Merchant Navy/Marine

A friend of mine who is working on the Biglift Happy Ranger sent these two pictures of his ship, shot last Friday by a small aircraft, when he sailed along the Dutch Northsea coast. I hope you like them. 😮

In the series “How big can we get”: The largest ship in the world: Jahre Viking (well, it used to be…, now she’s renamed and rebuilt (with helo platform etc.) to act as a Floating Storage and Offloading platform in a Bahrain oilfield.


This monster has a capacity of 564,000ts (5.5 supercarriers 😉 ), is 458m long, a beam of 68.66m and a draught of 24m (can’t safely sail the North Sea).

Now she looks like this:

She’s called Knock Nevis now, I suppose you can find some car on the cay and then you can make the comparison :p .

Since I talked about the propulsion things, here is the new stuff:
-Counterrotating propellors (I think these are very difficult in technology.
-The Azipods, which are more widely used nowadays and will probably gain more in the market.
-The combination of a normal propellor with a azipod “rudder”. The azipod turns in the oposite direction, acting as a counterrotating propellor, then, when the ship is getting closer to port, the main prop quits turning, the azipod takes over the lower speed propulsion and of course makes an excellent steering mechanism: The FUTURE!!! This will probably be the propulsion for the future planned 13,000 TEU container carrier.
Although it should be noted that the azipods, and in specific the electro azipods are technically unreliable and prone to errors…

Jumbo doing overturn, what do you mean by that? I think you’re suggesting she doens’t steer well? Well if so, then that’s the art of steering a ship, you have to be smart and steer in the required direction for a few seconds, then you’ll see on your rate of turn meter what she’s doing. Then you’ll steer in the oposite direction for about two, three or four times (not sure, since I don’t have time to measure every period, other things to look out for when you’re steering) as long as you did in the direction you wanted to go. So, basically, you just give it a push untill it goes into the required direction and then you have to start pulling her back to stop turning for a very long period. (first time taking a large turn with a large vessel, I had an overshoot of 10°, officer was asking what I was doing…)

No, Himanshu, the shaft is mostly very solid kept in her tunnel, except in the engine room of course.
Since no one else is giving it a try: it’s the pipe duct. Just above the keelplate of a bulkcarrier (and other ships) you have a tunnel, where pipes run to ballast tanks, double bottom fuel tanks etc. Next to that is mostly a rail with a chart, which you can see here. It’s meant to transport heavy tools etc. But of course, there is nothing more fun to lie on this car, pull it to the front and let it slide when the ship is pitching. For the ultimate kick, you just turn off the lights and it’s fun when your ship is 200 or 300m long and you don’t even have to pay to do it! 🙂

Seve.. is that second pic having the propellor shaft.. ??

nice pic man…… but wont this jumbo be much more prone to overturn than the others???

here’s Berge Stahl, the world’s largest bulkcarrier. She, in all respects, dwarves a US “super” carrier. Her measurements: length of 343m, beam of 65m (that is not just a deck, that is the entire hull, for a carrier the beam is only 40m) and carries 360,000ts of Iron Ore (Indeed about 3.5 supercarriers!). SOme nice shots from her last repair/maintenance in Rotterdam (her route is Rotterdam to Brazil in 5 weeks) Rotterdam is the only port in Europe that has a terminal large enough to accomodate this ship.

Note the little blue guys near the rudder and propellorshaft.

Here are some pictures already!
First one is from the brigde of a container vessel. The requirement (and limitation) for stowing containers on deck is, that you have to be able to see 500m in front of your bow. That’s why containers are stowed in a “stair” kind of way. As you might have noticed, this problem could be denied by placing the bridge in front, which also has the advantage of protecting the containers from overcoming waves! This idea is in consideration, but it’s a disaster for us, since everyone will puke the guts out of his body then!
I can post some pictures about the future developments too, future propulsion methods (well some are in service, hence the pictures). In propulsion we are some steps ahead of Navy. Nowadays we are also into silencing, since some new regulations see “noise” as pollution too, so there come the skewed propellors for merchant vessels. (skewed props make less noise by stressing the ends of the propellor blades more)
Second picture, I’ll let you have a guess where and what it is!

Oeps,

Vreemde vertaling van mij is de oorzaak van het misverstand. Hij zit bij de koopvaardij en heeft stage gelopen op een bulkschip; china clay, pulp vervoeren etc vervoeren van Finland naar de VS dan naar Brazilie en zo weer terug; ook een keer naar Napels trouwens waar de Italiaanse havenarbeiders (met een kraan) de maagdelijk witte pulp in de modder op een hoop gooiden. Maar ja, ik ben zelf ook in Napels geweest en dat is Italie.
Bij hem was zoals gezegd geen bar aanwezig, hoewel de vrije tijdsruimte wel een DVD speler had en een grote collectie domme actiefilms. Toen hij weer thuis kwam had hij een heleboel baggerfilms bij zich die in Florida gekocht had om zich aan boord te vermaken. Hij was in de haven daar ook bijna gearresteerd omdat hij foto’s stond te maken van legertrucks die in de haven stonden te wachten Hij had uiteindelijk 9 man om zich heen: douane, havenpolitie en nog een dienst 😀 Hij was nogal bang geweest, vertelde hij toen ie later opbelde :diablo:

