so if you could keep the atmosphere in the tank either below (lean) or above (rich) that  band you are safe; but it is almost impossible to keep it like that, given you have to access the tank to put the tank cleaning machine in. Am I also correct that the jet of water emerging from the nozzles of the machine created static electricity, and it was that combination that caused the explosion.  There was a third VLCC, the Kong Haakon VII, which also suffered an explosion at around the same time, and it was these three disasters that set off the research that discovered about the static electricity.

 

As Steve W has pointed out, inert gas systems had been around for years, since before WW2, if I recall. BP was the pioneer in installing it in the late 60s, partly as a result of the British Crown explosion mentioned earlier. Could Bon Accord confirm that the trials ship was ss British Skill, her sister ship and that the first ships fitted from new were the "Titty" class of product carriers from 1968, and the the first generation VLCCs from 1970 on?

 

Another advantage of I.G. is supposedly it reduces corrosion, due to the oxygen-poor atmosphere in tanks, I think

 

Lastly, I remember there was a serious explosion on a VLCC fitted with I.G. in the mid-1970s; the seal water pump was shut down, which allowed vapour to leak back into the funnel uptakes, where it went bang.

 

Edited December 15, 2019 by 62613

[Kingzance]

47 minutes ago, 62613 said:

 

As I recall, Shell Tankers used to tank clean with an "Over-Rich" atmosphere in the cargo tanks; petroleum vapour will explode with a concentration of between 5% and 15% in air, so if you could keep the atmosphere in the tank either below (lean) or above (rich) that  band you are safe; but it is almost impossible to keep it like that, given you have to access the tank to put the tank cleaning machine in. Am I also correct that the jet of water emerging from the nozzles of the machine created static electricity, and it was that combination that caused the explosion.  There was a third VLCC, the Kong Haakon VII, which also suffered an explosion at around the same time, and it was these three disasters that set off the research that discovered about the static electricity.

 

As Steve W has pointed out, inert gas systems had been around for years, since before WW2, if I recall. BP was the pioneer in installing it in the late 60s, partly as a result of the British Crown explosion mentioned earlier. Could Bon Accord confirm that the trials ship was ss British Skill, her sister ship and that the first ships fitted from new were the "Titty" class of product carriers from 1968, and the the first generation VLCCs from 1970 on?

 

Another advantage of I.G. is supposedly it reduces corrosion, due to the oxygen-poor atmosphere in tanks, I think

 

Lastly, I remember there was a serious explosion on a VLCC fitted with I.G. in the mid-1970s; the seal water pump was shut down, which allowed vapour to leak back into the funnel uptakes, where it went bang.

 

Although I was with Shell from ‘66 to ‘73, I was only on one crude oil carrier that was smaller (70,000 dwt and something like 14 sets of tanks) and I was very junior in the steam and grease department then whereas the sun deck team used to do the tank cleaning. Most “ black” oilers I was on rarely washed tanks, exception being when going from fuel oil to bitumen if I remember correctly and that was done with hot sea water. Bitumen boats always had their centre tanks carefully inspected for heating coil leaks on every ballast voyage as water and bitumen at around 250F is a recipe for disaster. White oilers were if necessary washed with cold sea water after a period of venting using water-powered fans. Washing was only started on these when the Dragers read well under the LEL. Lub oilers were always cleaned extensively with heated sea water and were carefully mopped out to ensure no water was present prior to loading.

The M class of VLCCs had fixed cleaning machines, no need to lower a Butterworth unit on a hose. King Haakon IV or maybe VII also exploded when Mactra and Marpessa went up, also whilst tank cleaning. The Shell ships used two slop tanks to settle out the wash water from the recovered oil, drawing water from one whilst recovering washings to the other. If this got out of balance, there was a possibility that oil could be pumped to the tank cleaning head and thereby enrich the atmosphere in the tank that had previously been below the LEL. The report on the accident which I read a while ago and don’t have now identified problems with controlling the water / oil levels and the risk of static electrical charge developing at the cleaning machine nozzles. No doubt that Shell were slow to move to IG, as were many of the independent ship owners.

