Cargo ship splits in half

[Keith Tindell]

reports on the BBC that a Spanish cargo ship has split in two off the French coast, KT

[Chris Allman]

Some good pictures and more information HERE

[Ivan Cloherty]

Thanks for that Chris, guess the souvenir hunters will be out in force once the seas abate

[Chris Allman]

Yes Ivan I bet they will. A sad sight, I hate to see any ship wrecked like that.

[Doc Vernon]

Must have been some Wave to lift her on the Rocks like that,not a good site at all!
Always so sad to see things like this happening!
Cheers

[Ivan Cloherty]

Me thinks that perhaps the scantlings are too light for a ship of the length and beam, no strength in the vessel's hull at all, strength is being sacrificed to increase payload on a reduced gross/nett tonnage basis, something has got to give and it's the ship that pays the price and regrettably on occasions the crew also. In the old days it would have been unusual for a ship to snap like that in a similar situation and if she did she would have taken her time over it. How often these days do we see modern ships breaking apart midships, and yes I know that many 'Liberty' ships broke in half but that was wartime effort combined with slack building practices and an effort to get ships into service quickly, today we are supposed to have technology at our fingertips to avoid these things happening, but in reality all technology is doing is finding ways of saving money to pare down the building scantlings of ships to the bare minimum and thus weakening them when they face real weather situations that no testing tank can simulate. It's all about cost, and if the ship doesn't make it, so what! the underwriters will cough up, but alas they cannot cough up the souls who are lost in these cost cutting exercises.

[Chris Allman]

Ivan, I think you have hit the nail on the head there. Its happening to cargo ships what is to say that it is not happening to passenger ships also. I wonder just how strong those floating blocks of flats are and I just hope that one is not tested to destruction in a bad storm. You never know, perhaps the wreck of the Costa Concordia may give some indications as to how the hull has stood up to the stresses that the righting process has put on it and to indicate just how strong or otherwise these ships are.

[Ivan Cloherty]

Chris there is an up to date video of the Concordia taken by a drone aircraft flying alongside it, shows the damage to the accommodation, looks like it was made out of paper, but suppose it has to be thin for stability purposes, but doesn't inspire confidence in an old seaman. When I was dry docking ships I used to renew plates thicker than those used today for safety reasons.

Will be absent for a few days as have family commitments in various parts of the country. Look forward to coming back up the gangway later

[Russ Kennedy]

Sad and frightening to see a ship in such a situation. However good to know that all 12 crew members were winched to safety by helicopter, one at a time. One person suffered a nose injury.

[John Arton]

Liberty ships
Ivan the cause of the Liberty ships splitting in half was put down to the steel quality used. The steel was o.k. in temperate waters but when they went into the colder waters in the higher latitudes then the steel became brittle. The fractures started at the square hatch corners (No. 3 if I recall) and as these were all welded there was nothing to stop the crack propagating from plate to plate and thus all around the vessel.
The first Liberty to crack was in convoys to Russia on the Pacific side.
If you search Liberty ships on the web there is a video of the one that is preserved in San Francisco along with a documentary on the reason for the Liberty ships, how they were built and the result of the investigations into their splitting in half and the measures taken to prevent it.
rgds
JA