Bridge collapse in the US

[chipbury]

On 15/05/2024 at 09:37, jjb1970 said:

 

There were numerous such cases. For a few months my job changed to basically trying to figure out how to cope with government restrictions. Some governments were basically making it impossible to get surveys done then getting heavy handed about deferred surveys. Seafarer welfare received negligible attention from most governments despite a lot of pontificating in public. The various IMO crew change procedures and guidelines were drafted by industry and agreed at IMO then promptly ignored by many member States.

 

The whole saga revealed something rotten. I would like to blame an inability to respond to exceptional circumstances and there was undoubtedly a lot of that but there was also a lot of deliberate decision making to throw seafarers under the bus and rules for thee but not for me. It altered my opinion of quite a few governments for the worse. Others struggled to cope but at least made an effort. Oddly (or perhaps not) the governments that impressed me by at least making an effort in many cases were countries most would give much thought to. Europe was awful.

I was stuck on a ship in Singapore during 2020, we sailed from Malta on 7th March, arriving in Singapore 5 weeks later in mid April.  We entered a shipyard and had daily contact with the local workers and management.  However we were denied a crew change for 4 months by the Singapore authorities as we were a health risk (armed guard on the gangway for the first few weeks).  As such a 5 week trip turned into a 5months plus trip.  Not a pleasant experience.

[jjb1970]

We came out to Singapore during the pandemic, that was a strange experience. We had to do two weeks quarantine which we knew about so couldn't complain, however every day we had calls from the Ministry of Manpower checking up on us (all four of us had calls, not just a call for the family). The strange bit was the journey out, the Singapore Airlines A350 had just over 40 passengers, of who 7 (including the four of us) entered Singapore. Changi airport looked like a zombie apocalypse zone, deserted, everything closed and the handful of workers were fully suited ready for an NBC attack or something, phones and tablets were in sealed wallets. It was eerie, walking through an empty airport which in normal times is one of the worlds great hubs being observed by a handful of people ready for a biological warfare attack. I had a 70 page document package with the entry permits, authorisations from the ministry of health, from the ministry of manpower etc and every page was checked.

After we cleared quarantine things were surprisingly open. We had to use the track and trace app, tap in/out of shops, restaurants etc and restaurant tables were double spaced to maintain distance but everything was open and people. The big thing was masks, that was rigid, and in a climate like Singapore it's not much fun wearing a mask everywhere. Strange times.

[Night Train]

I still dont get the Americans love of weighting incredibly heavy things using pounds? The video quotes 9-12 million pounds of steel to be removed. Surely using tons would be better? Or even washing machines.

Edited May 17 by Night Train

[PhilJ W]

44 minutes ago, Night Train said:

I still dont get the Americans love of weighting incredibly heavy things using pounds? The video quotes 9-12 million pounds of steel to be removed. Surely using tons would be better? Or even washing machines.

I recall some American model railway mags giving dimensions in thousandths of an inch as late as the 70's.

[Jeff Smith]

The US is still largely imperial, except of course a pint is 16 fluid ounces not 20…..so a US gallon is 4/5 of a real gallon….

 

If you look at the Kadee web site you’ll see lengths quoted in fractions of an inch.

 

You can buy electronic vernier calipers which display in fractions….

 

Thousands of an inch are easy to convert to mm, 40thou = 1mm.

[BR60103]

3 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

I recall some American model railway mags giving dimensions in thousandths of an inch as late as the 70's.

The latest issue of Model Railroader has 2 construction articles where the dimensions of plastic sheets and strips are given in thous. (.015", .030")  The plastic in my stores is either in thous or HO inches.

 I have a caliper that electronically switches between fraction, decimals, and metric.

 

I find it disconcerting looking at drawings that give the length of a prototype coach in mm.

 

[Ozexpatriate]

5 hours ago, Night Train said:

I still dont get the Americans love of weighting incredibly heavy things using pounds? The video quotes 9-12 million pounds of steel to be removed. Surely using tons would be better? Or even washing machines.

You make a relevant observation. It's about a simplification of the arcana of Imperial measures.

