Originally Posted by
j.sabourn
The worst case of misloading I have been involved with, and sorry to say I was mate at the time, my only excuse was that I was overruled by the master. Situation, a 6 hold ship, if remember correctly No.4 hold was floodable. According to Shipyard specifications, ship could go with 2 holds empty. The owners decided to build car decks in these 2 holds 2 and 4 (floodable hold) and this was done in Europe and could take 600 cars per hold. During the 13 months I was there everything O.K. we then finished up in Australia (Adelaide) to load motor cars for U.S.A. The owners then decioded to Load 2 holds of Concentrates in Esperance, and proceed to Durban to Load the remaining 2 holds with Grain. When I kicked up and said this was very unsafe I was ruled down on the mistaken assumption that the ship could still go with 2 holds empty. As everyone should be aware 600 motor cars does not constitute a sizeable amount of weight, therefore you could consider these 2 holds as nearly empty. The Chief Eng. and myself sat down and took us a day to work out every stress on every frame which meant every frame having to multiply by a factor etc. etc. no calculators in these days. The result was that the ship was not going to break, but the result was for still waters only. I gave these documents to the master who must have sent them to the owners. Anyhow the result was the loaded condition as stated went ahead. All the way across the Indian Ocean which was good weather all the time I am pleased to say, you could hear the cracking and groaning of the ballast lines in the upper wing tanks as the ship was obviously hogging and sagging continuously, if the ship had not been a new build I am sure she would have parted. I left the ship in Durban and flew home and had to go into the London office. They were exuberant with the charter and I sat and listened to this drivel, I was told I was the next rising star etc. I then said what had been done was an extremely unsafe practice, they then produced the paperwork that the Master had sent them and said look it is safe. I told them what I thought of them, no holds barred and said what does the asterick say at the bottom. Ship to be loaded in still water only, they had no clue what this meant. I told them to stick their job and walked out. The master was over 65 and had no inclination to go up against the owners. In those days I had no such qualms. Regards John Sabourn.
