edcayton Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 Just looked at the pictures. That is one hell of a hole in it, hardly caused by a "sand bar". Have we not had enough examples now that conventional lifeboats can't be launched on either side if a ship goes over on its side? Ed Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Belsay Lad Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 I wonder if it is a case that there are maybe too many decks stacked up on these vessels? They certainly seem to have more height above the waterline than liners of the past. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Debs. Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 I`m shocked and saddened: following the incredible relief of so-many thousands saved, there are now reports of 70 poor-souls, missing! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Brinkly Posted January 14, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 14, 2012 It is awful, truly awful. My thoughts are with the poor devils who are missing, and their families. Perhaps if we all hope and pray some good news might come from this awful disaster. Nick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jonny777 Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 Sand bar? From photos on the news, it seems to have hit a bloody great rock outcrop. Hope that the bridge crew have good excuses. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium spamcan61 Posted January 14, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 14, 2012 Sand bar? From photos on the news, it seems to have hit a bloody great rock outcrop. Hope that the bridge crew have good excuses. Indeed, how on earth anyone can drive a large, modern ship onto rocks next to a lighthouse in this day and age beggars belief :-/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16560050 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JZ Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 Sand bar? From photos on the news, it seems to have hit a bloody great rock outcrop. Hope that the bridge crew have good excuses. Indeed. Part of the outcrop is still in the ship. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
APOLLO Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 I wonder if it is a case that there are maybe too many decks stacked up on these vessels? They certainly seem to have more height above the waterline than liners of the past. I would not be suprised if this ships centre of gravity (due to the above) has a bearing on this incident. My condolences to the dead, injured and missing. Terrible event. Brit15 Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
noiseboy72 Posted January 14, 2012 Share Posted January 14, 2012 A couple of things, these ships are electrically powered, so if power is lost, you cannot steer, let alone stop. These ships are designed to operate in calmer waters than liners of old, so have a higher CoG. Very frightening to think of something so big and modern suffering like this. Thoughts are with passengers and crew. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold chris p bacon Posted January 14, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 14, 2012 A couple of things, these ships are electrically powered, so if power is lost, you cannot steer, let alone stop. These ships are designed to operate in calmer waters than liners of old, so have a higher CoG. Very frightening to think of something so big and modern suffering like this. Thoughts are with passengers and crew. Thats sort of true in that Liners where designed for a particular route and speed, but with the new designs the CoG is generally much lower, they are alluminium superstructure and the engines (100,000Hp +) are on the vessel bedplate. We have Just booked cruises No 18 +19 and we have done 3 transatlantics on vessels such as these, twice via Madeira and once via Iceland. In a force 8 one time mid Atlantic, Stability was amazing as they use stabilisers below the waterline that negate the top swell, they may look cumbersome but the manoeuverability of these has to be seen, they can turn on their own axis as well as use bow thrusters to move sideways. Sadly this has the hallmarks of senior crew not being on the bridge as the shipping route is some 3-4 miles offshore. Something else that may have a bearing on the outcome was that the ships officers did not carry out the SoLaS (Safety of Life at Sea) drill after leaving the first port, these have to be done in the first 24 hours and they are effectively a lifeboat drill. I have seen though a certain impatience in passengers at having to do these, similar to the safety briefings on aircraft, and having seen a Costa ship disgorge 3000 Italians in Dubrovnik I can only imagine the panic. On the news channels much was being made of the rigid lifeboats not able to be launched but these are just one type of lifeboat available to the crew, they also carry water activated rafts and a ship of this size now carries enough boats/rafts for about 10,000. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Simon Lee Posted January 14, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 14, 2012 As people are dead and missing, perhaps as with railway and aircraft accident threads we should not speculate as to what has gone wrong. Non of us, as far as I am aware, were on the bridge of the ship when it came to grief therefore speculation helps on-one. and yes I have lost a relative at sea so please lets stick to the facts until the inquiry publishes its report. Simon Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium PhilJ W Posted January 14, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 14, 2012 I second what Simon has said, the same rules should apply as when discussing a fatal rail accident. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold chris p bacon Posted January 14, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 14, 2012 As people are dead and missing, perhaps as with railway and aircraft accident threads we should not speculate as to what has gone wrong. Non of us, as far as I am aware, were on the bridge of the ship when it came to grief therefore speculation helps on-one. and yes I have lost a relative at sea so please lets stick to the facts until the inquiry publishes its report. Simon I understand what you are saying but my comments were generic information and not meant to be speculative. Information on the ships course is available on AiS and it can clearly be seen to be too close to a rock/crag outcrop, after passing this point it changes course by some 40 degrees to the island of Guiglio. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold chris p bacon Posted January 15, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 15, 2012 For those interested I have attached some pics of todays navigational aids available to mariners This is her course For a 112,000 ton ship this is a most unusual course to take Her final position. