Fire! Fire! Fire Down Below.

A P.S.

"My heart goes out to men at sea who have to fight a fire without the benefit of being able to call up 20 fire engines to help them."
My sentiments entirely Peter.

no prob different times....

Fire on board ***** Wow - what memories that brings back! Second ship as an engineer cadet was MV Oremina [Houlder Bros Iron ore carrier]. In Narvik [around December 1969 [lots of snow]] finished taking on ore and pretty well most of the crew were ashore except for the duty crew. About 2200hrs, and I was in the wardroom just forward of the funnel with the navigating cadet and the "old" mans daughter who we were both chatting up! Sudden! Unusual! "woofing" noise emanating from the funnel and as we went outside to look - saw flames out of the funnel! I went down to the engine room - no one else around - opened the door from the engineers changing room and saw smoke wafting around. Not enough to get really worried about so I went down and found, on the next platform below, a fire at the front of the auxiliary boiler - partly enclosed in the fire box but also burning diesel on the drip tray under the burner and running down under the fan housing. Being new and still smarting from college etc dashed down to the control panel and hit the fire alarm and engineers alarm. I had the presence of mind to switch off the electrical feed to the boiler then grabbing a foam extinguisher headed back up the stairs and liberally sprayed foam everywhere and put the fire out. By that time the chief and the "old" man came down to see what had happened. No one else! Pat on the back! Then the best bit was I was ordered get ready for standby so off I goes to get the boiler suit on and set up the Doxford LM ready to start - i.e. change over boilers and set up lube oil pumps, heaters and coolers and VCC, BFW and CW pumps etc. Got relieved by the 3rd Engineer around midnight and crashed until the 4-8 watch with the second engineer [who was the duty engineer that night and was pissed in his bunk at the time]. Got a shake to turn to and when I got down to the plates the second grabbed me round the neck and dragged me back up the stairs to the boiler front to ask me what the f... was all this foam and f......g clean it all up! So my first fire on board was quite a memory!

Lewis I am probably responsible for any misunderstanding here and can only put it down to senility. I read the initial post on the site and carried on . Read post 7 by Kenneth Crawford and went back to what I thought was Post 7 but having gone back and checked wasnt in the right place for the querys I asked which were about the flash point of the human body and the installation of gas alarms etc. on offshore ships. These should have been addressed to him. He states in his post he was 20 years as an offshore surveyor. So up to now my questions and answers have been in a different vein than they should have been . In short I thought I was talking to someone else. To Kenneth Graham if you are still following this post if you have read then you will know what the querys were, any response would be appreciated. To do a job such as you have or had you must be an experienced offshore worker. You werent by any chance one of the survivors off the Piper Alpha as believe one of them had a similar post to yours not too long after. And will know all the problems appertaining to such. If you werent then I can assure you then you havent ever seen such an offshore blaze and know all the consequences of , and wasnt made safe by Red Adairs team until weeks after. And the Worlds biggest fire engine half a mile away had absolutely no affect on quelling such a blaze. If God had been more merciful that night with the crew 238 men would have come out of the flames on a small sidewinder which was going to be the only means of their salvation. When I asked what I thought was you, was the reason why I asked about the gas alarms, Regards JS

Hi Tony,
I first went to sea 1970-ish....No, no restrictions normally...If a bloke got a bit "too silly with the booze": A quiet word would normally suffice and he would rein himself in. This also went for the African crew I normally sailed with...
I dunno...None of us are perfect, (me least of all!) ...but we had a sense of responsibility back then.
We did our jobs. And we did so soberly.
A quiet word was normally sufficient. But, I must say that not all were quite so responsible.

It's a bit like the drink-driving argument:
One person (PC correct you see) can drive after a Pint of Beer (Variable effectiveness) Perfectly well.
Whereas another"person" is a menace to themselves and others.
But it is so much easier to have this "Zero Tolerance" attitude.

