Weather conditions.

[Tony Morcom]

What a funny old world we live in these days. Here in the UK "Drought" restrictions were introduced over much of the country because it has been so dry for so long. Surprise, surprise we then had a heat wave for a couple of weeks. Typically that ended when the kids broke up for their half term break. The forecast for the next week is rain, rain and more rain and it was announced yesterday that within two weeks all drought restrictions will be lifted through out the UK.

This got me to reminiscing about previous years' weather and the sort of weather conditions I experienced when at sea. Perhaps a good discussion point would be "What were the most memorable weather conditions you experienced whilst at sea"

[Keith Moody]

back around 1956/7 I was an a/s on the P&O`s Arcadia (30.000 ton), coming back from OZ, we left Las Palmas for Tilbury and hit one hell of a storm,
the ship was rolling and pitching and at one point she rolled over so far that we were walking on the bulkheads, we had water pouring in the after puplic rooms and we were told to get blankets and soak up as much water as possible, the grand piano in the first class puplic room sheered its bolts and landed up half way through one of the windows where it was tied with some of the curtains, portholes and windows were smahed and not a hot meal or drink was served on the ship for 3 days or nights they turned the ship around and headed towards New York until the storm abated, then poured on the steam and was 12 hours late into london, never knew a ship could vibrate so much, john Brown the builders said the angle of the ships roll should have been the last anyone saw of the ship as it should not have righted its self.
Is there anyone out there who was on the Arcadia at the time, who remembers this?
keith moody
R635978

[John Arton]

Apart from many Atlantic storms the two worst weather conditions that spring to mind were:-
1. Homeward bound as third mate,on a forest product ship fully laden with pulp/plywood/kraft liner and a full deck cargo of timber, bound for Newport and Tilbury. We had just cleared the Carribbean when we got caught up in the tail end of a hurricane and were running before some tremendous seas and hurricane force winds. This ship had under deck tunnels leading fro the engine room to the forward cargo gear store and then the focsle. The chippy (spanish crew) was tasked to go fwd and check that all the cago gear in the fwd store was o.k., which given that he should have used the tunnels was a safe task. However for reasons we will never know he chose to go up the exposed maindeck on the very narrow walkway alongside the travelling gantry cranes. We were shouting and screaming at him to get back from the bridge and the poop deck in front of the accommodation but either due to the wind or something he just carried on. He could actually also have gone safely across the top of the timber deck cargo as by SOLAS regs we had to have a safe walkway built on top of the cargo, which we had.
Despite all this, as I say, he chose to take the most dangerous path. He had just got abreast of the fwd gantry crane when a wave broke onboard, picked him up, smashed him against the crane and then washed him overboard....a terrible sight to witness. Some of the crew had seen this and came dashing up to the bridge demanding that we turn and search for him. Apart from the fact that he was most likely killed instantley when he was smashed against the crane, turning her round in those seas would most likely led to the ship foundering and us all losing our lives. When the captain refused to turn round 5 of the crew mutineered and we had to barricade ourselves in the wheelhouse whilst these boyos attacked the wheelhouse doors with fire axes. Eventually the rest of the crew overpowered them and locked them up in their cabins with guards on the doors. A very fraught end to what had been a graet trip up to that point. On arrival in Newport about a week later the culprits were whisked off the ship but cannot remember if they were ever charged. The poor chippys body was, of course, never recovered.
2. North Sea of Texel. I was master on a small chemical tanker and we were coming down from Norway bound for Rotterdam. We had hurricane force SE'ly winds and were hove too just past the rigs in Dutch waters south east of the Texel TSS. Suddenly the C.P. unit went tips up and the pitch went from minimum ahead to full astern and the poor wee engine tried to start taking us backwards. This caused the main engine to stall. The engineers could not restart it until they had got the pitch setting back to zero and the C.P.pumps disengaged. Every time they thought they had got the pitch back to zero and were about to ram the locking bolts in place she would lurch and the pitch control piston would move, so they could not get the bolts in. We were rolling 30 deg. either way and the wind and current were pushing us towards the dutch islands at the texel. I had been on the phone to the office constantly and we were just about to call a full scale emergency with tugs etc. when the engineers finally managed to get the locking bolts in palce, disengage the CP unit and get the engine started. By this time we were only a mile and a half off land. The engineers could only get 50% pitch ahead so we crawled clear at around 3 knots. Fortunatley the weather was rapidly going down and we eventually made Rotterdam safely and got towed in by two tugs as the unit went again shortly after picking up the pilot.
The cause of the failure and brown trousers all round? A tiny speck of dirt in the hydraulic piston that controlled the pitch setting. Apparentley in the dry dock two months previously they had overhauled the whole system but on reassembling it had connected two hoses wrong way round which had resulted in sediment from the header tank (had not been cleaned out) been drawn into the system causing it to fail on leaving the dry dock. They had blown through and cleaned the system before eventually leaving dry dock but that one remaining speck of dirt decided to get into the system at the worst possible moment.
rgds
Captain John Arton (ret'd)

[Peter F Chard]

I was S/E on the " KWANGTUNG " in 1963/4 and experienced the worst feelings of all my time at sea, not due to extreme weather conditions but to the type of cargo we were carrying. Southbound from Japan to Hobart we carried slabs of polystyrene to be used in the construction of a hydro dam.These slabs were 10m by 5m by 1m in size -- the holds were totally full and we had them stacked on deck almost to the bridge height in places. Someone calculated that we had less than 1000 tonnes of cargo on board. The result was that in a sea the ship would roll about 15' to 20' at times but it was such a slow roll that it took almost three minutes to complete one port to starboard and back to the upright position. The effect on your body was weird and most uncomfortable to experience, it almost stopped the pre lunch gin and tonics !! We discharged our cargo and steamed round to Bell Bay, Launceston and loaded ingots of zinc, when down to our marks the holds looked to only be about 5 % full. We sailed for Japan and soon ran into some moderate weather but this time the roll time was about twenty seconds -- the ship just did not want to heel over, it was so stiff and really horrible to experience, the ship seemed to make a noise something like ' claddung ' when it returned to the upright position ! But we had learned from our southbound trip and used more gin and less tonic in our lunchtime drinks ! Regards Peter C.