One of my fellow Shell Engineers who also left the company but stayed at sea was C/E on the vessel that went bang in the 1970’s. He was very badly affected by it but I cannot ask him about it as he died a couple of years ago.

[62613]

13 hours ago, Kingzance said:

Although I was with Shell from ‘66 to ‘73, I was only on one crude oil carrier that was smaller (70,000 dwt and something like 14 sets of tanks) and I was very junior in the steam and grease department then whereas the sun deck team used to do the tank cleaning. Most “ black” oilers I was on rarely washed tanks, exception being when going from fuel oil to bitumen if I remember correctly and that was done with hot sea water. Bitumen boats always had their centre tanks carefully inspected for heating coil leaks on every ballast voyage as water and bitumen at around 250F is a recipe for disaster. White oilers were if necessary washed with cold sea water after a period of venting using water-powered fans. Washing was only started on these when the Dragers read well under the LEL. Lub oilers were always cleaned extensively with heated sea water and were carefully mopped out to ensure no water was present prior to loading.

The M class of VLCCs had fixed cleaning machines, no need to lower a Butterworth unit on a hose. King Haakon IV or maybe VII also exploded when Mactra and Marpessa went up, also whilst tank cleaning. The Shell ships used two slop tanks to settle out the wash water from the recovered oil, drawing water from one whilst recovering washings to the other. If this got out of balance, there was a possibility that oil could be pumped to the tank cleaning head and thereby enrich the atmosphere in the tank that had previously been below the LEL. The report on the accident which I read a while ago and don’t have now identified problems with controlling the water / oil levels and the risk of static electrical charge developing at the cleaning machine nozzles. No doubt that Shell were slow to move to IG, as were many of the independent ship owners.

One of my fellow Shell Engineers who also left the company but stayed at sea was C/E on the vessel that went bang in the 1970’s. He was very badly affected by it but I cannot ask him about it as he died a couple of years ago.

Yeah, I was in the the same department as you, so most of the stuff I picked up was second-hand.

 

[Bon Accord]

21 hours ago, 62613 said:

 

As I recall, Shell Tankers used to tank clean with an "Over-Rich" atmosphere in the cargo tanks; petroleum vapour will explode with a concentration of between 5% and 15% in air, so if you could keep the atmosphere in the tank either below (lean) or above (rich) that  band you are safe; but it is almost impossible to keep it like that, given you have to access the tank to put the tank cleaning machine in. Am I also correct that the jet of water emerging from the nozzles of the machine created static electricity, and it was that combination that caused the explosion.  There was a third VLCC, the Kong Haakon VII, which also suffered an explosion at around the same time, and it was these three disasters that set off the research that discovered about the static electricity.

 

As Steve W has pointed out, inert gas systems had been around for years, since before WW2, if I recall. BP was the pioneer in installing it in the late 60s, partly as a result of the British Crown explosion mentioned earlier. Could Bon Accord confirm that the trials ship was ss British Skill, her sister ship and that the first ships fitted from new were the "Titty" class of product carriers from 1968, and the the first generation VLCCs from 1970 on?

 

Another advantage of I.G. is supposedly it reduces corrosion, due to the oxygen-poor atmosphere in tanks, I think

 

Lastly, I remember there was a serious explosion on a VLCC fitted with I.G. in the mid-1970s; the seal water pump was shut down, which allowed vapour to leak back into the funnel uptakes, where it went bang.

 

 

I think the trials ship was the Sovereign, seem to remember hearing they put the scrubber tower in the funnel which was extended to enclose it.

The first class to be fitted from build would be a close run thing between the itys and the Calamity class - the latter certainly had IG but I can't remember if they had it from new or if it was a retro fit.

[62613]

1 hour ago, Bon Accord said:

 

I think the trials ship was the Sovereign, seem to remember hearing they put the scrubber tower in the funnel which was extended to enclose it.

The first class to be fitted from build would be a close run thing between the itys and the Calamity class - the latter certainly had IG but I can't remember if they had it from new or if it was a retro fit.

Retrofit, i think. I had my first trip 4/E on the Centaur, in 1978, and I'm pretty sure we didn't have it then.

 

[Guest Jack Benson]

Can anyone identity the paddle steamer in this painting?