 

Distances less than a mile are almost always in feet. None of this yards, fathoms, rods, chains, furlongs, nonsense, thank you very much.

 

In the same way pounds are used rather than stones and hundredweight. Tons are confusing. For "ton" the US would use the "short ton" of 2,000 pounds, which is quite close to the metric tonne (907 kg), rather than the Imperial ton of 2,240 pounds (and isn't 2,240* is such an obvious number to use?)

 

* 20 cwt

 

Similarly volumes are in US gallons - not firkins, hogsheads, tuns or butts or puncheons or tierces or runletts.

 

Then there's barrels. The US oil barrel is 42 US gallons (39 Imperial gallons). The Imperial barrel is 36 gallons.

 

They're all nonsense. Three cheers for Système international d'unités.

[Ozexpatriate]

4 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

The US is still largely imperial, except of course a pint is 16 fluid ounces not 20…..so a US gallon is 4/5 of a real gallon….

There are 16 Imperial fluid ounces in the Imperial pint.  It is 20 US fl oz to the Imperial pint.

 

Once upon a time there was a wine gallon (Queen Anne's Gallon) and an ale gallon in the Imperial system. The US standardized on the wine gallon. The UK standardized on the ale gallon.

 

4 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

Thousands of an inch are easy to convert to mm, 40thou = 1mm.

Very close to. It's 1.016 mm.

 

Edited May 18 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

5 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

I recall some American model railway mags giving dimensions in thousandths of an inch as late as the 70's.

Worse than that Phil is that manufacturing dimensions of circuit boards still use thousandths* of an inch while semiconductors are metric. Packaging for semiconductors is changing to metric, gradually.

 

Even more absurd is that the "thou" is the same dimension as the "mil". Both of them are 1/1000 of an inch. 1,000 in Latin is mille. 

 

Mil should not be confused with millimetre (39.3701 mil).

[jjb1970]

I was always amazed there weren't more incidents in offshore oil and gas. Being still a largely US dominated industry a lot of the installations still ask for fuel, mud, base oil, brine and other fluids in US measures (gallons, tons) and cement and dry bulk sent to them using fluidised transfer (compressed air) in sacks. All well and good but the instrumentation on offshore vessels other than US ones is metric and both dry bulk and liquid measurement is in volume (m3). Which means the crew have to convert. The one that catches a lot of people out is tons, if new people weren't aware of the difference between ton and tonne it is very easy to convert volume to metric tonnes (a simple conversion based on SG) and get a different answer to tons. Fortunately a tonne is heavier than a ton so at least if people get it wrong they won't overfill tanks. On the other hand it would work the other way around is fuelling something like an aircraft for a long flight and too little was loaded (cough...Air Canada...gimli glider....cough).

[Ozexpatriate]

In what universe is a "hundredweight", logically 112 pounds? It is so, but not logically. Eight stone?

 

Even a gross is a dozen dozen - 144 - which would make sense to Babylonians who liked base 12.

 

Multiples in Imperial (a subset):

 

3 - feet to the yard

4 - quarts to the gallon

6 - feet to the fathom

8 - stone to the cwt / pints to the gallon / furlongs per mile

10 - chains per furlong

12 - inches to the foot

14 - pounds to the stone

16 - ounces to the pint

20 - cwt to the ton

22 - yards to the chain

 

This is of course an incomplete list.

 

It's bedlam.

 

It's as crazy as florins to the guinea (ten and a half florins - more properly ten florins and one shilling -  1/1/- if you are playing along). 

 

[MarkC]

6 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

The US is still largely imperial, except of course a pint is 16 fluid ounces not 20…..so a US gallon is 4/5 of a real gallon….

 

If you look at the Kadee web site you’ll see lengths quoted in fractions of an inch.

 

You can buy electronic vernier calipers which display in fractions….

 

Thousands of an inch are easy to convert to mm, 40thou = 1mm.

Back in 1998 I had to do an emergency drydocking in Norfolk, Va, after the rudder of my ship fell off whilst we were on our way up the Delaware River to Marcus Hook (Philadelphia). My first encounter with the lathe operator who was going to take a skim off the rudder stock during repairs led to some initial mental agility when he was talking about  "taking off thous" - but my school days & dealing with Imperial measurements quickly came back to me...

