Loss of the Brigantine Albatross

[Roger Long]

While searching the net for Google hits where I can get my recent phone number change listed, I discovered that the Google Books exerpt for the book "Tall Ships Down" is the chapter describing my involvement in the loss investigation of the "Albatross" which was the subject of the considerably fictionalized film "White Squall".

http://books.google.com/books?id=XH...&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result

A quick free read for those of you snowbound in New England today.

This was another vessel I studied in which the stability was so poor that, if allowed to heel steadily under wind pressure with the freeing ports closed, the weight of water pouring over the railcaps could capsize her. Both vessel with these characteristics were over rigged as film sets and then put into sail training service after the studios disposed of them. The other one is also discussed in the full book although the author did a poor job on that chapter.

 

[Ctskip]

Fascinating is all I can say. Thank you for keeping us involved, not only in the safety aspect of our sport but also in the attempt to stay that way, by giving us the whys and the wherefores of design. Maybe it'll save a life or two. Thanks for your contribution. I'll look to get a copy today. Thank you.

Keep it up,
Ctskip

 

[kloudie1]

Excellent stuff, Roger!

 

[Benny]

Roger my commendation on your excellent work in helping form regulations and your contribution in enhancing safety standarts for the USCG certifications of boats. Reading the article confirmed my belief that ship design is a result of trade offs. Certain safety risks are considered inescapable in consideration of other design and building factors. The idea of considering and eliminating those characteristics that were common in ships that have floundered while preserving those characteristics of ships that have not, creates a practical and effective way of improving present ships. The Albatros was reportedly sailing with 3/4 of its canvas up as it was low on and conserving fuel. The light air configuration suited the prevalent weather. Survivors reported being struck by what was described as a microburst of high intensity wind which may have put them in irons with no steering to be able to get ahead of the wind. With no time to drop sail nor secure hatches the boat apparently heeled over allowing water to come in over the rail and floundered. This description of the event points more to chance or bad luck than to an inheretly dangerous design. The modifications made were deemed to be conservative at the time in comparison to others. It was doomed by a combination of factors which either by itself would probably have not been of any consequence. It is indeed a challenge to design a boat against that. I still question the design characteristics of these modern cruise ships although they probably rely more on their speed and communications than their sea worth for staying out of trouble.

 

[Roger Long]

Survivors reported being struck by what was described as a microburst..

Ships with poor stability get hit by microbursts. Ships with good stability get hit by squalls. Much was made of microbursts in the "Pride of Baltimore" accident (which I was also in up to my eyebrows) but I had a phone conversation with the man who discovered and named microbursts. He told me that there couldn't have been any in that weather pattern.

This description of the event points more to chance or bad luck than to an inheretly dangerous design. The modifications made were deemed to be conservative at the time in comparison to others.

If I were at my office today where I could dig out and post one of the population study graphs I did for the SSV research, you wouldn't say it was bad luck. There is a whole cluster of ships up in the right hand corner. Way down at the bottom left are three clustered together. All capsized. There is more white space between these three and "normal" than the spread of the normal region.

Right at the lower edge of the normal region is the "Pride of Baltimore". I was once explaining the research and stability to a meeting of the Society of Educational Sailing Ship Masters. I pointed to the "Pride" mark on the graph and said, "The position of this point means that, while the Pride is not an accident waiting to happen, she is the vessel in the population most likely to suffer a stability accident." At that moment, the survivors were drifting in the liferaft but had not yet been spotted and no one on shore knew that she had gone down.

 

[HukilauMike]

Fascinating. I remember reading Ernest Gann's "Song of the Sirens". He apparently owned "Albatross" before Sheldon did, and in Sirens, Gann described how Sheldon had changed the rig and thereby compromised stability. 20/20 hindsight?

 

[Roger Long]

Guilt rather than hindsight I would think. The spars for the film conversion were oversized so they would look like a larger vessel in close ups. I remember doing a calculation of how much extra weight was in the rig due to making he yards thicker than normal proportions. We had complete plans for the rig, right down to the bands for attaching the fittings.

Sheldon changed the rig but only to remove the gaff which would have slightly decreased weight aloft. It was the original conversion to a brigantine that doomed the ship.

 

[saltyoldman]

Roger were you at all involved with the investigations on the sinking of the Marques?

 

[ITMaster]

Thanks Roger. I usually get choked up watching the movie, even though I know it is highly fictionalized.

