Funny things you have heard on a Bridge of a ship

[Lewis McColl]

This concerns a comment I heard on board the LNG carrier British Merchant
I was cargo engineer on her from new and this would have been maybe her 3rd loaded voyage.
The British Merchant was a new class of Menbrane LNG carrier. For those not familiar with LNG cargos they are loaded at -160/163 degrees C give or take.
We had loaded out of Trinidad and headed for the USA Lake Charles or Savanah. Anyway it was what was called a hot cargo as the actual loading temp was about -159.8 degrees. You may wonder surely .8 of a degree will not make that much difference , it does as -160 degrees in the boiling point of LNG so it is flashing off as a gas. This means that the pressure in the cargo tanks will be increasing. The way you control this pressure is that the gas is used to fuel the ships boilers there by supplying steam for the turbines.
We had managed to arrive at the Pilot station with the cargo tank pressures at a controllable level. The US coast guard boarded the ship and demanded we go to anchor as they wanted to check that the vessel complied to Coast Guard regulations. Sitting at anchor for 12 hours was causing us problems as the tank pressures were going up and up. I asked the engineers to take more gas as the pressures were now getting a tad higher than I wanted. There is a system were they can burn more gas and generate more steam but the steam has to be dumped. This is done by opening the steam dump valve which then discharges the steam out through the bottom of the ship. This is costly in two ways, one you are burning cargo and to basically dumping water which cannot be recovered via the ships condenser.
Anyway when we got the go ahead to travel up river to the discharge berth the USCG decided as an LNG tanker we would have to have a 4 tug escort, standard procedure in most ports while an LNG carrier is transiting in navigable waters. We also had armed coast guards on the bridge, 4 armed coast guard boats RIBS, and two Coast Guard helicopters who kept crisscrossing the main deck. I was monitoring the cargo tanks and advised the engine room we were getting close to critical and they would have to dump more steam, shall we say the C/Eng was less than helpful. I advised the master that I was going have to do a controlled venting to atmosphere if the situation did not improve. The master advised the senior coast guard officer to inform the helicopter pilots to stop criss crossing the deck and also to ask them to fly well away from the ship. As usual with those in authority in America they said the choppers will hold there course. The master who was from the NE of England in a broad Georgie accent says to the Coast Guard officer how fast can one of those choppers fly? why do you need that information? well can they break the sound barrier? don't be daft was the response, Daft says the master, Lew how far are we off from needing to vent before the safeties lift, about .5 of a KPA. How long would you need to vent? Don't know Captain I have never had to vent cargo tanks in the 10 years I have been a gas eng. Okay he says , right mister Coast Guard I am not asking you I am telling you to get those fucking choppers away from the vicinity of the ship because if you don't and we do have to vent you will see them break the fucking sound barrier. I think what convinced the coast guard was when he advised the chopper pilots that we may be going to vent gas they disappeared immediately never to return.

[Gordon Brown]

Whilst working for BP during a pilotage the order given to the helmsman " steer 355 degrees" the helmsman repeated back " steer 365" the pilot said " helmsman, how many degrees in a circle ?" . The reply came back " it depends on the size of the circle sir ". The pilot bawled " Get that clown off the helm ""...

[j.sabourn]

There are always situations and situations Lew one that sticks in my mind was on an old steamer under the Gibraltar flag. 10 months into the trip without a second mate and after failing to get into Saigon as a port of refuge the Irish master decided to make for Hong Kong. 0200 hrs in the morning he puts me on the shake and says there's a ship. Out here calling us up on the lamp can you come on bridge, he obviously couldn't read morse too well, I won't tell you his name in case you know him. This was in 1970. Going on bridge sure enough was this blinding light and just. Managed to read the last of probably many messages, it was "Retreat Retreat last warning I fire", the ship I was on had one of the blades of the propellor 50 percent missing all the time I had been there and was capable of a. Good 4 knots on a fair weather day, so even when I put the wheel hardcover took what seemed like hours to get her round on to a reciprocal course. It was a Chinese warship and the old man had us on the wrong approaches into Hong Kong. My one thought all the time was where was the first shell going to hit, the bridge being what I thought would be the obvious target, a heart stopping moment in time one might say. I think a lot of seafarers have had similar close shaves of one type or another. A lot of us forget about them but on sites like this one is often reminded by others close shaves. Those still alive must have good Karma. Cheers JWS

[j.sabourn]

#2..That reminds me of the bloke up for orals. The examiner says you are at anchor and dragging what do you do.? Pay out more cable he answers . The wind veers 3 points and your still dragging what do you do , lay another anchor he says. The wind backs 6 points and still dragging what then the examiner says, lay another anchor says the candidate. Hold on a minute says the examiner where are you getting all these anchors. The same place your getting all these bloody winds says the candidate. JS

[Doc Vernon]

Funny things you have heard on a Bridge of a ship

Now that would be telling Lewis! LOL

[j.sabourn]

As per title of post....The sparks coming into the wheelhouse and the old man asking him if he got that last message away , and the sparks saying that communications at the moment were not too good as a lot of sun spots. Sunspots meant a lot of volcanic extra eruptions on the sun which had a direct bearing on the compatibility of radio waves. Today you never hear mention of this. This was and is uncontrollable by man, and yet today they talk about climate change and changing. What a load of crap. They are talking about weather and. If they are so clever why do we have famine areas due to lack of rain.? With today's knowledge it is easy enough to make artificial rain clouds. Climate change is one big con in my oplinion and has been misrepresented from the very beginning. If there was going to be any advantage to that in changing the climate I would be all for it. To change the climate you have to change the inclination of the earth and its orbital path around the sun.or change the surface temperature of our closest star itself. Trump instead of coming out of the believers of miracles should give the money to these famine ridden countries for the construction of rain makers would be closer to the mark of doing good. Anyhow one never hears of sunspots these days, neither do we hear of any inspection into the effects of all the different rays re. Computer and radio signals that must clutter up the earths atmosphere as well as the open fire. Maybe we don't hear about sunspots at sea today as there are no radio officers as such. Cheers JWS

[Lewis McColl]

A couple of years ago I heard a chief engineer saying to the 2/eng , there are two things I know for sure that should not contain liquids , Superheated steam and a fart, fuckit I'll be back in a minute and off he waddled.

[j.sabourn]

Maybe he was looking for one of these Irish fairies Lew and was going to see if he could catch him sitting on one of the boiler mountings, first one to look at would be the salinometer cock. JS