Kentucky Highway

[Jacyn Wade]

Hubby and I were watching a program the other night about the Panama Canal and they focused on two ships, one of the Maersk carriers and a vehicle carrier called the Kentucky Highway. I found the Kentucky Highway a most unusual looking vessel, which was described as very top heavy and difficult to maneuver. It actually scraped alongside one of the locks while entering the canal.

Considering it carries vehicles, I've been wondering why on earth was it built the way it was. I couldn't imagine it encountering a storm at sea. Is anyone familiar with this vessel?

[Keith Tindell]

H,i Jaycn, We have car carriers here in the Solent weekly, great big ugly things, more like a biscuit tin than a ship, strangely one of the companies running these ships is the UGG line, very appropiate ! KT

[Ivan Cloherty]

Jacyn, like all things looks can be deceiving, sailed on one yonks ago and surprising how stable they are in a seaway, but do tend to lay over like a sailing ship in high winds and rough seas, manouvering in confined spaces is a nightmare in windy conditions because they are one big sail and once the wind gets her you have a job to get her back where you want her; not so bad these days with twin thrusters fore and aft. Why are the built like that, because they have to be, probably the only ships with more spare cubic capacity when loaded than any other ship afloat when you think of the shape of cars, trucks etc, especially when trucks are shipped as chassis. The height is necessary because of the moveable decks can be moved up or down 2/3 metres to accommodate different heights of cargoes, one trip trucks, return trip cars vice versa etc. Types of vehicles, even models, are not mixed in close proximity because they do what we call dancing on their springs, have a different motion when the vessel is working in a seaway. BMW and Mercedes (other models are available, as their is no advertising on this site!!) dance different and would contact each bodily even when their wheels are locked down when the ship rolled. What the practice is now I don't know but stowage used to be 12 inches thwartships and 9 inches longitudinally and they would never touch no matter how much she rolled or pitched. The car jockeys didn't need to measure it they could handbrake a 180 degrees into the slots when necessary to have the vehicles facing the right way for a quick discharge; on the bigger ships they now don't need to as they drive around in sequence and last row reversed into place. Hope this helps Rgds

[Ivan Cloherty]

Jacyn, like all things looks can be deceiving, sailed on one yonks ago and surprising how stable they are in a seaway, but do tend to lay over like a sailing ship in high winds and rough seas, manouvering in confined spaces is a nightmare in windy conditions because they are one big sail and once the wind gets her you have a job to get her back where you want her; not so bad these days with twin thrusters fore and aft. Why are the built like that, because they have to be, probably the only ships with more spare cubic capacity when loaded than any other ship afloat when you think of the shape of cars, trucks etc, especially when trucks are shipped as chassis. The height is necessary because of the moveable decks can be moved up or down 2/3 metres to accommodate different heights of cargoes, one trip trucks, return trip cars vice versa etc. Types of vehicles, even models, are not mixed in close proximity because they do what we call dancing on their springs, have a different motion when the vessel is working in a seaway. BMW and Mercedes (other models are available, as their is no advertising on this site!!) dance different and would contact each bodily even when their wheels are locked down when the ship rolled. What the practice is now I don't know but stowage used to be 12 inches thwartships and 9 inches longitudinally and they would never touch no matter how much she rolled or pitched. The car jockeys didn't need to measure it they could handbrake a 180 degrees into the slots when necessary to have the vehicles facing the right way for a quick discharge; on the bigger ships they now don't need to as they drive around in sequence and last row reversed into place. Hope this helps Rgds

[John Arton]

Jacyn, Ivan
Regularly used to be in the locks at Le Havre and Antwerp with these huge things capable of carrying 4000 plus cars at a time.
The big ones, although bad bulgers in any wind, always had tug assistance and we get them into the Tyne, which makes for an interesting watch.
The smaller feeder carriers seem to be the worst as especially the older ones seem under powered. When sharing the lock at Le Havre, which is big enough for a VLCC, if one of the older ones came in with us they often struggled in any wind.
Back in the early 80's I was discharging timber in Jacksonville and as it was some sort of holiday the shore labour was what the stevedore boss told us was "C" class meaning they were pretty useless and had little knowledge of how to discharge packaged lumber. They ended up doing huge amounts of damage, bursting bundles of timber open and wrecking fork lift trucks. The next day a brand new huge car carrier moored up astern of us and started discharging Mercedes, bmw's, Porsche's etc. at a tremendous rate. Boy was I surprised to find out that the wreckers from yesterday were now driving these expensive cars off doing hand brake turns etc. and never once putting a scratch on a car. I queried this with the foreman stevedore and he explained that the (black) stevedores had a love of expensive cars and so treated them like gold dust. Any other cargo they could not care less about, hence all the damage to our lumber.
There was a constant stream of Merc's etc coming off this ship and most of them were all of one colour-black. After a few hours the stream of cars stopped and we expected to see the ramp go up and the ship to sail but no it sat there for hours. So we thought they were possibly having a shindig on board as it was the ships maiden voyage so myself and the Captain decided to invite ourselves on board for a look around, neither of us ever having seen the inside of one of these ships. Just as we got to the ramp one single Mercedes came down it and immediately after it cleared the ramp, up went the ramp and the ship prepared to sail. On talking to the foreman stevedore he told me that the last car off had been parked in the wrong deck and bay and they had been going round all the remaining onboard Mercedes (still almost a thousand) checking each cars VIN against the Customs documentation in order to get the correct one.
rgds
JA

[John Arton]

Jacyn, Ivan
Regularly used to be in the locks at Le Havre and Antwerp with these huge things capable of carrying 4000 plus cars at a time.
The big ones, although bad bulgers in any wind, always had tug assistance and we get them into the Tyne, which makes for an interesting watch.
The smaller feeder carriers seem to be the worst as especially the older ones seem under powered. When sharing the lock at Le Havre, which is big enough for a VLCC, if one of the older ones came in with us they often struggled in any wind.
Back in the early 80's I was discharging timber in Jacksonville and as it was some sort of holiday the shore labour was what the stevedore boss told us was "C" class meaning they were pretty useless and had little knowledge of how to discharge packaged lumber. They ended up doing huge amounts of damage, bursting bundles of timber open and wrecking fork lift trucks. The next day a brand new huge car carrier moored up astern of us and started discharging Mercedes, bmw's, Porsche's etc. at a tremendous rate. Boy was I surprised to find out that the wreckers from yesterday were now driving these expensive cars off doing hand brake turns etc. and never once putting a scratch on a car. I queried this with the foreman stevedore and he explained that the (black) stevedores had a love of expensive cars and so treated them like gold dust. Any other cargo they could not care less about, hence all the damage to our lumber.
There was a constant stream of Merc's etc coming off this ship and most of them were all of one colour-black. After a few hours the stream of cars stopped and we expected to see the ramp go up and the ship to sail but no it sat there for hours. So we thought they were possibly having a shindig on board as it was the ships maiden voyage so myself and the Captain decided to invite ourselves on board for a look around, neither of us ever having seen the inside of one of these ships. Just as we got to the ramp one single Mercedes came down it and immediately after it cleared the ramp, up went the ramp and the ship prepared to sail. On talking to the foreman stevedore he told me that the last car off had been parked in the wrong deck and bay and they had been going round all the remaining onboard Mercedes (still almost a thousand) checking each cars VIN against the Customs documentation in order to get the correct one.
rgds
JA