Anyone Interested in Ships

[The Johnster]

Ships and boats, hmm.  This one will run and run…
 

According to my dad, merchant navy officer, extra master’s ticket, and Cardiff pilot, a ship has a displacement hull and at least one main weather deck with sealed hatches for the full length of the hull.  Submarines, irrespective of size, are therefore boats because they are not built like this, being basically cylinders compartmentalised by vertical bulkheads.  Boats with cockpits are not ships despite having full length weather decks because the cockpit is not sealed by a hatch, but many sea-going fishing vessels are ships by dad’s definition despite being traditionally called boats, as are tugs.  Motor torpedo boats, lifeboats, fast patrol vessels and the like with proper weather decks the full length of the hull are not ships because they have planing, not displacement, hulls.  And if it doesn’t have a keel, it’s a barge.  

Now, one can pick at least as many holes in this as any of the other definitions between ships and boats, just thought I’d throw it into the mix…

Edited August 12, 2023 by The Johnster

[62613]

I was always told that ships carry boats

[drmditch]

A ship has three or more masts and carries square rig on all masts.

 

 

(But definitions do change over time!)

[6990WitherslackHall]

Whitby Lifeboat today.

 

The current Whitby Lifeboat is Trent class lifeboat 14-14 RNLB George and Mary Webb. However, it is due to be replaced by Shannon class 13-49 RNLB Lois-Ivan. The Shannon is currently at Whitby and the crew are being trained on it before they transfer over to it. 

 

Edited August 13, 2023 by 6990WitherslackHall

[The Johnster]

4 hours ago, drmditch said:

A ship has three or more masts and carries square rig on all masts.

 

 

(But definitions do change over time!)

 

And... down the wormhole we go!  All oranges are fruits but not all fruits are oranges; a full-rigged ship has three or more masts and carries square rig on all masts, but is only a type of ship, not the definitive of a ship.

 

The Royal Yacht Britannia had three masts specifically for standard flying purposes.

 

Ships do indeed carry boats (somebody once told me that this is the Royal Navy definition, but what do they know), but that is not the definition of either a ship or a boat.  Many boats are never carried by ships or anything else. 

 

I rather doubt if there is a foolproof definition of 'boat' or 'ship'; vessel is probably safer, unless of coure you're Chekov, in which case it's 'wessels'.  The Starship Enterprise connection is another difference between ships and boats that is obvious but difficult to quantify; a ship is self contained, containing all the necessary wherewithal to stay at sea for long periods without needing to come to land.  It has food, fresh water, cooking facilities, washing facilities, toilet facilities, materials and skilled crew members to repair (and on some of the voyages of discovery, completely rebuild) it if needed, basic medical facilities, laundry, &c.  The lie to this is of course nuclear submarines, boats, which can stay at sea for even longer periods and are completely self sufficient, fuelled for their entire expected service lives, their endurance only being limited by the need to load food; they can even make their own fresh water.  Round-the-world yachtsmen/women push the definition of this to extremes, in what are generally agreed to be boats.

 

Starship Enterprise is the classic example; able to replicate food and fresh water, she is limited in endurance only by the life of her dilithium crystals, which is considerable even at Warp Factor 8.  Her most famous mission was of five year's duration, to boldly go where no hooman eye had ever set foot...  She is organised as a ship, with a ship's command structure of officers and crew, with basically US Naval traditions going back to Farragut.  It is extremely likely that when hoomanity really does get around to boldly going, we will regard the vehicles that we use as ships, the term 'spaceship' already being universally used among us.  We will then be able to indulge ourselves in endless discussion around the difference between spaceships and spacecraft, when of course they are all wessels. 

 

 

 

1 hour ago, 6990WitherslackHall said:

Whitby Lifeboat today.

 

The current Whitby Lifeboat is Trent Class lifeboat 14-14 RNLB George and Mary Webb. However, it is due to be replaced by a Shannon Class lifeboat. The Shannon is currently at Whitby and the crew are being trained on it before they transfer over to it. 

 

 

Aw, look at it's sad little face, with it's worried eyebrows...  There's something of Marvin the Paranoid Android about it; 'life, don't talk to me about life'.  It fails to be a ship on two counts, no through weather deck and no displacement hull.

 

So what about Shackleton's Andrew Caird?  She was by any definition an open boat when they hauled her over the ice, but for the journey from Elephant Island to South Georgia she was completely decked in except for a waterproof hatchway, making her a ship by my dad's definition albiet a small one.  In my view, any vessel that could undertake that particular journey in those circumstances deserves to be called whatever it wants to be called, it'll get no argument from me...

