Anyone Interested in Ships

[Schooner]

34 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

UNSC

Currently Presided by a nation with no legal membership status, condemmed by the body it heads for enacting genocide, and currently in violation of a UN resolution calling for the cessation of an imperialist war of aggression against a sovereign neighbour.

 

Happy April Fo- oh, no, wait a minute...

 

Anyway, ships:

 

:)

[drmditch]

On 01/04/2023 at 06:14, Schooner said:

Currently Presided by a nation with no legal membership status, condemmed by the body it heads for enacting genocide, and currently in violation of a UN resolution calling for the cessation of an imperialist war of aggression against a sovereign neighbour.

 

Happy April Fo- oh, no, wait a minute...

 

Anyway, ships:

 

:)

Nice ship. Where? When? (And did she come off safely?)

[WessexEclectic]

1 hour ago, drmditch said:

Nice ship. Where? When? (And did she come off safely?)

 

SS Fleswick

 

29/01/1902 Hayle Estuary, Kernow.

 

Search - fleswick + ship

Edited April 2, 2023 by WessexEclectic
detail

[Johann Marsbar]

The 6 week fundraising appeal to get the MV Ross Revenge into dry dock starts today.....

 

 

[jjb1970]

This is a picture from Xinde Marine, a Chinese maritime information and event company of one of Zhonggu Shipping's new builds. On the surface it doesn't look anything unusual but it's quite interesting for two reasons.

 

The first is that this is one of a series of 18 4600TEU newbuilds for domestic service, indicating the scale of Chinese domestic shipping.

 

The second is it is a much more interesting design than it appears. The ships are optimized for domestic trade which means they have a very high deadweight for their size as there is a lot of containerized dry bulk cargo (i.e. a heavier than average box weight) and service speed is only 15 knots. Almost like a cellular containerized bulker.

 

[brian daniels]

Interesting container ship behind it as well. I believe Maersk are having some new builds and one of them visited Southampton last week for the first time. Picture of Maersk Acadia at Soton backing out on 02-04-23

Edited April 7, 2023 by brian daniels

[KeithMacdonald]

Sorry, it was a gloomy day when I took this picture of the Training Ship Royalist in Plymouth. But interesting for how it used to be done. You could be forgiven for assuming Royalist is c.150 years old, but was only built during 2014 / 2015 at the Spanish shipyard of Astilleros Gondan.

 

[KeithMacdonald]

Same boat, on a better day.

 

[KeithMacdonald]

Another one, Pelican of London, in Plymouth

 

[J. S. Bach]

2 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Same boat, on a better day.

 

 Those two yards seem to be very close together on the masts.

[St Enodoc]

6 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Same boat, on a better day.

 

I hadn't realised there was a new Royalist. My CCF RN section chums sailed on the earlier one from time to time.

[drmditch]

10 hours ago, J. S. Bach said:

 Those two yards seem to be very close together on the masts.

Hoisting topsail yards.

Fairly conventional in the later days of square rig.

[drmditch]

12 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Another one, Pelican of London, in Plymouth

 

Seems a strange rig, with square rig on the main but not the fore.

Perhaps easier to handle than a 'traditional' barquentine with the square yards on the foremast.

 

[Pacific231G]

On 31/03/2023 at 15:52, The Johnster said:

Ships are inherently dangerous.  They are build to keep water out, so the structure is very weak if it is in a collision with anything such as another ship, the land, or an iceberg.  The chance of collision with such obstructions is increased by the surface of the water moving in various directions in a way which is not completely predictable, then further increased by the vessel being subject to windage and suction effects (Ever Given), and human errors in navigation, securing of loads, difficulties in steering at low speeds, and other issues.

 

They are not as inherently dangerous as airliners.  You build these out of highly inflammable magesium alloy, fill them with paraffin, set light to them, chuck them into the sky, and the whole thing works because it manages to go so fast that it stays about six feet ahead of the explosion, most of the time at least. 

 

In most 'incidents', it is probably safest to stay aboard the big thing that sinks slowly and wait for rescue, but not if the stability of the big thing is compromised or it is on fire.  In those cases it is better to evacuate using lifeboats, but if the weather is bad you may not be able to launch them and even if you do they may be difficult to keep together and away from the rocks.  Not always easy to make the best call in some situations and very easy to criticise/blame after the event. 

 

As a passenger, I make a point of familiarising myself with the exits almost as soon as boarding, a quick wander around the ship checking where everything is, and prefer to remain somewhere high up with a good view of things, that's just my nature nobody told me to do it.  On a lot of ships this conveniently coincides with the location of the bar...

If airliners needed to travel quickly to stay ahead of the fire in their engines then taxying would be a bit of an adventure! 😬

You are of course wise to familiarise yourself with the exits as soon as boarding a ship or airliner (or even more so a hotel) but do you check your tyres and brakes every single time you get in your car? Perceived risk is generally very different from actual risk. After the Ladbroke Grove rail disaster a lot of passengers switched to travelling by car. They were of course placing themselves at around twenty times greater risk for each journey. 