[John Callon]

Like many other members on this site experienced severe heavy weather on the North Atlantic but the worst conditions I ever experienced was one night on the Cairnryan to Larne run whilst working with for TTF. The trip usually lasted 2 hours except on the night in question it took us 18 hours to complete the voyage. Never have I been in such heavy weather as on that night. The same night that Morcambe Pier was washed away and to be honest I really thought that this was it. We only had about 120 passengers on board and I dont need to tell you what they were doing. I had the stewards working through the night literally washing down all the time. My worst fear was that one of the trucks on the vehicle deck would break its lashings and we would have the Princess Victoria scenario again, which when I thought about it later on was a stupid thing to compare with as our stern doors opned inward. The Captain asked me to come upto the bridge just as it was getting light and explained what he intended to do as he crossed the north Irish Sea to hug the coast of N.Ireland and to reassure the passengers that everything was going to be O.K. Standing on the bridge that morning, or to be more precise hanging on for dear life, I have never seen seas like what we were battling through. It seemed the fordeck was continually under water. I take my hat off to those guys who work on the deep sea trawlers. They have to be the real seamen.

Regards
John

[Ivan Cloherty]

........... I take my hat off to those guys who work on the deep sea trawlers. They have to be the real seamen.

Having sailed on a few trips with them in the 50's to Iceland and the Barents Sea I can confirm that the weather conditions we consider atrocious they consider normal and take it their stride, also in the winter spend hours chopping ice off shrouds and accommodation so that they don't turn turtle. Sadly they sometimes lose the battle. Although I am glad that I did my stints it wasn't a lifetime choice for me. They are very brave men but do not know it.
Ivan

[happy daze john in oz]

Worst I can recall was in the Great Australian Bight in 64. We had left Brisbane bound for freemantle and all was well until just west of melbourne. Then it hit like something I had never seen. For three days no one was allowed on deck and i never imagined a 10,000 could move so much. It was almost like being in a submarine there was so much w ater around us. For two days all we served was cold food as no pot could be kept on the stove no matter how hard we tried. Even some of the hardend deck hands found it hard to cope with. The skipper never left the bridge for three days he was so concerned.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Not the worst weather conditions experienced, but certainly the saddest. In 1957 mid Atlantic we got caught in Hurricane Carrie, the German sailing ship "Pamir" was south of us taking a real hammering, (as were we) she had a crew of 86 including 51 young cadets ages 16-19. We turned around to go to the scene some 300 miles distant, that turnaround was a most terrifying experience with our ship rolling on her beam ends putting our lifeboats in the water. We then started to ship heavy seas which started to tear our 8000 grt vessel apart, railings disappeared from the foc'le head, the access ladders to the foc'le got torn away, main deck rails disappeared as did one of the ladders from main deck to accommodation deck, port lifeboats got damaged. As we battled through this towards "Pamir" we got news that she had foundered with all hands, although we and other ships continued towards her until we started to feel that our vessel wasn't responding as she should have and was probably taking on water somewhere but too dangerous to find out where (later turned out to be strained rivets, letting salt water into our DBs and contaminating all our drinking water) so it was another 180 degree turn to get back on course. I knew from his face it was perhaps the hardest decision that the Captain had to make leaving that area (although he had been in WWII and seen plenty). We all felt so helpless it was a morose voyage thereafter.

We later learnt that although she had foundered some crew had managed to get away in two boats which were sighted some days later by an American ships. One boat had five survivors and the other a lone survivor, apparently there had been more but they succumbed to the cold weather. The date of foundering was 21st September 1957 only these six men out of 86 lived to tell the tale, the oldest the assistant baker being 25 years old and who took command of the lifeboat and saved those with him.

A court of enquiry found that contributing factors were (i) the master had left it too late to issue the abandon ship order after the vessel was dismasted, (and who would envy him that decision) so that boats could not be launched and the liferafts could not be found on board ! (ii) most of the survivors of the foundering and who made the boats perished because although fit and healthy young men their bodies had not adjusted to the extreme conditions they found themselves in and their mental preperation was not ready to face up to the adversity required for the ordeal and they died, some washed overboard from the boats being too weak to hold on. It must have been a terrifying ordeal for all on board.

It still lives with me.

[Keith Tindell]

I remember the PAMIR incident well, i was 16years of age, had just been for interview for the MN, and was waiting to attend sea school. Pretty frightening story, but fortunately did not deter me from continuing in my chosen path. KT

[happy daze john in oz]

Talking of drought as Tony was at the begining of this I can understand how you all feel in UK. But drought there is not new, mid 50's and mid 70's saw similar conditions. Here in Victoria we had a 14 year drought, nothing new for us here, so the government of the day, Labour, put water restrictions in place so severe that you would never belivev. So then they decided to build a desalination plant, the biggest in the nation. Now over budget, almost two years over time during which we have had some of the heaviest rainfall in decades, the dams are almost 70% full. But the best bit, the desalination plant is being built on a flood plain and flooding has delayed the completion.