Thanks for your help in getting some regs to help keep something like this from becoming realities again and again.

 

[Roger Long]

Roger were you at all involved with the investigations on the sinking of the Marques?

I pretty much was the investigation. It's the one of the three in the "Tall Ships Down" book where I was formally involved instead of as a researcher. I was hired by the British government to be their impartial expert investigator and witness, serving roughly as what is called "friend of the court" over here. For some reason, the author of the book barely mentions my involvement.

I reconstructed the vessel's lines and stability data from very sketchy information such as tonnage documents and photographs since her plans had disappeared years before. She was one of those three dots way off to the bottom left on the graphs I referred to in a post above and reconstructed roughly from memory below. (I hurt my back the other day and it’s going to be a while before I pull that big box off my shelf of archives).

I got over to London and immediately learned that the fix was in. The wreck commissioner is a lawyer hired to serve as the judge of the inquiry. It turned out that the commissioner and the lawyer for every single party in a defensive position, owner, insurance company, etc., all worked for the same law firm. In England, you see, everyone is a gentleman and can be counted on to behave honorably so they don’t have to obsess about silly issues like conflict of interest as we do here in wild America.

The British regulators revealed that, yes, they had issued a letter exempting the vessel from all regulations and oversight. They are permitted to do that although only after the vessel is surveyed and her stability determined. They skipped that step since it would have inconvenienced the queen’s cousin who owned the vessel. However, they had estimated the vessel’s stability after the fact and determined that she would have been considered suitable for the intended sail training service so stability was not an issue in the loss. It must have been a microburst or other event that no vessel could be expected to survive (despite the fact that she was in the middle of a fleet).

I testified for a day about my research and methods. I was working very closely with another naval architect whose sister had been lost on the vessel and a U.S. trial lawyer. We were careful to include in my testimony the fact that all of the methods we were using were completely described in “White’s Naval Architecture”, the standard British textbook on the subject published in the 1870’s.

On day two, I sketched a diagram on the chalkboard during lunch and picked up my testimony like this:

We have all agreed here that these curves represent wind force and that the state of the art does not allow us at this point to determine exactly the wind speed value associated with any particular curve. The intersection of each curve with the righting arm curve (graph of the vessel’s stability) indicates the steady heel angle for that wind force but we simply don’t know what it is. However, we don’t need to know that.

Testimony has been accepted that the vessel was sailing with her deck edge just at the water level. That would be this wind curve intersecting the righting arm curve at that angle. This curve could represent the full sail plan in a light wind, storm sails in a gale, or even bare poles an a storm, any combination of forces that would produce the heel angle we know existed just before the accident. This curve up here is the lowest one that does not intersect the righting arm curve anywhere and therefore represents the least wind force that could capsize the vessel.

According to testimony, the only thing that changed between these two curves is the wind force. We can therefore take the square root of the initial value of each curve and simply divide one by the other to determine the percentage increase in wind force necessary to take the vessel form her normal sailing condition, the one in which it has been accepted she was sailing just prior to the loss, to capsize. The result is 22%.

There was then, in the room where the House of Lords met during WWII, the most complete hush and dead silence I have ever heard in a room with several hundred people. The owner of the vessel put his face in his hands. It was certainly the most dramatic moment of my life. Seeing the “Titanic” appear out of the murk through the submarine’s porthole didn’t begin to compare.

I went on to point out that a wind gusts 50% above nominal velocity are common and the accident was therefore nearly inevitable on a blustery night.

After I returned to the US, the vessel’s lines plan was discovered and I was able to redo all of my calculations. The results changed only insignificantly.

My findings were accepted by the inquiry but they let the owner off the hook by saying that only Roger Long could have known that the vessel’s stability was deficient and therefore no one was at fault. They had to ignore huge parts of my testimony to do this. It certainly made me look good but never has a compliment made me so angry.

All this sound and fury leading to such an absurd conclusion was about a ship that had NO BALLAST! Sure, she had some heavy ferro cement fuel and water tanks but their total weight (empty) was only 12% of displacement vs the 30 – 40 that would be typical for a vessel of her class. Further, she had an oversized rig for her original purpose of portraying a clipper ship in a film. Maybe the regulators weren’t privy my research but, if they had sent someone aboard to look, it should have gone something like this:

Hmm. No ballast. Wow, big rig. I wonder what holds her up? Are all sailing ships like this? Maybe I’d better do a little research. An afternoon in the library would have saved 19 lives.