 

Tranport safety is very different if you compare deaths per million kilometres than if you compare deaths per hundred million hours. By distance, for travel within the EU, commercial flights (0.035 d/Mkm) are about eight times safer than ferries (0.25 d/Mkm) but if you look at it per hour then the time exposure risk for commercial flights at 16 deaths per hundred million hours is about double the 8 deaths for ferries.  Rail carries about a quarter of the risk per hour of flying but about the same per million kilometres. Driving carries about twenty times the risk per kilometre compared with train or air travel but, across the EU, less than double the risk per hour. In the UK the hourly risk is about the same for driving and flying (because Britain has fewer road deaths than most of Europe) but obviously an airliner travels a lot further in an hour than a car. 

Those are obviously averages and, because most air accidents happen on take off and landing, a short flight is far more dangerous per hour or mile than a long one though the risk per flight is probably similar. 

 

An hour drving in a car is about three times more likely to kill you than an hour on a ferry and the ratio is about the same for a journey of the same distance.

 

Apart from cruises most passengers don't travel very long distances by sea so the figure for ferries is nowadays the only one for whicn transport statistics are available.   However, the 'transport' operations that worry me the most are the mega cruise ships. A  slow sinking on a calm day  then maybe they'd get most of their passengers off. A fast sinking, capsize or a fire that overwhelmed the vessel and I think we'd be looking at a maritime disaster that could well eclipse the Titanic.  

[Schooner]

8 hours ago, drmditch said:

Seems a strange rig, with square rig on the main but not the fore.

Perhaps easier to handle than a 'traditional' barquentine with the square yards on the foremast.

Well spotted, she is - a 'mainmast barquentine', or some fun combination involving the words like 'polacre' :)

 

The rig was designed not to be easy (in a way the reverse) but to allow her to be braced up very sharp whilst carrying a fully square mast (for its sail training/youth development advantages) and set plenty of fore'n'aft canvas to promote upwind performance. Well, I say upwind...! Raised lots of eyebrows at the time, but she's proven pretty handy inshore and gets across the Pond very handly indeed. Good little boat, not bad for an old Arctic trawler...

 

[The Johnster]

All absolutely true, David.  In the days when I owned a car, I did check tyres and brakes daily, a habit picked up from motorbikes, which will kill you if you don’t check these as well as your chain and cables! 
 

My attitude to aircraft is a that any crash I can’t walk away from at my own pace is automatically fatal, but I do make a point of checking my position vis a vis the exits in case of a ditching in water.  I also worry about the mega cruise ships, huge numbers of people to evacuate and fires spread quickly once they take hold.  Anything other than even keel in calm weather and warm water is potentially a death zone of Willhelm Gustloff proprtions, never mind Titanic.  The windage and top hamper of these ships worries me.  
 

The railway has been lucky in that, thus far at least, there has not been a collision at high speed involving a crowded commuter service with vulnerable passengers standing in the aisles and vestibules being hurled about; that would be horrific, and luck has a habit of running out…

[St Enodoc]

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

The railway has been lucky in that, thus far at least, there has not been a collision at high speed involving a crowded commuter service with vulnerable passengers standing in the aisles and vestibules being hurled about; that would be horrific, and luck has a habit of running out…

Not since 1952, at least (touch wood).

[The Johnster]

In that tragic incident, the two expresses were relatively lightly loaded, and the crowded one, the suburban service that had been routed to the up main ahead of the Perth express, was stationary at the moment of the collision.  If one were to replicate the circumstances with crowded modern services, say at Didcot with an up South Wales or Bristol 800 rammed with standing passengers at 125mph hitting an up train in the up main platform, to be struck almost immediately by a down 800 at a similar speed, the carnage in the up express doesn't bear thinking about...

[62613]

9 hours ago, The Johnster said:

In that tragic incident, the two expresses were relatively lightly loaded, and the crowded one, the suburban service that had been routed to the up main ahead of the Perth express, was stationary at the moment of the collision.  If one were to replicate the circumstances with crowded modern services, say at Didcot with an up South Wales or Bristol 800 rammed with standing passengers at 125mph hitting an up train in the up main platform, to be struck almost immediately by a down 800 at a similar speed, the carnage in the up express doesn't bear thinking about...

Also, the platforms were still fairly crowded, weren't they?

[jjb1970]

The two big safety issue in shipping for many years have been domestic ferries in developing countries, and bulk carriers. Things have been improving for bulk carriers with initiatives like the common structural rules and much more awareness of things like stresses when loading and cargo liquefaction, but domestic ferries are still worrying.

 

Ro-Ro ferries have intrinsic vulnerabilities associated with free surface which can be managed to some extent and the current iteration of SOLAS is a pretty reasonable set of requirements for the design of such ships. Unfortunately SOLAS only applies to ships engaged in international voyages, so ferries engaged in domestic trade in countries like the Philippines and Indonesia are outside of SOLAS.

