Re: Cruise ship raises two questions for you about ship desi
I saw the exact same thing done on the river clyde many years ago. A cargo ship loaded with sugar, was at a mooring, when another ship broke its mooring, slammed into the sugar boat, and holed her, the pilot got on the radio, and told the captain, "beach her" but the captain delayed, he waisted valuable time telling the pilot station, he didnt want to run his ship aground, the ship now listing badly was finally ran onto the beach, as soon as it hit the beach, it just fell over, and is still there on its side to this day. Its different from these ships, to car ferries, I saw a russian factory fishing ship go down, it was holed, then flooded, and went down in the classic, stern up, bow down, we stood by it for hours waiting for it to go, the crew had been taken off, and we watched as the ship got lower with every lurch, and the lifeboats were eventually torn off the falls, by the sea, and then the water reached the bridge doors, which were just swinging before the ship finally went down, thats the way a ship holed bellow the water line goes down, the weight of water, and loss of buoyancy takes it to the bottom.
A car ferry however, is different, the car deck is above its center of gravity, and the estonian ferry as well as the Herald of free enterprise (the uk ferry sailing from france) both had their bow doors, in one case, smashed in, in the other case, sailed with them open. Water got onto the car deck, and was able to move freely from one side to the other, causing a free surface effect, well above the water line, and above the ships center of gravity, it dosent take much to roll it over. Its like putting water onto a tray, and trying to carry it, a gallon of water, maybe an inch deep on the tray, suddenly makes the tray, hard to control. But when the water is below the ships water line, you dont get that free surface effect, because the water that gets inside, is always lower than the level of water outside, when it gets level with the water level outside, that is when the ship sinks.
As to water tight compartments, Lloyds insist any ship that is insured with them, have a deck level mark, below which, the ship can be made water tight, but nothing above that mark needs to be made watertight, and the watertight doors, need to be able to be operated locally and from the bridge, but, with a hole the size of the hole on that ship, the water tight doors would be all but useless. Anyone near those doors, and seeing that water coming in, is not going to hang around, and drown waiting on a slow moving hydralic door to close, they are going to get out of there, and by the time the bridge know to close the doors, its too late.
Their was a cruise ship, off south africa, ten or twenty years ago, that had either a greek, or italian captain. A cooling water pipe burst in the engine room, and started flooding the place, it was only a short time, before the water shut down the generators, then the engines, and when that happend, it was curtains for the ship, they had no pumps, no ability to close water tight doors, so they just did a mayday, and abondoned, again captain was ashore before the rest of the crew, and most of the passangers, claimed he went ashore in a lifeboat, to direct rescue operations from the shore side. I think their were a few cassualties, but not many, but that was just a burst cooling pipe, and a badly managed engine room.
I was on one, where the same thing happend, engineer, turned off the bilge alarms, and went onto the bridge, spent his four hour watch on the bridge, when he returned to the engine room, to hand over his watch, it was flooded, from a one inch pipe, main engine shut down, a few mins after he got to the engine room, (so he claimed and claimed he had only been gone for five mins) but the generator kept going, and that is what saved the ship, because we were able to run the pumps, which could pump out faster, than water was getting in, the pipe that had broken, was handle shaped, six inches long, and one inch diameter, thousands of gallons passed through that pipe, in the time he was out of the engine room.