 

I suspect that my generation was the last to be taught in both Imperial & metric units...

 

mark

[Ozexpatriate]

16 minutes ago, MarkC said:

I suspect that my generation was the last to be taught in both Imperial & metric units...

Mark I'm likely a little younger than you. Australia went metric in 1974 - but I learned the basics of both in school. My technical university education (early 1980s) was 100% SI Units.

 

Working in the US was retrograde - plenty of Imperial units persisted (and still do).

 

Edited May 18 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

The most bonkers linear unit might be the cable.

 

Nominally 100 fathoms - ish. The Admiralty defined it as 1' of latitude (a tenth of a sea mile) - which of course varies, with latitude - and being on the surface of the earth, isn't (mathematically) even linear, or at least straight.

 

The USN makes it 120 fathoms.

[GrumpyPenguin]

11 hours ago, Night Train said:

I still dont get the Americans love of weighting incredibly heavy things using pounds? The video quotes 9-12 million pounds of steel to be removed. Surely using tons would be better? Or even washing machines.

There is a very simple answer to the at - our North American Cousins like to make out that everything US is bigger, hence using pounds instead of ton/tonnes.

 

[F-UnitMad]

3 hours ago, MarkC said:

my school days & dealing with Imperial measurements quickly came back to me...

 

I suspect that my generation was the last to be taught in both Imperial & metric units...

Pretty sure I was mostly taught metric at school (1970s) but there were still some books about with Imperial in them.

I still prefer to measure in feet & inches, until it's shorter than about half an inch, when millimetres are a bit easier. Although, working out fractions of an inch is fun too, but I get lost with 'decimal' fractions - e.g. 0.020" - Americans use these a lot and I'm lost. Is that "thou" they mean? Yes I know it's short for "thousands" from my younger days doing my own car maintenance, back when all you needed was a spark plug spanner, feeler gauges & an oil filter wrench!!!

 

I think my generation (born mid '60s) is the last to talk of Old Money, as I remember two prices on everything as decimalisation came in, and the old folk never got used to New Money and bored you to death with how the 50p coin couldn't possibly be as good as the old Ten-bob note.... 😂😂

 

Sorry, thread drift over....

[kevinlms]

58 minutes ago, F-UnitMad said:

Sorry, thread drift over....

That will NEVER happen!

[Hroth]

2 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

I think my generation (born mid '60s) is the last to talk of Old Money, as I remember two prices on everything as decimalisation came in, and the old folk never got used to New Money and bored you to death with how the 50p coin couldn't possibly be as good as the old Ten-bob note....

 

Well, the 10 bob note certainly weighed less and had less chance of wearing a hole in your pocket!

 

Thread drift?  Whats that? 🤔

 

[Hroth]

6 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

The most bonkers linear unit might be the cable.

 

Nominally 100 fathoms - ish. The Admiralty defined it as 1' of latitude (a tenth of a sea mile) - which of course varies, with latitude - and being on the surface of the earth, isn't (mathematically) even linear, or at least straight.

 

The USN makes it 120 fathoms.

 

Novels of Napoleonic naval war often speak of exchanging broadsides at a cables distance.

 

To the modern reader, it sounds a comfortable distance, but if you think 600 FEET away from the business end of a row of 32 pounders about to go bang?

 

Puts it in perspective.....

 

 

Oh well, its closer to shipping disasters.

 

[Michael Hodgson]

On 16/05/2024 at 08:31, Oldddudders said:

I suppose these luckless seafarers are regarded as accessories to a ‘crime’ of ultra-high profile and public visibility, despite their actually having limited input to the ship’s fitness to put to sea, still less the decision to do so. But inhumanity is the only description of their treatment.

Maryland was a slaveholding state during the Civil War and is considered to be one of the Southern States even though it didn't secede from the Union whose Congress declared "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness".

 

But of course, these sailors are Indians and Sri Lankans.

[Michael Hodgson]

 

 

9 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

In what universe is a "hundredweight", logically 112 pounds? It is so, but not logically. Eight stone?

