SHIP PICTURES

AND POTTED HISTORIES IF YOUR LUCKY!

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COSCO heavy lift ship with 4 portainers at Vancouver it carried from Shanghai

An 11,000 ton balancing act

In the early morning of February  16, 2006, the  semi-submersible vessel M.V. Kang Sheng Kou of COSCO Shipping, taking advantage of its advanced dynamic positioning system,  accomplished a float-over positioning installation of the topside weighing more than 11000 tons in the PM3-CAA oilfield off Thailand Bay.

Above one of the best ships I sailed on, the ' Maltasian" an Ellermans medi boat.

Our long time NSW member David Lennon sent us this picture of of this fabulous model  of the "Orontes" which is in the Newcastle Maritime Museum, which David said is really well worth a visit.

QE2 Vs TUG

From  http://www.tugspotters.com/verslag/archief/int.junil.2005.htm

 
 When the QUEEN ELISABETH 2 left the Norwegian city Ålesund Sunday evening, (18-06-05) there was an incident with the tug MULTIMAMMUT.

Apparently there was a line still attached between the tug and liner which should not have been, and as the QE2 moved out, it pulled the tug very far over until the bridge nearly was awash.

The line then came loose from the tug, and the tug righted itself immediately.

As I understand things, the tug had not taken on water, but would have done so if the bridge had gone under.

No persons were injured. It seems to have hit the news just a few minutes ago - there is yet only one newsitem out on it, and a rather information-challenged one at that.

The local newspaper in Ålesund doesn't seem to do much updating of its website on Sundays.

There is no information or indication of fault yet. 

SOME PHOTOS FROM JOHN MEARS OF HIS EARLY YEARS.

Like most of us he has a lot of them - but more so!

Not exactly a ship but you have to start somewhere!

John in a nostalgic mood, recalling the day in the early thirties when his Dad purchased a secondhand 1927  Austin 7 saloon. The same size and make of this little vehicle. The saloon version had a bench type back seat just wide enough to squeeze in three small children.

The "SS Atlantian"

John was second steward on her (stores officer). He did a voyage to the West Indies - one he is still trying to forget. The firemen and the deckies started to sell their weekly rations, sugar, tea, etc. for rum. He was not very popular when he had to tell them that the chief steward had told him he was not to issue any more victuals until they stopped that practice. All those stories you have heard about the 'Hungry Harrison' boats could not be truer.

"The SS Voco Standard"

John saw the war out on this tanker, doing several voyages, signing on five times over a period of nineteen months. Of the seven ships he was on during the war, including one on which he came back to the UK twice as a DBS. Five were sunk by torpedoes and one was bombed. He was only on three of them at the time. He feels he could have been a bit of a jinx as even the Voco, coming out of New York harbour on 27 September 1944, managed to ram a ship and sink it.

John's last voyage was on P & Os "Iberia" he and his new bride, Marea, had their Honeymoon aboard when the Iberia was cruising out here in April 1971.
The Iberia only lasted 17 years being a victim of her older style inefficient engines in the days of rapidly rising fuel prices.
Just like now!

****

Below some more pictures from John's collection

The "Windsor Castle" in the prewar days.

John was assistant pantryman, a fellow crew member was Len Wade, another of our Vindi lads who was nine days into his first voyage when the "Windsor" copped it in the Mediterranean by a JU 88 torpedo bomber on 23 March, 1943

With those funnels a coal burner no doubt.

The "SS Palermo"
A lovely little ship belonging to Ellerman Wilson Line, she survived WW2.

Shaw Savilles "Wairangi" that replaced the "Wairangi" sunk in the Pedastal convoy to Malta.
Fittingly this Wairangi took part in the Normandy invasion on D Day.

The Queen Mary 2

 This is from a postcard sent to John by UK Vindi boy Brian Aspinall who was a passenger on her maiden voyage from Europe to the West Indies and the USA. Brian said in the postcard that Captain Warwick could remember sailing with Brian in his cadet days.  

SOME MOMENTOUS MOVEMENTS AT SEA AT SEA TODAY

Above the 'Mighty Servant2' with a load for Shell oil

The "Blue Martin" loads a BP oil rig "Thunder Horse" in Korea for the Texas offshore oilfields

The "Mersey Mammoth" transporting a 40 ton tower crane from Swansea To Newport

The HLV "Blue Martin" brings home the "USS Cole". The big hole was caused by a terrorist bomb. 

The "Mighty Servant 1"

Arrives in Seattle with a floating Dry dock on board it carried from Norfolk Virginia

 Military Sealift Command  moves World War II-era drydock
(MSC = Military Sealift Command the US equivalent of our RFA) ed.