 

Some countries apply SOLAS as the standard for domestic shipping regardless, while some shipowners certificate their ships for international voyages (it's something often lost in the debate - there are a lot of ships certificated under SOLAS which never make international voyages) because they have a higher potential future value, insurance can be less expensive etc, but there is a large fleet of ferries designed and built to woefully inadequate standards and questionable operation. And it is evident from safety performance. Some ferry incidents have had truly horrific loss of life but are largely unknown in the Western world.

 

Unfortunately, some countries consider the benefits of cheap transportation worth the risks. It's not that they're indifferent to safety or unaware of the issues, but they baulk at the cost of really addressing the matter, it's rather sad really. 

[J. S. Bach]

On 07/04/2023 at 12:20, brian daniels said:

Interesting container ship behind it as well. I believe Maersk are having some new builds and one of them visited Southampton last week for the first time. Picture of Maersk Acadia at Soton backing out on 02-04-23

I have a very, very, SMALL part (1/48 US O scale)   of that ship (port bow, second stack, bottom container, I think):

Edited April 9, 2023 by J. S. Bach

[Ozexpatriate]

On 08/04/2023 at 08:30, Pacific231G said:

However, the 'transport' operations that worry me the most are the mega cruise ships. A  slow sinking on a calm day  then maybe they'd get most of their passengers off. A fast sinking, capsize or a fire that overwhelmed the vessel and I think we'd be looking at a maritime disaster that could well eclipse the Titanic.

Costa Concordia is a good case study for a capsized 'block of flats'.

 

With 4,252 people aboard there were 33 fatalities, including (later) a salvage member.

 

Yes it was close to shore (the proximate cause of the accident), but it did suffer a dramatic loss of stability. I'm not sure that a similar capsize, further offshore would see an order of magnitude more fatalities - likely *some* more - I'm no expert in evacuating cruise ships, but offer it as an example.

 

After the MV Cougar Ace loss of stability in the North Pacific, all 23 crew were rescued. There was a salvage fatality that resulted from a nasty fall.

 

Edited April 10, 2023 by Ozexpatriate

[jjb1970]

I picked up this as a desk toy for the office yesterday, a 1/4000 scale diecast Hanjin container ship, it's surprisingly good and has a clip on hull underside so it can be a waterline or full hull model. Available from Tiny -  https://www.tiny.com.hk/product/ATC40010

 

 

[Bon Accord]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

Costa Concordia is a good case study for a capsized 'block of flats'.

 

With 4,252 people aboard there were 33 fatalities, including (later) a salvage member.

 

Yes it was close to shore (the proximate cause of the accident), but it did suffer a dramatic loss of stability. I'm not sure that a similar capsize, further offshore would see an order of magnitude more fatalities - likely *some* more - I'm no expert in evacuating cruise ships, but offer it as an example.

 

After the MV Cougar Ace loss of stability in the North Pacific, all 23 crew were rescued. There was a salvage fatality that resulted from a nasty fall.

 

 

What saved the day with Costa Concordia was that she rested on a ledge in a shallow bay for some time before capsizing, that only happening after she fortuitously drifted inshore (it wasn't intended, nor controlled).

She grounded about an hour and a half after the initial grounding with a constantly increasing list as she continued to flood. Due to the chaotic abandonment it took nearly 5 hours to get everyone ashore despite the close proximity of land and the participation of shore based rescue services.

Most consider that had she drifted offshore into deeper water, the rate of capsize would have been more rapid with likely severe loss of life.

They were exceptionally lucky to have only had 33 fatalities.

 

As per the SOLAS regulations every passenger vessel is supposed to be capable of being safely abandoned - with a full complement of passengers and crew - within 30 minutes and with every person onboard checked and counted.

 

To put that into context, here is a list of the more recent passenger ship incidents/abandonments:

 

2007: Explorer, 154 passengers and crew, no fatalities, 3 hours to abandonship.

2010: Lisco Gloria, 235 passengers and crew, no fatalities, 90 minutes to abandonship.

2012: Costa Concordia, 4252 passengers and crew, 33 fatalities, 5 hours to abandonship.

2014: Norman Atlantic, 478 passengers and crew, 20 fatalities, a full day to abandonship.

[Bon Accord]

On the subject of passenger ship troubles, today marks 55 years since the loss of WAHINE in Wellington harbour, probably the most significant event in NZ maritime history in living memory.

A modern ship - only two years old -  complying with or exceeding the very latest regulations of the time and with a hugely experienced and able crew, yet she foundered only a couple of hundred yards from the Wellington shore in Hurricane force winds and with the loss of 53 lives. She ripped her bottom out on Barrett Reef and then slowly capsized, rendering half of her lifeboats unusable.

 

This site has a number of pictures of the ship and her sinking: https://www.museumswellington.org.nz/tev-wahine-2/?fbclid=IwAR3SB9lKStMERYhasqx1zfyHbfA9aHeQukJ7EevuqJ1AJ-7rAlkVR_xT-HA

 

Quite a number of passengers had their cameras with them and took pictures onboard prior to and during her abandonment (middle of the page), whilst the press were present when the survivors came ashore. It's an excellent historical record of a tragic event.