 

Even a gross is a dozen dozen - 144 - which would make sense to Babylonians who liked base 12.

 

Multiples in Imperial (a subset):

 

3 - feet to the yard

4 - quarts to the gallon

6 - feet to the fathom

8 - stone to the cwt / pints to the gallon / furlongs per mile

10 - chains per furlong

12 - inches to the foot

14 - pounds to the stone

16 - ounces to the pint

20 - cwt to the ton

22 - yards to the chain

 

This is of course an incomplete list.

 

It's bedlam.

 

It's as crazy as florins to the guinea (ten and a half florins - more properly ten florins and one shilling -  1/1/- if you are playing along). 

 

Guinea coins ended before Victoria came to the throne.  They only continued as the traditional notional amounts of 21 shillings in auctions and for prize amounts for horse racing, only really of interest to the very wealthy.

 

Florins on the other hand were a deliberate first stage of decimalisation introduced early in the reign of Queen Victoria, and the anomaly was the half crown (aka half-dollar, because of historic exchange rates).  The idea was that as 1/10 pound the florin should supersede the half-crown in general circulation, but they failed to follow through with that idea.  Prior to their introduction we had coins with values of farthing (1/4d), ha'penny (1/2d), Penny (1d), thruppenny bit (3d), sixpence (aka tanner, 6d), shilling (or bob,1/-), half-crown (2/6) and crown (5/-) coins.  The farthing wasn't very far off being a decimal value as there were 960 of them to the pound. 

 

These were practical values suitable for everyday transactions.  The pound sterling had originally been a pound in weight of silver - far more than the ordinary working man would ever have or use.

 

In poorer parts of the British Empire, decimalisation based on 100p=£1 would have been inappropriate, so the East African Shilling became the Kenyan Shilling, consisting of 100 cents.

 

4 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

I think my generation (born mid '60s) is the last to talk of Old Money, as I remember two prices on everything as decimalisation came in, and the old folk never got used to New Money and bored you to death with how the 50p coin couldn't possibly be as good as the old Ten-bob note.... 😂😂

 

Replacement of notes by coin amounts to official acknowledgement of their loss in value because of inflation, and was therefore always unpopular. The 50p coin was introduced and ten bob note demonetised before decimalisation - and blamed on Harold Wilson, who was PM at the time, although it was probably more down to the then Chancellor, Jim Callaghan. 

 

The £1 coin replaced the £1 note in England some years later (Scotland keeping its £1 notes for a good while thereafter), and the Scots referred derisively to the coins as Maggie's washers).   Woe betide the politician who decides to replace the fiver with a plastic button!  Probably won't happen, we will be digital currency only.  Tony Blair got away with introducing the £2 coin into general circulation, reducing the demand for £5 notes, and the ATMs no longer issue them.

 

And of course not everyhwere accepted the end of the 10/- note - replaced in IoM by the relatively short-lived 50p banknote - usually viewed on the mainland as "Monopoly money".

 

[Michael Hodgson]

16 hours ago, Jeff Smith said:

The US is still largely imperial, except of course a pint is 16 fluid ounces not 20…..so a US gallon is 4/5 of a real gallon….

 

 

The ten-gallon hat is typical of Texas - an exageration!

[billbedford]

12 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

In what universe is a "hundredweight", logically 112 pounds? It is so, but not logically. Eight stone?

 

It was never logical. It is a remnant of the long hundred of 120 and was only defined as 112 lbs in the Weights and Measures Act 1835.

[F-UnitMad]

2 hours ago, Michael Hodgson said:

[Tony B. Liar] got away with introducing the £2 coin into general circulation, reducing the demand for £5 notes, and the ATMs no longer issue them.

Our local Post Office ATM still issues £5 notes, although I think withdrawals have to be in multiples of 10 - i.e. you can't request £25:00.

It's also the only ATM in town that's free to use - there being no Banks left now.

Edited May 18 by F-UnitMad

[TheQ]

I think the " Rod, Perch or Pole" is missing from this discussion, we certainly had to recite this measurement of 16 .5 feet at primary school.. so an acre is 4 rods by 40 rods.