 

[tsmwebb]

Thanks Roger. Interesting as always. On your graph what is a stability numeral? Is the dashed line LPS = 90 degrees?

--Tom.

 

[Roger Long]

The Stability Numeral is an artifice of the USCG stability regulations and is the result of a calculation incorporating the areas under the wind heel and righting arm curves, the displacement of the vessel, and some other factors.

The basic theory of the calculation was proven faulty by later research conducted by the Wolfson Unit in England but it still indirectly provides a reasonable basis of comparison of a vessel's overall resistance to being heeled by wind to downflooding or capsize angle.

The dashed line simply indicates the lower bound of what has been successful in the past vs what has failed. Every vessel we could get data on that fell to the lower left was a casualty and there were none above and to the right. Very compelling.

The original graphs had heel angles and numbers on them but this give you a good idea of the general picture.

 

[tsmwebb]

The Stability Numeral is an artifice of the USCG stability regulations and is the result of a calculation incorporating the areas under the wind heel and righting arm curves, the displacement of the vessel, and some other factors.

Amazing. I've got a sail cert on my license and I've been present during COI stability tests and I've never even heard of the Stability Numeral before. I presume 100% of sailing catamarans would fall below the dashed line on your chart (no?), but you can get a COI for 20 pax on a 40' sailing cat by passing a simple initial stability test...

--Tom.

 

[Roger Long]

Amazing.but you can get a COI for 20 pax on a 40' sailing cat by passing a simple initial stability test...

There weren't enough cats around back when I was involved with this for me to remember what, if anything, they did. In any event, if the vessel doesn't go overnight, which is the case for most cats and many monohulls, you can do a simplified stability test below 65 feet and 49 passengers.

The stability numeral calculations require a full inclinning experiment and also include minimum range of stability requirements that would be difficult for most cats to meet. OTOH, the simplified stability test over emphasizes the importance of initial stability so treats cats very favorably.

 

[tsmwebb]

http://vlex.com/vid/19859946

Better: http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/cfr_2007/octqtr/pdf/46cfr171.057.pdf

--Tom.

 

[Roger Long]

That jogs my memory. I remember seeing that cat stuff but no one I knew or worked for had one so I didn't pay much attention. Now that you've found the CFR's you can see what the stability numerals are.

I haven't worked with any of this stuff for over 10 years. After decades of aggravation, I made it one of my life's goals never to have to speak with anyone in USCG inspections again I also have been working strictly with powerboats since the early 90's.

I have the final engineering and stability approvals on all my designs handled by either another naval architect or the shipyard now. I focus on getting the basic design right having reached the age and reputation where I can get away with just doing the fun stuff.

 

[tsmwebb]

After decades of aggravation, I made it one of my life's goals never to have to speak with anyone in USCG inspections again I also have been working strictly with powerboats since the early 90's.

I understand. The tales one could tell ... Also, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that that GZ curve isn't for any catamaran (maybe a tri w/less than 100% floats)... I think I grok what they're after with the formulae but on first blush I'm not sure they have it nailed...

[addendum: I just ran some numbers and while my cat qualifies for offshore work under their definition the formula is completely bogus. If nothing else, the definition of Hc is not sufficient to define the healing moment. GIGO.]

--Tom.

 

[Roger Long]

I think I grok what they're after with the formulae but on first blush I'm not sure they have it nailed...

Not nailed? Hell, they don't even have a hammer. They don't even know what a saw is. The stability regulations can be proven with a simple thought experiment to be absolutely useless. They only evaluate differences in vessels in the conditions in which accidents seldom occur. They become completely irrelevant as soon as the wind rises beyond pleasant conditions. They allow you to operate a more dangerous hull by making inconsequential changes to the rig.

A vessel which has already capsized in Maine can (and continues to) operate as a windjammer cruise boat. It's a vessel now one with a smidgen of knowledge of sailing vessels would take beyond the protected waters of the coast. Meanwhile, the Schooner "When and If", designed by John Alden for a circumnavigation and with twice the angle to downflooding and twice the ultimate range of stability can not be operated under the same rules because it is not considered to have enough stability!

I was able to get substantial improvements made in the SSV rules, which "When and If" can operate under, but I did it knowing I was tinkering around the edges of a crazy and almost irrational set of regulations.