Worlds largest ship

#9... When you talk about H.P. of some of these quite large ships, it makes things seem a bit disappropiate as some of the early supply vessels I was on in the N.Sea no where near the size of the ships mentioned were about 5500 H.P. and were considered underpowered, as usual the British Owner was behind the times. You were really struggling moving an oil rig. When I left the oil companies would not look at a ship under 12000 H.P. (early 90"s) shortly after this went up I think to 18000 H.P... On coming out to Australia all this discarded low H.P. tonnage a lot found its way to Singapore and the Graveyard for ships. This found its way down to Australia on bareboat charters and was once again working with under powered ships, even been on some of them years before. Fortuanetly whatever the Australians think they don't get the bad weather like the North Sea did. If did happen the job would stop. Safety and Health does have a few good points when can use for an accepted excuse. Certainly would have to have been Typhoon weather in the North Sea before stopping. Cheers John Sabourn

john just looking at some old discharge books of my family from 110 years ago.......skulda.....on..81131.....reg tonnage720....engine hp99.....trading foreign.....he did arun to Valencia.....and one up the Baltic.....as ab......guess this could have been a sailing vessel......lots more of similar sized vessels........no pig and whistle on them

Cappy When I said these higher horse powers this is with ref to the ships with towing capabilities. The heaps of converted fishing vessels were all down below the 400 gross and HP of less than 500 also in most cases. I was on one ship called the Tamito she had been a whale chaser, then they stuck an extra 50 feet in her and converted her to a coaster under the German Flag. Then she came back as a stand by safety vessel. Used to leave Aberdeen at 6 to 7 knots and come back 5 weeks late at 2. Was really embarrassing. After the piper A, was supposed to be a big push to get proper tonnage and I kept on advocating this plus more crew, it finally was recommended, but knowing the oil industry especially in the North Sea, the change would not be to the oil companies liking. Stuff them. They think they are a power to themselves, and must have a lot of pull with that shower in the big house in London. The Norwegian supply vessels were always well ahead of the British, and the oil companies would hire these rather than their own flag, how patriotic can you be. As I said stuff them. I was on 6 of the converted fishing vessel types good sea ships but not fit for the job they were hired to do. Cheers JS

Joined a Shell super tanker 1952, 28,000 ton,721ft long with a 84ft beam,twas said that a bike was needed to go from forrard to aft,600,000 ton dumb barge the bike will have to be upgraded to at least a moped.
7 months on her with only 5 nights ashore.
T2's mentioned again lovely ships,tramping on them could not want for any thing better.

John S
If you look at many modern ships you will be surprised at there ration of displacement to engine power. The fancy men who design these go on about efficient hull design coupled with slow speed engines couple to high skew propeller's, slippery hull coatings etc. When I was superintendent our Greek partners had a series of 45000 ton tankers that had a tiny 3 cylinder sulzer coupled to a high skew propeller. The engine was rated at around 7000 HP and supposedly these ships had a service speed of 14knots. B.S. Anything above force 4 and fully laden you were lucky to get double digit speed out of them. The other problem was they were pigs to manoeuvre as they had a small semi balanced rudder. It was o.k if you were going to ports where tug service was available but in our veg. oil trade most of the ports visited, there was not a tug within a couple of hundred miles. The Greek Captains used to crap themselves as soon as they sniffed land. I recall going down the river to load in Port Klang and the Greek skipper did not describe the ships manoeuvring to the pilot and we ended up in the mangroves on the right angled bend just below Port Klang on the way to the veg. oil terminal.
I have just been looking at the new handymax bulker designed by a Chinese shipyard. Looks like no bulbous bow, slow speed, low powered engine, high skew propeller and claims of amazing fuel consumption at service speed, bet they never get near their service speed after completing sea trials, slightest bit of weather and they will most likely just crawl. How efficient is that if voyage times are prolonged by lets say 30%, no profit at all for the owners suckered into believing they have got a good deal.
rgds
JA

John my experience of deep sea ships is limited up to the mid 70"s. I found on one ship however which others on this site may of been on, had a controllable pitch propeller and when manouvering going into port would go where least expected. Most of us were brought up to know the transverse thrusts usually expected with a single screw fixed propeller and when joining other types had to adjust thinking in an extremely short time. However the offshore Industry is another ball game, and nearly always are dealing with twin screw. Horse power is associated with bollard pull. There is a big difference between an 80 ton bollard pull as against a 180 ton bollard pull, hence the higher horse powers are essential when it comes to towing, especially in the bad weather associated with the North Sea. I am certainly no expert to towing, I leave this up to those who have made a living from all their lives, the towing mainly rigs which I was involved in one had to learn by trial and error at times. Then again you had vessels with no rudders but azimuth thrusters, all ok in good weather conditions, but bad weather another story. It seems to me in a lot of cases some of these ship designers have used the crews of vessels to put their ideas up for test. The most important thing in shipping is to have control of vessel in close quarter situations, the designers are forever looking for ways of lower fuel bills, not much good when you have ship stuck on a beach or into a rig. I shudder when I look at some of this huge tonnage and see no way of handling them without the use of tugs. Regards John Sabourn

The only T2 I really had a look at was the stern section of one tied up in Eureka, Ca. Apparently it was hooked up to the local electric grid to suppl power during blackouts (outages)sic.


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