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Thread: The Sinking (well almost) of the Shell Tanker mv Helisoma

  1. #11
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    Default Re: Helisoma

    Hi Jim, sorry for the late reply, but I think you may be right, it may well have been Nha Trang. So it was a floating explosive?
    Do you remember Pedro? I think he was an AB. I was an Engine room rating at the time. He drank a lot but for youngsters like me he was a pillar of wisdom.
    On one of our visits to Singapore this Sheikh fortune teller came on board. He came to my cabin and I was interested in what he had to say. To cut a long story short I wouldn't pay him for his services because I thought he had cheated. So, he put a curse on me. He told me that I would break my leg within a month. Needless to say I was rather worried so I went to see Pedro for advice. After much thought he looked at me solemnly and told me that he had no idea what would become of me, but he was going to take a lot interest in my legs for the next month. Thanks Pedro. Happily the curse didn't work.

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  3. #12
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    Default Re: Helisoma

    Jim, it was Nha Trang. I was on the USS Safeguard that patched and raised you. We had a great since you guys had a bar on board.

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    Default Re: Helisoma

    Ref. Tankers... Not being a tanker man I was a bit wary when sent to join a 4 mate ship loading a full cargo of Naptha at Bangla Mashur for Japan. The Chief Officer was the loading officer and the other 3 mates cargo and watch keepers, On arrival Japan the Chief Officer was paid off and sent home the same as the pump man. I was promoted to Chief officer without the benefit of another mate or pumpman, Ship returned to Banda Mashur to load Jet 1A and 2A and, various kerosenes and Paraffins. I honestly did not have a clue as was the first tanker I had ever been on. Luckily for me I got a lot of assistance from the 3rd. Mate and Chief Engineer who were old tankermen. After discharging again in Japan and returning to the Persian Gulf I was relieved and flown down to Australia to join another tanker for 3 months on the Kiwi coast. Not to many years after this it would have been impossible to have landed in my situation as believe they brought out tanker endorsements certificate wise. It was exactly the same situation as a tankerman who had only ever been on tankers would find himself having to load general cargo. We are today I suppose more specialized in a particular trade or ship type, but in days gone by one had to be able to adapt very fast. This was the same attitude I found on arriving in Australia and was sometimes a bit scary but very refreshing as made one use the old head again. Cheers JS
    Last edited by j.sabourn; 6th April 2015 at 09:00 AM.

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    Default Re: Helisoma

    Hi John.
    I was on a tanker called the Baron Kilmarnock, belonging to the Baron boats, it was built for the Swedes I think single cabins very posh mess room and rec room. The mates were all company men from the Baron cargo boats and had never been on tankers before, they were lucky to have a great pump-man, who more or less taught them what was what, we were out for twelve months, running around on the Aussie coast
    Cheers Des
    Last edited by Des Taff Jenkins; 7th April 2015 at 04:53 AM.

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    Default Re: Helisoma

    Yes Des I found that out the hard way, the pump man was the most important man on the ship. Starting and stopping the paraffin tanks steam pumps, fortuanetley the Chief gave me a run through, if knew what oils were compatable with what and when to put a pig through the line were ok. Otherwise a tanker was not a hard ship to load. Always saw a 3 feet 6 inch ullage on all 26 tanks, no stability to worry about and very rarely down to the plimsolls. Maybe I was lucky. Never could understand why so many samples at different heights had to be taken and carried until discharge, dozens and dozens of sample bottles. Cheers JS