 

On the subject of Antarctic wessels, Sir David Attenborough is definitely a ship, and should have been called Shippy McShipface.  Since Boaty McBoatface is in fact a submersible ROV constructed as a submarine, this wessel is definitely a boat.  Boaty McBoatface is a stupid name for a ship, but fine for a boat.

 

[Pacific231G]

11 hours ago, The Johnster said:

On the subject of Antarctic wessels, Sir David Attenborough is definitely a ship, and should have been called Shippy McShipface.  Since Boaty McBoatface is in fact a submersible ROV constructed as a submarine, this wessel is definitely a boat.  Boaty McBoatface is a stupid name for a ship, but fine for a boat.

 

And a good example of the wisdom of not getting the public to make a decision in a referendum without being responsible for the consequences (in this case it would have made Britain an international laughing stock) but instead electing responsible people to make such decisions. I can't imagine even the elected committee of the Much Binding in the Marsh Sailing Club taking responsibility of a name as daft as that and I wonder what the crew of the RRS Sir David Attenborough really call their ROV.

[jjb1970]

I really didn't find the Boaty McBoatface thing any worse than naming the ship David Attenborough. The BAS ships were traditionally named after Antarctic explorers and navigators, ships like John Biscoe, Bransfield and James Clark Ross kept names alive which have largely been forgotten. 

[The Johnster]

Exactly.  Everybody knows the stories of Scott, Shackleton, and the lost Franklin expedition, but there were others, many of whom never came back but laid the groundwork for the later explorers.  I sometimes wonder if Scott would be so well remembered had it not been convenient at the time for his heroic failure to be championed as an example of British character and stoicism; even in my schooldays in the 60s there seemed to be an understanding that sneaky Amundsen, having already committed the unforgivable sin of not being British dammit Carruthers. had somehow cheated by not informing anyone when he was starting, using dogs as food when they could not haul any longer, and taking a more direct route.

 

Rae, who was proved right be later discoveries, was much censured for suggesting that some of Franklin's men had, in the last extreme, resorted to cannibalism. not because that was a terrible thing to have done but because it equated them to the French survivors on the Meduse's  raft; not British behaviour at all (dammit Carruthers).  One sympathises with Lady Franklin's strenuous campaigning to clear her husband's name, not that he was ever mentioned in connection with the cannibalism, but it seems very wrong to me for people who have never experienced the severity of polar conditions and the deprivations that were experienced on some of these failed expeditions to criticise men at the very end of their endurance.  You weren't there, you don't know what it was like, nor do I, but it must have been terrible beyond imagining.

 

Of course Rae was an easy target, not an establishment figure, not English, and was automatically questionable for having taken a First Nations wife who was more than capable of accompanying him on expeditions, I mean, what sort of gentleman does that!  Good lord, Carruthers, the bounder even took the word of 'Eskimo' savages (in fact completely reliable eyewitness accounts) regarding the fate of Franklin's ships and men.

[Ron Ron Ron]

A video of Pioneering Spirit arriving in Rotterdam a couple of weeks ago.

I saw this monster ship in the Baltic in the summer of 2019, when it was involved with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.

 

The Pioneering spirit only appears in the first potion of the first video..

 

 

 

 

An example of one of the many varied jobs this vessel is called upon to do.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.

[jjb1970]

A good example of how we forget explorers and navigators is Matthew Flinders. I suspect few of those using Euston station notice the statue of him and fewer still know anything about him despite his achievements in Australia and his legacy there. 

 

Britain has a rich maritime heritage and a tremendous list of achievements in marine engineering and naval architecture. Rightly or wrongly maritime trade was both a driver, beneficiary and essential component of the empire. Despite all that, and being aan island country, we aren't a maritime nation. Few know much about the sea and maritime matters, and I suspect fewer still have an interest.

[Flanged Wheel]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Despite all that, and being aan island country, we aren't a maritime nation. Few know much about the sea and maritime matters, and I suspect fewer still have an interest.

I’ve heard this referred to as “sea blindness”. Although often cited as a British problem, my experience is that it is globally true. The phrase is often used to refer to awareness of shipping and maritime trade but it extends to a lack of understanding of the ocean’s vital importance in providing half of the global oxygen, the oceanic currents that control climate, the cradle of life…

 

If I ruled the world (a terrifying but thankfully implausible prospect), then The Boundless Sea by the Cambridge historian David Abulafia would be compulsory reading. It is the best book I have read on the history of man and the oceans (his earlier book, The Great Sea, on the history of the Mediterranean, is a cracking read too).

[The Johnster]

The sea, ships, seafaring and all that is a quite separate world from that which most of us inhabit.  It has it's own culture, traditions, and marine law is the root basis of international law.  It is frightening how little those who live on land know of it, a matter that becomes apparent whenever such folk go to the seaside and express surprise at how quickly the tide comes in.

