SA Oranje

[Bryan Portwig]

does anyone remember the name of the air vents to capture cool air on the mailships - this is from the SA Oranjesa oranje air vents.jpg

[J Gowers]

I saw these on a cargo ship they do have a name but I cannot remember what it is or even what ship I saw them on. Most of the ships I was on had forward facing ports in the cabins so we just opened them and let the fresh air blow through.

[Doc Vernon]

On the UCL Ships we called them Wind Scoops

They were a Godsend in the Tropics, but then also not too good when the Tropics were Hot as hell and not a breath of Air!
Cheers

Just a snippet from an old Seadog!

I spent a fair bit of time welding Gamlen sea clean drums to fit into the portholes to allow a flow of nice cool air into the cabins, especially the cabins which did not face forward, I do apologise if any of my air scoops scratched the brass work.

[Jim R Christie]

Tennents cans soldered together and placed in the porthole had much the same effect!

[Des Taff Jenkins]

Wind Scoops, yes they were a godsend on a tanker up the gulf, but one had to be on the alert for choppy seas when fully loaded, not a good thing when laying your bunk and there is a whooshing and smashing sound and you get a bath in you bunk with sea water, as a slightly bigger sea came up. Then there was a race to get the mangled scoop out of the port, which mostly ended up with crushing it and sending it into the sea. Even a slight chop was enough with being so low in the water.
Des

[Colin Wood]

Wind scoopsor wind shutes, very common on ships I sailed on, with British India or Chinese crews.

[happy daze john in oz]

On the Windsor we had port you could open.
Fine if your cabin was on a higher deck, but for many catering it was on a lower one.

One such port was open, some smart a had opened it for some unknown reason.
But we were coming into the bay and it got a bit rough.
No need to sugi the cabin deck on that occasion but it took some cleaning up we were told.

[vic mcclymont]

The two ships I sailed on SA VAAL and CLAN RANALD were bot air conditioned, luxury.
One trip on the Ranald we had a first trip Refrigeration Engineer, settings were all by the book, we sweated our n*** in th acommodation, it was absolutely red hot.
No amount of persuasion could get him to change the settings, previous trips had been ok.
We had a party in Durban and even the girls were complaining about the heat. Fridgie moaned that we ad put them up to it.
Next night sitting in the Bar with the sweat pouring of us, the temperature fell like a stone, cold air flowing from the vents what relief.
Next thing Bar swings open, Fridgie enters with a tirade of abuse, which translated meant which one of you clowns has been playing with his fridge gear.
No amount of discussion on our part, pleading innocence (which is true) would he believe us.
In the midst of the ongoing tirade, the door opened their stood the C.E., it was me who adjusted the controls, leave it like that do not tamper, Fridgie looked sheepish.
The parting comment was a big put down, he looked at Fridhie this supposed to be an AC ship.
Vic

[j.sabourn]

A leckie on a ship was always welcome but rarely had one on a D/C ship. All the lamps and any electrical work was usually done by the third engineer. However he would rarely assist with any problems with the Gyro compass if you had one, which had to be run off an alternating current. So had an inverter to convert the supply to the gyro which passed through a Carbon Pile supposedly to keep a constant supply to the gyro ,otherwise it used to wander . That carbon pile used to drive me nuts as used to shriek like a person in agony when struggling to do its job , I did everything as said in the book , but in the finish used to tap the box with a hammer. It was always another job of the second mate gyro and radar if you had one. Used to pray when joining a ship it was a Marconi Radar so it was the R/Os job and make straight to the gyro to see what model it was. Years later when the armour Brown came out , it was a sealed unit and didn’t have to take apart and put together again for cleaning Life was more like a holiday then. JS

[Des Taff Jenkins]

I always preferred to steer by Gyro, used to go cross eyed trying to follow a compass around, two hours on the wheel used to feel like four.
Perhaps that is why I took up smoking while at sea.
Des