Luminous

iTrader: (3)

BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Stricken Antarctic ship evacuated

The ship has a hole the size of a fist in its hull. The report mentions that it has water tight doors, which were fixed before it set sail. Just how can a hole so small do so much damage to a ship that is meant to have water tight doors?!!

Just what are those doors meant to prevent, a hole the size of a straw from sinking it?

Shark Man

1969 ship?

Hmm, hole in hull on an aging vessel.....Insurance job springs to mind.

Get everyone to safety, before the bilge pumps somehow become "overwhelmed" due to the size of the leak. (or more likely switched off )

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

Quite a risk to take for an insurance job. If someone was killed during that, just imagine the implications if you get caught out

fast bloke

Have you ever seen how much water can get through a 4" hole? -

warrenm2

so much for global warming. Oh and I note it did the north west passage in 1984 - so much for the recent bbc story as well!

Fuzz

Once that goes under we wont be seeing it again, it's 2000ft to the sea bed.

Beastie

iTrader: (2)

Age of vessel dictates single skinned hull, so 4" hole fills up the watertight compartment which only comes up to the maximum designed draught of the vessel. After that any ballast (possibly pumped to keep the vessel upright)and extra weight could be enough to overwhelm the watertight bulkhead.

The largest emergency suctions for bilge pumping are only in the engine room, if the hole was in a forward compartment then only a smaller bilge pump would be available to use through a smaller line. Eventually the pump would be overwhelmed unless additional pumps were set up and used i.e. salvage pumps.

As the end result was that the vessel sank then probably one of the above or more than one hole or a very big rupture.

gpssti4

iTrader: (6)

A 4" hole wouldn't usually be enough to sink a ship. I feel there's something else going on here.

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

I was thinking there had to be something more. I know a massive amount of water can get through a 4" hole. Whatever watertight compartment that was behind the hole would certainly fill with water.

Its just the whole point of a watertight compartment is meant for just such an event. If the compartment is not capable in stopping the ship from sinking there is not much point in having them.

Maybe there was more than one hole, that would have caused it an issue.

J4CKO

iTrader: (1)

Fnarr Fnarr

Leslie

If you upset anyone around here on the water, they have been known to drill a !/4" hole below the waterline of your pleasure boat after you have moored up and it will be sunk by the morning!

Les

boxst

Stolen from B3TA : WE LOVE THE WEB



Amused me anyway

Steve

DCR59

Heard on the news, that the ship was a double skin due to the type of seas it would face in the Antartic.

Beastie

iTrader: (2)

If it was holed in the double skin then it just shouldnt have sunk. However, most double skin vessels have a single skin vulnerability around the area of the A frame where the propeller shaff tube exits the vessel due to the need of the designed hull form.

As the end result is that the vessel sunk then i can only assume that a hole was made in a single skin area.

gpssti4

iTrader: (6)

Yes, maybe so, but that's a bit different though!

A 4" hole would take in a lot of water, but the bilge pumps should cope. If not there would be submergible pumps that would also be used. In addition, it wouldn't be left like that. The crew would try to stem the ingress of water with emergancy repairs - or so you'd hope.

BTW, I was in charge of various Damage Control parties during my time in the Royal Navy, so I do have a little knowledge about the situation.

Shark Man

That's why I think that the pumps were switched off after all the passengers had abandoned ship. Obviously the report will say they became "overwhelmed".

[Davey]

Tad cold to go wadeing around in that water with a welder and some patches of metal , not many people that could last more than 10 minutes in that sort of temperature

Butty

iTrader: (2)

A 4" hole (4m below the surface?) would flow about 150 m3/hr which doesn't need a very big pump.
The BBC report says that an inspection revealed that watertight doors weren't required though - presumably due to the assumption of a twin skin saving the day?

Nick

oobster

Excuse me if I am being thick here, but what is that huge gash (Fnarr Fnarr) along the hull?

Shark Man

Don't know, but I'd expect the hole to be on the other side of the hull...seeing that its listing in that direction

oobster

Thats what I was thinking, but whats the mark in the hull then?

RB5_245

The watertight bulkheads come up to the level of the first outside opening that is not a watertight openening, in this ship that would have been at least as high as the top red stripe.

It would very unlikely have been double skinned, as neither would a brand new cruise vessel with a rating for ice. There would be tanks in the bottom of the hull though which would act as a double bottom.

It should also maintain stability and not sink with any 2 of it's watertight compartments flooded. Somewhere there has to have been a serious failure as a single 4" hole should not be an issue at all.

Above assuming a class 1a ship, don't see how it could have been otherwise.

RB5_245

Black mark, possible oil staining from a bilge overboard.

Leslie

Yes I understand your point-I forgot about the bilge pumps.

Les

gpssti4

iTrader: (6)

They'd don special suits capable of fending off the cold for enough time to carry out the repair. Well, it's a stop-gap really, they'd just plug the hole not weld it up! The worst thing would be cold hands and trying to hold hammers etc

nooobyscooby

The hole appeared in a forward cabin and when the passengers in there got a bit wet, they shot upsatirs to complain - as you would! The crew then spent an hour ripping out the lining to get to the hole by which time the ship had taken on a significant list.

The list then caused a 2 inch diameter pipe that vented moist air from the cabins to go under water.

The 2 inch pipe laso fed into the engine room - water soaked the controls, all the electrics went out and the pumps stopped.

An hour later they got the engine going again by which time the abandon ship call had gone out and only the captain and first mate were still on board.

However the list was now too dangerous to stay so they too abandoned ship.

As the lifeboats waited 5 hours hours to be picked up, the engines suddenly fired up again when the ship was on her side, the prop was still engaged and began thrashing around pulling the ship towards the waiting lifeboats!

I was surprised they did not drop a patch over the side and then pull it into and onto the hole to make a temporary fix so that even if it leaked the pumps could more than keep up.

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

I guess fitting an outside patch would be really hard. Made even harder due to double skinned hull. The outer hole could be non visible and not that near the inner hole. I don't know that much about this stuff to know if that would be possible.

I don't get why a vent would be so close to the waterline though. Pretty poor planning imo.

PeteBrant

This is why I love internet forums. Everyone is an expert on everything. I never knew there was such a wealth of knowledge on ship hull design on this very forum

nooobyscooby

Just think, if the Captain had come on SN instead of fannying about calling the coastguards in Falmouth, we'd have sorted him out in 10 minutes and the Explorer would still be afloat instead of 2000 feet down polluting the sea bed.

SN can save the World no less!

RB5_245

Not really difficult, a flat panel of anything will naturally be pushed onto the hull if the hole is close to vertical. There is also 101 other ways to reduce flow using pretty much anything available there.

I'd like to see the source that says it was double skinned. That doesn't make sense really.