 

The same applies to railways, though to a lesser extent.  Apart from us, the enthusiasts, and those who work on them (there is a considerable overlap), nobody knows or cares much about them including the millions that use them daily.  Why should they?  Why should they be interested in seafaring matters?  People know more about aircraft than ships or trains.

[MarkC]

45 years ago, when I was starting my career, the traditional maritime ports still had a great understanding of shipping. The likes of South Shields, for example, saw 30,000 men & boys go to sea in the Merchant Navy during WW2 - 10,000 of them are still "on passage". And yet, these days, the same town has pretty much forgotten it all.

 

Mark

Edited August 14, 2023 by MarkC

[jjb1970]

Singapore is the second biggest container port in the world (after Shanghai), it's generally considered the world's most important maritime centre, at any time there is around a thousand ships within the port ( including those at anchor) and the maritime cluster employs thousands including a lot of high value legal and technical roles and high end technology providers. Despite that people outside of the maritime sector know very little beyond the fact they can see lots of ships at anchor.

 

I think it was made very clear in the pandemic. Shipping was critical to keeping wheels turning, had to respond to huge surges in demand while managing a humanitarian crisis for crews (stuck on-board for months, denied access to medical care, corpses stuck in the freezer etc) with hopelessly inadequate (or inept) support from governments. Yet the only thing most people noticed was the effect on shipping rates and as a result villified shipping.

[BR traction instructor]

Latest bulk carrier to dock in Silloth port just now...no sign of which commodity she brings though...

 

BeRTIe

[SteveyDee68]

A query, if I may…

 

I’ve lurked on this thread for a long time as I do ‘have an interest in ships’ although I class myself as being somewhat “sea blind”, as alluded to in an earlier post. Thus the talk of engine types, priming marine engines for starting etc etc is all technically way beyond my understanding but fascinating it’s own right. Therefore please forgive the following query, as it may be regarded as being “kindergarten level” by many who frequent these pages; then again, who better to ask?

 

Background

I recently purchased off eBay a whole series of neat little books about coasters (ships, not the things for putting glasses on, that would be a different thread) which provide lots of inspiration for modelling through many photos, although usually only one photo of any particular vessel. 
 

Usefully for modelling purposes, the author usually indicates the date they were built together with their original name, which means I can avoid using anything too modern to fit my time frame (so basically anything pre-1962).

 

However, he doesn’t give any other info - tonnage, length, beam etc.

 

Query

I’ve tried Google searching for some of them which hasn’t really worked. I also know of the Lloyd’s Registry but when entering a ship’s name for information I get an option for “more detail” (which is where I hope the pertinent detail may be) and am then faced with a whole set of terms relating to “clients” and agreeing to fees etc.

 

Can anyone tell me - is there a fee to look up information on the registry?

 

I’ve avoided clicking on the accept for the terms, as I can’t find anything about fees listed on the website!

 

The search page itself gives three fields to search under, the third of which (Flag) doesn’t help me at all as far as I can tell, but the other two…

 

IMO Number - forgive my dimness, what is that?

 

Ship Name - enter current name … what happens with ships that have been scrapped?

 

Many thanks for any help

 

Steve S

[jjb1970]

The IMO number is basically a number plate for the ship, it's a unique identifier which is displayed externally as well as on the ships statutory and class certificates and is assigned for the life of the ship. So if it changes owners and names the IMO number is the same. It is a global system, part of an IMO requirement, and was introduced to address concerns that it was very easy for ships to disappear. Not literally, but in terms of legal tracking.

 

For databases, the good ones like IHS and Clarksons have some public access but details are pay to access as its valuable information. Equasis is public access (you need to register an account) and has some good info, especially on safety:

 

https://www.equasis.org/EquasisWeb/public/HomePage

 

Some of the publicly available AIS databases like vesseltracker and marinetraffic are very good though a lot of the info on those sites needs a prescription too.

[KeithMacdonald]

11 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I think it was made very clear in the pandemic. Shipping was critical to keeping wheels turning, had to respond to huge surges in demand while managing a humanitarian crisis for crews (stuck on-board for months, denied access to medical care, corpses stuck in the freezer etc) with hopelessly inadequate (or inept) support from governments. Yet the only thing most people noticed was the effect on shipping rates and as a result villified shipping.