Yet the same people who bang on about Human Rights yet fail to acknowledge this simple variance in relacion to indivduals.
But why do they take the "Zero Tolerance." approach?
Because it is easier and fulfills insurance obligations (And we know where they are coming from.)
As a result, I would venture.... (because I don't know).... Drug-abuse use has become more prevalent amongst seafarers. It is simply easier to hide.

What happened to the old maxim: "If it aint broke....." Mmm?
No, we have allowed ourselves to be driven.into a situation whereby we have crews at sea totally cut off from being reasonable human beings ... being able to relax & thereby protect their mental health...Whilst at the same time being fully aware of their resonsibilities and NOT over-indulging.
We took that area of self-responsibilty away from them. Does not that ring alarm bells? I think it should.
Because this syndrome is being repeated in societies acrosss the world.
"Alcohol is so restrictive .... I'll go elsewhere else for my kicks."

You only have to look at the most failed experiment in the world to see the logic! The USA Prohibition!
What a crock of crap that turned out to be. You ban something: You just marked up its price 1000%
Same with drugs:
Educate. Show the reality. The pain. The suffering. In all the painful scenes available. The widows. The orphans.

But ban them?
No. Forget it.
Ban something: Instantly attractive...at what ever price... and it is the price that drives up the crime levels

Towards the end of my sea-going years...
I sailed with a newly promoted Captain.... And he genuinely worried me.
A bottle of scotch a day ..at least...it was obvious. I rather doubt he lasted any length of time after his promotion.
He was an exception to the rule in my 17+years at sea. I felt so sad for the guy. He was, sober, a really nice guy.
I liked him so much and I tried hard to get him off that path of self-destruction.
There but for the grace of God......Go many of us.
We are fortunate that such personal disasters do not come to us.

Hi William....WOW...what a story.
We can only hope the 2/E eventually apologised?.....
I'm guessing not. A sad facet of British Officers...wherever.... "Never apologise".... Always looks bad on the old resume.
Yeah. There's a word for them.
But, sadly, they are Worldwide..... Don't lose any sleep over it. It's going to get FAR, FAR WORSE! I can assure you.
Stay well. Stay Safe. Cheers.

#32... Cappy to put it bluntly if you were not at sea prior to 1966 then you will have a different view to the Industry. The Seamans strike of 1966 was the start of the rot. Many forced to go on strike never came back.A new ideology was on its way in. I cut the tethers for 5 years and went for better money to pay the mortgage , and coming back in 1971 was obvious what was going to happen, so in 1977 cut the traces and went offshore. Your different times is very very true. Hope your leaving your skis outside and not trailing through the house . Cheers JS

From my experience engineers were some of the biggest drinkers, but never saw onw go on watch under the influence.
Cannot recall seeing any one drunk while at sea, but in port was another matter.
As to saying maybe 20% of the crew were under the influence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

But it has crossed my mind on numerous occasions about container ships.
The manifest on each container is supposed to show what it contains, tins of tomatoes with packets of cocaine inside?
Happened here a couple of years ago.
So what is in some containers, imagine some explosive mix in one down in the hold and it catches fire, how do a crew of maybe only 8 or 9 deal with that Lewis?

I don't remember having any fire drills or seeing any fire equipment whist at sea, only boat drills.
Many years later as a Safety Consultant I became used to finding smoke/ fire alarms covered up disconnected fire hoses and sirens because they make a noise etc. On carrying out practice evacuations there were many comments but one I remember was an old man refusing to leave because the building was made of brick and wouldn't burn !
Terry Sullivan R340406

Probably a lot on this site who attended the firefighting course at Liverpool. Did a week there and did do the part where t we had to go to the top of a steel house climb in with smoke helmets and hose, find your way down 1 or was it 2 levels, and then put out a blazing oil fire in a tray at ground level. Learnt plenty, but best part of course which was in summer, was when the main branch running across the parade ground sprung a leak, and a large jet of water went across the parade ground and straight through the CO's window, which was open.