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    Default Re: Helisoma

    I was 3rd mate on a VLCC loading at Kharg Island when the first ever tanker, a VLCC, that Blue Flu had came into load. We used to load at 20,000 t.p.h there so expected the Blue Flu job to load at the same rate. the chicksan arms had been connected up to her but for hours nothing seemed to be happening cargo wise and no sign of ballast discharge going on. In those days clean ballast from cargo tanks would be discharged direct to sea, nowadays tankers are double hulled so again clean ballast is discharged direct to sea.
    Anyway after about 4 hours a very smartly dressed officer in full tropical rig turned up in our cargo control room asking if anyone of us could go across to the Blue Flu ship and show them how to load it. Apparently in their wisdom Blue Flu had refused to employ any tanker men when they signed building contracts for their VLCC's in the mistaken belief that as Blue Flu Officers were the best in the world {I was told that whilst having an interview with them for a job as a cadet on first going to sea by the guy who interviewed me, mind you he also asked me if I had any homosexual tendencies which I thought was a rather strange question to ask a naïve 16 year old} . We had a 1st Officer with us so he went across to show them how to load the ship and ended up spending the whole loading period on board as non of them knew a thing about tankers. They had not even thought to employ a tanker pumpman, instead all the A.B.'s were cargo boat men. The Chief Officer had been struggling not only lining the pipeines up for loading cargo and discharging ballast but had been trying to load her in the same manner as if it was a general cargo ship and working out the stability at various stages during the loading. Strange it was.!!!
    J.S.
    Pigging between grades, do you not mean putting a water plug through the line between different grades as pigging involves introducing a rubber plug into the line that is then blown through the lines with air pressure and after cleaning the line is removed, so the cargo lines need to have a means of introducing the pig at one end and removing it at the other end.
    All the crude oil and product tankers I sailed on had a single pumproom aft with 4 centrifugal steam turbine driven cargo pumps, each fitted with its own ring main pipeline system that included crossover lines so that all lines could be made common and two steam driven displacement stripping pumps for fina stripping of tanks. This meant that you could load and discharge 4 grades of different cargoes completely segregated and if you had more than 4 grades you would either discharge the lighter grades first so that any cargo remaining in the lines {after blowing through the lines with air} would only "improve" the heavier grades. Alternatively a water plug would be introduced between grades to clean the lines but this was rare as sea chest valves for taking on sea water ballast, would often be sealed to prevent inadvertent opening during discharge resulting in either cargo escaping to the sea or sea water entering the cargo.
    With the advent of mandatory double hulled tankers where the ballast is completely separated from the cargo spaces and carried in the double hull, most tankers are now fitted with individual deep well pumps in each cargo tank. This eliminates the need for cargo lines to be running through the ballast spaces an so eliminates the risk of a cargo line leaking into the ballast tanks.
    Regarding the number of samples, each receiver of the cargo, of which even with only a few grades but many receiver, will require samples of the cargo along with samples for the ships own use as protection should any cargo claim arise for off spec cargo. Depending on the receiver they may want bottom, middle and top samples along with composite samples of all cargo plus manifold samples at the start of loading as a minimum.
    These samples were the ship owners only defence against cargo contamination claims caused by the ships or loading terminals bad practise. Even so in certain parts of the word, including Europe, there was enough corruption around that even if the ship had taken all the correct procedures during oadin/carriage/discharge of cargo, there could be still a claim against owners.
    In the 80's in Holland there was a big scam going on in the veg. oil trade whereby off spec {supposedly} veg.oil was appearing on the salvage market in large quantities. Investigations showed that these cargoes were perfectly on spec. but corrupt receivers/surveyors were claiming it was off spec and putting it onto salvage market and selling it on, thus not only receiving the insurance money for off spec cargo but also receiving money for selling the cargo on the salvage market, often at a similar price to good cargo.
    Rgds
    JA

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    Default Re: Helisoma

    #16,,, My 12 months split between two clean Products Carriers always assumed putting a shot of water through the line was called putting a pig in the line. The 4 cross over tanks forward were independent of the 26 other tanks and were purely for kerosenes and paraffins and had their own independent pumproom, the main tanks were centrifrugal pumps run from the engine room and controlled from the after pump room by joy sticks to control the rate of discharge, the second tanker was on ,on the Kiwi coast was loading petrol for the various garages in all the kiwi ports loading in Whangeri, tanks were never cleaned between cargoes as was loading the same cargo over and over again. When the 3 months were up and had to leave the coast went up to Newcastle NSW and lay at some staithes for tank cleaning. As said I was never a proclaimed tanker man, but the company had a big new 300,000 tanker lying up one of the Norwegian fiords and think I was being groomed for that. However there was a big drop in the trade and the same company were selling off their dry cargo ships to pay for this big monster lying idle. It never did a run for same Company and they went bust over it, so never materialised. Double hulled tankers was not even thought of then. Cheers JS

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    Default Re: Helisoma

    HI John's
    I was on a B.T.C. tanker up in Baton Rouge,we were going to load a refined cargo for Antwerp We had been three weeks cleaning tanks before we got there, the chemists said that we still had so much sludge still down there and there was an argument about us going back down the Mississippi and into the gulf to clean them again. I don't know who fixed it but we loaded up and they said that by the time we got to Antwerp the refined spirits would be about normal, eventually they found that only two wing tanks were contaminated,and that would be turned into kerosene.
    Cheers Des
    redc.gif

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    Default Re: Helisoma

    #18... Des my memories of Baton Rouge was on a cargo ship loading I think Rice. There was a helluva rise and fall there if memory correct, and a long walk to the nearest pub. So that one wont go down in places to visit. Cheers JS

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    Default Re: Tankers.

    The Helisoma salvage operation was definitely in Nha Trang Harbor. I'm a Yank and was the Executive Officer of the USS Safeguard (ARS-25). I was a young 26 years old at the time when just before Christmas we were ordered to get underway from Subic Bay in the Philippines to rescue the British Shell Oil tanker Helisoma. Last September I was interviewed by Louisiana Public Broadcasting for their Vietnam Oral Histories Project. In that interview, I spoke for over 6 minutes about the Helisoma salvage (which I mistakenly identified as a Dutch Shell Oil tanker; sorry mates) at the end of 1968. It was a Dutch Shell tanker that came alongside Helisoma while we were patching her. My Helisoma discussion ran from 02:05 - 08:17. Helisoma sailed for Singapore thanks to our patch on 1/2/1969. We had the best New Year's Eve party in the Officer's mess that I will never forget!
    Last edited by David Curry; 14th October 2018 at 07:14 PM.

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