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium kevinlms Posted January 15, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 15, 2012 A couple of things, these ships are electrically powered, so if power is lost, you cannot steer, let alone stop. These ships are designed to operate in calmer waters than liners of old, so have a higher CoG. Very frightening to think of something so big and modern suffering like this. Thoughts are with passengers and crew. Surely not. If power supply had been lost, should there not be some battery or other auxiliary power supply to keep the ship under control. From the photos at night there is nothing wrong with the lighting. As for calmer waters, the photos indicate almost a millpond. I dread to think of what the outcome would have been if a major storm was ocurring. Kevin Martin Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeremyC Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 As a ship's engineer I will not speculate on the actual causes, but I will make a few comments on others comments! Lifeboat davits are gravity fall; beyond a certain degree of list they will not deploy. Regulations for passenger ship's [iIRC] require sufficient lifeboats on each side of the ship for the full complement of the ship. As far as I can discover this is a diesel electric ship i.e engines driving generators which supply the propulsion motors. From the photos I've seen I suspect the hole is in the machinery spaces, which probably meant total loss of propulsion. The fact the lighting is on in some photos doesn't mean the ship is 'under command'. In the event of power failure there will be an emergency generator which cuts in, [45 seconds maximum after power loss unless another supply becomes available] this will supply lighting and some other vital services [steering, fire pumps etc] but will not provide propulsion. Usual comments from some reporters about how this could happen to a modern ship, I don't know how it came to hit the rock, but as far as going over on its side my answer is look at the size of the hole. At that size it may well have breached the tank tops. The laws of stability apply to any ship modern or otherwise. If the machinery spaces are flooded then free surface effect may take charge and as the 'Herald of Free Enterpise' disaster showed that can totally destroy a ships stability. A ships stability is determined by the the metacentric height. I'll not try to explain it all, but if people are interested then http://en.wikipedia....acentric_height. Jeremy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
edcayton Posted January 15, 2012 Author Share Posted January 15, 2012 Yes, but on the Herald there was a large open car deck which when flooded to a couple of inches could capsize the ship (which I thought designers had sought to minimise with partitions etc). That is not the case with these large cruise ships, but they do look very "top heavy". Is the superstructure Aluminium as suggested earlier? Again, this is not meant to be speculation, I'm just curious. Ed Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
JeremyC Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 Yes, but on the Herald there was a large open car deck which when flooded to a couple of inches could capsize the ship (which I thought designers had sought to minimise with partitions etc). That is not the case with these large cruise ships, but they do look very "top heavy". Is the superstructure Aluminium as suggested earlier? Again, this is not meant to be speculation, I'm just curious. Ed Yes you're quite correct. I can't find a picture / description of the machinery spaces so I am speculating here for this vessel, but by their nature engine rooms often tend to be big open spaces across the width of the ship. Of course they're deep inside the vessel so major flooding of them is unlkely though not impossible, [the most likely cause would be a pipe failure]. Emergency pumping of flooded machinery rooms is done by an emergency suction to the main SW cooling pumps, but if you've no power or can't reach the valve! Jeremy Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold chris p bacon Posted January 15, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 15, 2012 I can't find a picture / description of the machinery spaces so I am speculating here for this vessel, but by their nature engine rooms often tend to be big open spaces across the width of the ship. Of course they're deep inside the vessel so major flooding of them is unlkely though not impossible, [the most likely cause would be a pipe failure]. Emergency pumping of flooded machinery rooms is done by an emergency suction to the main SW cooling pumps, but if you've no power or can't reach the valve! Jeremy Concordia has 6 Wartsila engines (about 100,000 hp) so her engine space is going to be quite a large area, I think she is Azimuth pod as well, which cannot be powered by emergency generators (stand to be corrected), I wonder if they deployed the stabilisers as a means of steering the ship as she is facing the opposite direction (just a thought). Looking at the TV pictures the hole in the hull is in the area of the engine room of most modern cruise ships, water comes in very fast as well as leaves very fast, hence the rolling of the ship. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium Legend Posted January 15, 2012 RMweb Premium Share Posted January 15, 2012 We can't and shouldnt speculate on the cause. I think this may be a wake up call. I've now been on around 30 cruises and have got fed up with the lifeboat drill and treat it as a bit of the cruise to be got over before heading to the bar. For sure I will be paying more attention the next time! I think maybe we have just had another "Titanic" moment where maybe over time people have thought that a modern cruise ship foundering was almost impossible. While I sympathise with anyone suffering loss, and to the passengers and crew of the Concordia who have just had the most traumatic experience, hopefully we can learn from this. I don't think people should jump to conclusions about the boat being so close to shore. Perhaps she was steered there deliberately to make it easier to launch the boats , We need to wait and see Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold chris p bacon Posted January 15, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 15, 2012 I don't think people should jump to conclusions about the boat being so close to shore. Perhaps she was steered there deliberately to make it easier to launch the boats , Afraid the navigation says otherwise, no distress calls were recorded until she passed through the Islets, her course took her barely a ships length from the shoreline. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Stationmaster Posted January 15, 2012 RMweb Gold Share Posted January 15, 2012 Having a mild interest in ships and the sea but a very limited knowledge - especially of merchant ships where what little I do know is either long out of date or came some years back from colleagues in the marine part of Lloyd's Register - I can see nothing wrong with members on here explaining for our benefit the technology of modern cruise ships or even explaining how equipment failures are dealt with/could affect, say, navigation; that is 'explanation' and not 'speculation'. I can't see anything wrong either in drawing attention to a freely available source which indicates the ship took an unexpected/unusual course - that too is nothing more than information. Suggesting an explicit course of events which led to the unfortunate foundering of this ship and the consequent deaths etc is probably speculative unless someone has a hotline to the investigators and should be avoided in the same way - as noted by Phil - that we try to avoid speculation about incidents on the railway, especially those involving fatalities. Edit typo Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
trisonic Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 Yes, it's kind of an obvious thing that she went too close to shore. I saw a dirty great rock embedded in her side on TV. It's why she did that is speculation... Best, Pete. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
bmg Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 There's a good cutaway drawing of the hull here: http://www.nedcruise.info/costa_concordia.htm It's interesting that she is at rest heading in the opposite direction to her intended course. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Boris Posted January 15, 2012 Share Posted January 15, 2012 This is incredible, when you see the photographs from shore, you can see how close they really are, quite literally within swimming distance, the town was obviously quite well lit, so it does beg the question as to how they missed it. That's a huge great bit of geology sticking out the bottom too! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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