Military Sealift Command chartered heavy lift ship MV Mighty Servant I to transport former Navy floating drydock Resolute.

The World War II-era drydock was leased to Todd Pacific Shipyards in Seattle.

Mighty Servant I will transport Resolute from Norfolk, Va., the 522-foot long drydock's former berth, to Seattle. The two began the journey on July 10 and should arrive in Seattle by the end of August.

Heavy lift ships are designed specifically to carry large, unwieldy cargo like drydocks, damaged vessels and oil rigs.

To load their cargo, ships like the 623-foot long Mighty Servant I semi-submerge.

The ship fills her internal tanks with water to lower her deck below water level so cargo can be floated on board. Once the cargo is positioned on the ship, the internal tanks are emptied, raising the ship to the water's surface and the cargo is secured for transport.

Although the process sounds simple, it takes hours for the internal tanks to fill and then empty.

Securing the cargo to the ship is a very exact process that can also take a long time.

"The drydock is secured to Mighty Servant I by a series of landing blocks and shores, each designed to keep the drydock stable," said Jay Standring, MSC marine transportation specialist. "Such exact measurements require months of planning."

Over the next two months, Mighty Servant I will travel from Norfolk, Va., to Seattle by going around South America and through the Strait of Magellan.

Mighty Servant I is too wide to fit through the Panama Canal.

The 552-foot long Resolute was deactivated in 2003 after more than 50 years of service.

The floating drydock was modified in 1982 to meet the requirements of a changing Navy. After her modifications, Resolute drydocked more than 130 submarines before being deactivated.

Todd Pacific Shipyards will lease Resolute for the next five years.

The Navy offered Resolute for lease after identifying a need for additional drydock capacity in the Seattle area.

In addition to chartering ships to move Department of Defense cargo, MSC operates more than 110 noncombatant, civilian-crewed ships that replenish U.S. Navy ships at sea, chart ocean bottoms, conduct undersea surveillance and preposition combat cargo at sea.

 Military Sealift Command, ATTN: Public Affairs, 914 Charles Morris Ct. SE, Washington Navy Yard, DC, 20398-5540
 General Information: 1-888-SEALIFT • Marine Employment Opportunities: 1-877-JOBS-MSC  • Email: webmaster@msc.navy.mil   

Above the "MERCY" a USA Hospital ship manned and run by the MSC

The MSC "Texas" in choppy seas.

Despite the enormous USA airlift capacity 95 % of US military requirments are still moved by sea.

Heavy Lift ship bringing two new Portainers into Port Tilbury, London

It didn't give the name of the ship but I saw a very similar ship bring two like cranes to Port Botany some years ago.

The amount of water in the ship's ballast tanks are adjusted to bring the deck rail lines that the cranes run on to exactly the same level as the wharf  rail crane lines, the ship is moored to the wharf at a 90 degree angle, with the wharf lines meeting the lines on the ramp.

The cranes are then towed off the deck and onto the temporary wharf lines which are so laid to be able to manoeuver the cranes one by one onto the permanent crane lines on the wharf.

An operation than can take all day and needs calm weather.

SUBMERSING HEAVY LIFT SHIP

The HEAVY lift ship 'MIGHTY SERVANT'

Mighty being the operative word here!

Dosn't seem possible does it?  It's marvellous what mathamatics can do, ain't it.

Mighty Servant 1
Mighty Servant 1 is able to carry the heaviest semi-submersible drilling units, harsh environment deep water jack-up rigs and large floating production platforms like TLP's, FPU's and spars with drafts of up to 14 metres.

The specially strengthened unobstructed cargo deck of 150 metres long by 50 metres wide provides an unequalled footprint support for these types of cargo.

The vessel -in empty condition- is capable of achieving a minimum draft of 4 metres, which allows berthing alongside shallow draft load-out quays.

Principal characteristics:  
Length o.a.  190.03 m
Length b.p. 174.70 m
Breadth 50.00 m
Depth 12.00 m
Draft sailing 8.77 m
Draft submerged 26.00 m
Draft minimum 4.00 m
Max. cargo draft 14.00 m
   
Gross tonnage 29,193 t
Deadweight 40,190 t
   
Deck space 50 x 150 m
Deck load 19-40 t/sq.m
Cargo hold 50 x 16 x 7.5 m
Hatch 31 x 14.6 m
   
Speed  
Service  14 kn
Maximum 15 kn
Range 59 days

RADAR ASSISTED COLLISIONS

When I was on the Blue Star boats in the mid 50s the company took the Radar sets out of the ships as they were getting too many of what was termed radar assisted collisions.