 

 

JP

[KeithMacdonald]

Yes, it's the Paddle Steamer "Embassy"

http://poolehistory.org.uk/node/327820

 

Lots of info here:

https://www.paddlesteamers.org/news/wessex-dart/p-s-embassy-1911-1967/

 

The loco in the foreground is 30093 (Adams B4), assigned to Bournemouth.

http://www.brdatabase.info/locoqry.php?action=locodata&type=S&id=116739&loco=93

[TheQ]

Its the embassy 

[Simon Lee]

 

 

38 years ago tonight…………………..

 

 

 

The static silence and the desperation in the Coastguards voice still makes my blood run cold. 

 

 

 

[NorthBrit]

 

Already answered

Edited December 19, 2019 by NorthBrit

[The Stationmaster]

On 18/12/2019 at 11:25, Jack Benson said:

Can anyone identity the paddle steamer in this painting?

 

 

 

JP

It would seem that 30093 was a regular at Poole

http://georgejennings.blogspot.com/2015/05/rebuilding-b4.html

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dan700/11843713246

 

[Ozexpatriate]

There a news reports of an allision between two Carnival blocks of flats in Cozumel, Mexico with avoidance maneuvers with a third vessel.

 

Carnival is using the term allision but both vessels were underway - or at least unmoored and had power and maneuvering capacity. Damage appears to be mostly superficial and no passengers appear to have been hurt.

 

It can't be easy maneuvering these ships in high winds in close proximity. Inertia is a beast.

 

Edited December 20, 2019 by Ozexpatriate

[4630]

There’s a report on the BBC, including a bit of video. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-latin-america-50873559/two-cruise-ships-collide-in-the-caribbean

[The Stationmaster]

15 hours ago, 4630 said:

There’s a report on the BBC, including a bit of video. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-latin-america-50873559/two-cruise-ships-collide-in-the-caribbean

Watching that film it looks almost as if they were set for a second coming together!

[62613]

Bump felt in engine-room!. Nothing a bit of TLC and T-Cut won't fix!

[KeithMacdonald]

What we need is someone like Jasper Carrot with Best Ever Shipping Insurance Claims.

 

Like : I was obeying ColRegs when I felt a bump in my stern.

 

 

[newbryford]

A good friend's son is FO on another cruise line. I was talking to him (the son) a few months back and they do their utmost to avoid being near Carnival ships...........

 

Cheers,

Mick

[burgundy]

 

 

A rather varied selection of ships from a recent trip to New Zealand.

Firstly, the apartment block in the Bay of Islands is Ovation of the Seas, which carries up to 5,000 passengers. Tragically, she was in the news about 10 days later, when one of her shore parties landed on Whakaari/White Island as it erupted. Current death toll is 17 dead and 2 missing, with quite a few others hospitalised with burns. When we saw her, the tenders were shuttling groups of passengers around the Bay of Islands.

Can anyone explain please what this device is for?

Or why there is quite such a large mushroom farm aft of the funnel?

Now for something completely different; a genuine coal fired steamer on Lake Wakatipu. TSS Earnslaw was built in 1912 for the New Zealand Railways, to link the communities scattered around the lake with the railway at Kingstown (formerly home of the Kingston Flyer Railway) – in much the same way that UK railway companies operated lake steamers in the Lake District and in Scotland. TSS Earnslaw is now owned privately and carries more tourists and fewer sheep and other agricultural cargoes.

There is a walkway across the upper area of the engine room, which allows passengers to get the full benefit of the sound and smell of coal fired boilers.

Different again, Fjordland Navigator is a small cruise ship (just under 700 tons), built in 2001. She operates around Doubtful Sound, which is one of the most remote places that you can imagine. She does actually carry sail, a jib and two stay sails although these appear to be largely cosmetic.

The replica of HMS Endeavour, leaving Wellington without the aid of sail.

Finally, can a ship look embarrassed? Also in Wellington was this small launch named Sea Lion, which looks from a distance as though it is neglected and has been a perch for a lot of sea gulls. More closely, you can see that it seems to have been painted overall with penguins. Why is a mystery.

Best wishes 

Eric