 

I agree, and I'm fairly sure if we had a "Anyone Interested in trucks" thread we would (quite rightly) see some similar comments. Maybe not the "corpses stuck in the freezer", but almost everything else. Like, middle-class people working from the comfort of their own homes during Lockdown still expected to get all their food & wine from supermarkets and and toys from Amazon, and would complain if they were late arriving. Somehow delivered by unseen, unmentioned, almost invisible "key worker" drivers that had kept working, otherwise no pay, and literally keeping the wheels turning. If it was set as a film of a Dickens novel, I expect there would be outrage at the treatment of servants. But not when it's our personal comfort at the expense of others. Like how some "rare earth" metals are mined by children, as critical materials for electric car batteries or the electronic toys we enjoy. So we here can signal our virtue by driving electric cars while ignoring how they are produced, or who they are produced by.

 

[jjb1970]

More images of the weird little 'Golden Star 1', I don't think she's a literal 'cut and shut' but I do get the impression the yard may have utilized a barge design adapted to a powered sea going vessel and it is awfully barge like. Yet her age (built 1995) indicates there can't be that much wrong with the build and that she does her job pretty well.

 

[jjb1970]

A couple of much bigger ladies going by in the distance.

 

[jjb1970]

A rather impressive Boskalis LCV going past the beach.

 

Edited August 15, 2023 by jjb1970

[The Johnster]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

More images of the weird little 'Golden Star 1', I don't think she's a literal 'cut and shut' but I do get the impression the yard may have utilized a barge design adapted to a powered sea going vessel and it is awfully barge like. Yet her age (built 1995) indicates there can't be that much wrong with the build and that she does her job pretty well.

 

 

She's certainly an odd little thing.  Perhaps designed or configured for a specific route.  Is 1995 the age of the build or her rebuilding from an earlier barge; that looks to be a much older hull form, at least at the for'ard end...

[Pacific231G]

On 14/08/2023 at 16:49, MarkC said:

45 years ago, when I was starting my career, the traditional maritime ports still had a great understanding of shipping. The likes of South Shields, for example, saw 30,000 men & boys go to sea in the Merchant Navy during WW2 - 10,000 of them are still "on passage". And yet, these days, the same town has pretty much forgotten it all.

 

Mark

This topic sometimes makes me feel like someone who went to the seminary but was never ordained!

 

I did half of my phase three in Shields in 1969-1970 (then bu**ered off to University) after spending two years in Plymouth getting my OND.

 

Plymouth was then far more a naval town and its relationship was far more with the RN than with the sea per-se while Devonport dockyard, which I think was the city's largest employer,  was very much on the other side of a high wall. We used to go to Millbay to visit actual cargo ships (mostly foreign and very hospitable to snotty cadets) and sniff around their engine rooms but it was really a port for coasters and short sea traders rather than larger ocean going ships.

 

Tyneside was still involved with shipbuilding but, perhaps like Glasgow, was far more about building ships than working them so, when Britain stupidly lost its shipbuilding industry, ships and the sea became a memory rather than a daily reality. (It also btw took me a long time to realise that S. Shields was still a coal mining town!) When I was there the largest ship ever built on the Tyne left the river and half of Tyneside turned out to watch it but it was a bit of a swansong. 

 

Apart from the loss of shipbuilding, I think the big changes were the globalisation of crewing, which meant that seafaring stopped being a major source of employment for ordinary Britons, and later the container and bulk revolution which meant that ships spend hours rather than days or weeks in port and the ports themselves often became far more removed from the traditional port cities.

I lived and worked in Southampton in the 1980s and the city did still have some relationship with the sea. The port was in the town (though you couldn't actually see much of it behind its walls) so there were quite a lot of people who worked in the docks and quite a few others who worked or had fairly recently worked on the liners. I did make a TV programme "Sea Change City" about the city's changing identity with the port no longer its raison d'etre.

 

Ironically, Southampton now handles more passengers than it ever did in the era of the great liners but, apart from jamming the city's roads when three or four cruise ships are in at once, the city's relationship with the sea (which it is actualy qute a long way from) now seems fairly marginal. The ships aren't crewed by Southamptonians and its doesn't take many people to handle them in port. There were and probably still are specialist firms associated with provisioning ships and other shore support including engineering but they  weren't an obviously distinct commercial sector.  

 

If we as a nation have lost our relationship with ships and the sea, it is perhaps because seafaring has lost its relationship with us.

Edited August 16, 2023 by Pacific231G

[jjb1970]

The NYK car carrier Helios Leader bunkering on a grey and overcast (but still warm and humid) day off Singapore. I have a soft spot for this one as I used to have a 1/150 scale builders model of one of the class in my old office, lovely model.

 

[jjb1970]

Two strange bedfellows anchored alongside each other, a big MSC box boat waiting to enter Pasir Panjang and a Seaway semi-submersible heavy lift ship.