Which, years later when I was doing my radar ticket for my master 4 exam, I realised why they did it; they obviously believed that its ships were being navigated in bad visibility by radar by its masters and mates who did not properly know how to plot movement observed on a radar set and they were getting into situations that they would not have got into without radar.

My arms and shoulders still ache when I think of the passage from Ushant to London on the "Australia Star"; thick fog all the way crawling along at about 2 or 3 knots and every two hours we would drop the deep sea lead. I can't recall its full name but I think it was something like "Kelvin Hughes patented Deep sea sounding machine".  I think every ship had one on the stern but this was the first time I ever saw one with its canvas cover removed we usually just painted around or over them!

Each time before we dropped it the mate fitted the mercury scale in the box and it would drop and keep dropping out till just about all that thin wire on the reel ran out and by the time we got it wound up again it was nearly time to drop it again!

THE "AUSTRALIA STAR"

Built 1935 in Belfast she had a lucky war, damaged just the once by incendiary bombs in Liverpool. Scrapped 1964.

Below an extract from the BLUE STAR  website about the company's policy on Radar in those days.

The Australia Star 1 was without radar, Decca or whatever.   Legend had it that Australia Star was fitted with radar during the war (probably a type 268) and was involved in a collision in the Caribbean. The other ship was without radar.The Court of Enquiry held the radar equipped Australia Star responsible for the collision which resulted in substantial damages payable by the Vestey Group. An immediate consequence was the removal of radar from those BSL ships which had it! I cannot vouch for the truth of this story but it is in character.   Certainly my last BSL ship,  Brasil Star,  was without radar when I left the company in 1951.
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I think my most scary time in fog was one night on a little coastal tanker the "Pass of Kintail." We were outward bound from Thameshaven and the fog came down thick the Captain slid us into towards the shore to get out of the main shipping channel and decided to wait it out at anchor. We had just dropped the pick and I left the wheel and was standing next to the Captain on the wing of the bridge waiting for the ship to take up to the anchor when I would go on the foc'sle and start ringing the bell 10 seconds every 2 minutes?

We were standing there in the stillness of the night when we heard thrash thrash thrash the sound of another ship's propellor and the sound of its engines and later even voices!

 
Our captain was swinging onto the whistle sounding away for his dear life the mate on the foc'sle clanging the bell when we heard an anchor let go and roar out of its hawse pipe, the splash of the anchor wet our deck, later when the fog cleared we saw this big Tanker, light ship, was lying next to us almost within chucking distance, we up anchored and slunk away.

A war time built Empire class tanker the "ALACRITY" one of Everards coastal fleet a sister ship to the "PASS OF KINTAIL" mentioned above.

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The reports below of several collisions around Japan & China  reminded me of my time on the "Australia Star"

Ship collision leaves 4 dead, 5 missing
07/23/2005

The Asahi Shimbun 

A Japan Coast Guard helicopter rescues a freighter crew member.
 
Four crewman died and five others were missing after two ships collided in heavy fog and one sank Friday off the coast of Chiba Prefecture, Japan Coast Guard officials said.

This is the ninth ship collision since last Thursday in Japan's coastal waters, with seven of the accidents occurring in dense fog. A collision July 15 between two tankers left six crewmen dead.

In Friday's accident, the Wei Hang 9, a 3,947-ton freighter registered in Malta with 21 crew members, likely Chinese, sank. Only 12 of the crew were rescued. The other ship was the Kaishin Maru, a Japanese-registered 499-ton freighter owned by a shipping company in Osaka. None of the four crew on the ship was injured.

The ships collided at 5:10 a.m. about 18 kilometers southwest of Cape Inubosaki in Chiba Prefecture, the sources said. The Wei Hang 9 was bound for Dalian, China, carrying about 6,000 tons of scrap iron. The ship left around 2:30 p.m. Thursday from Shiogama, Miyagi Prefecture. The Kaishin Maru was loaded with steel pipes and bound for Kushiro in eastern Hokkaido. It departed Thursday evening from Chiba port and was scheduled to arrive Sunday morning at Kushiro.

According to the Kaishin Maru's operator, Kotobuki Kisen, based in Imabari, Ehime Prefecture, a call came in from a crew member that the vessel's port bow (left front) had collided with the Wei Hang 9's starboard (right side) near its bridge.

In a previous accident in September 2003, the Kaishin Maru collided with a freighter off Shizuoka Prefecture, causing the other vessel to sink.

A marine accidents inquiry agency decided in a June 2004 ruling that both ships had been navigating improperly in dense fog.

These photos are of a different collision but in that general area.

Notice the big tanker is turning over slow ahead and the tugs are pushing the small ship up to keep the bow of the big tanker plugged in and they have mooring lines from the the tanker's bow to the smaller ship.