Well, first of all, piracy is not the greatest concern, as said, it’s on high seas and mostly the pirates don’t have the vessels to attack in those waters. Armed robbery on the other side, has become a huge concern, that’s where most casualties are made. The number of 216 was not even correct, that seemed to be the number of the first quarter of a year, don’t know the exact number for the entire year… Onboard, you are warned by the Navtex, it prints out “Piracy Reports”, where they describe the place and type of attack (and casualties and stolen goods). Most these attacks happen near the South-Indian Coast and Malacca Strait, mostly in anchorages (certainly the anchorage at Singapore). Mostly these attacks are done by more than one small boat that approaches from the stern, because the huge funnel blocks the radar in that part (blind spot). Also because the freeboard of the ship is smaller there (better for mooring gear), so they have to climb less. We are not allowed to carry weapons (although some companies give the captain a gun in case there would be a mutiny, very likely in that company Vaiar mentioned 😉 ). That leaves us with very little to defend, on tankers they use the foam canons to “blow” these guys off, on other ships they use the firehoses, most of the time fastened to the fences (no one outside, because they could start shooting at you).
UN doesn’t have any fleet against that, some countries do work together to fight this, US for example has a good cooperation with the Dutch and Belgian Navy for Drugbusting ops in the Caribean (one wonders why US has such a large Coast Guard and Navy, their Coast Guard likes to annoy the merchants more than they try to do something about the drug traffic).
I think nowadays, some talks are going for guarding the Strait of Malacca, when we were anchored at Singapore, there was a guard vessel just outside the port, but I don’t know how they would come to aid…

The other question, no, they also attack large vessels. But mostly, they don’t highjack the large ones, since they don’t know what to do with it. They don’t have installations for unloaded Crude Oil or liquified Gas. On General Cargo and sometimes containers, they can sell the cargo, mostly they repaint the ship when still at sea and give it a different name. So afterwards they use it too.
On the Tankers and Gascarriers, they mostly attack for food, money and electronics (cameras, TVs,etc.) and leave as soon as they have what they need.
One Piracy Message I recall went like this:
Anchorage in Indonesia, seven small crafts approached a tanker, the tanker’s crew reacted by using the lights and the small crafts fled. Shortly after, the boats approached a tug, they put the crew overboard and fled with the ship.

(I do hope they put the crew in a lifeboat, although that was not even mentioned).

Pictures, that takes a bit too long for now, I’ll do that later, but I can tell you that taking pictures of radarstations is not the smartest thing you can do! (Normally you’re not even allowed to do that from within 1-1.5m of the radarscreen). Engines are more fun. It’s hard to get a full picture of them, since they are mostly six floors high… But I’ll see what I can find.

Vaiar: Is die kadet een marine cadet of een koopvaardij kadet, als ie van de marine is, dan vind’k het wel heel raar dat ie op een koopvaardijschip stage moet lopen, bij ons gaan die allemaal in de zomer met een mijnenjager of de Godetia mee!
Quite bad for him, onboard we had two bars, one for the ratings, one for the officers, both were equiped with a large screen TV, DVD player, Video recorder and Playstation II, also a very large stereo was there. A large collection of movies (approx 500), music cassettes and cds (400) and a library. We also had an improvised pool.
On large tankers they mostly have a sauna (with the exhaust pipes going to the funnel) and a pool.

Agreed Sev , Merchant ship crews are always at high risk , And the kind of stastics you gave makes me think more and its Sh** scarry , I too have many friends who are merchie and they always have a story to tell .

Yes companies do earns billions , but when it comes to safety and extra manpower there is always a negative attitude and stories of budget cuts and so called needless expenditure.

I would like to ask any knowledgeble ones , if there is any international law on high seas governing and safeguarding the Interest of the Merch , If there is none what is the UN doing about it.

Also one question , do these pirates attack only small ships (less that 2000 tonnes ) or do they even highjack huge container vessel , recently the Indian navy rescused one such Japanese Mecrh ship , seized by the pirates at high seas.

I’ll also post some spectacular pictures or pictures on request if there is anything you want to see (and if I have it)

Yes I would like to look at those spectacular pictures , speciall huge and small container vessel, Picture of the bridge and how electronics , radar station look like and even the engines of these merch vessels

A friend of mine who is studying to be a marine officer returned just before X-mas from his first six months at sea as part of one of his two mandatory traineeships. He applied to Spliethoff for his traineeship and he was accepted immediately; later his found out why: in his opinion Spliethoff was the budget shipping company, their ships didn’t have a bar on board, only one tv and just one crew lounge (for officers and the rest of the crew) compared to more luxurious crew provisions with other companies. Not that he did not enjoy his first working experience (he will leave the end of January for his second tour), but hé it can be better. :rolleyes:

I don’t know, but not for containers I think. I’m very fond of all kinds of tankers and bulk carriers. We did visit the Hessen-NoordNatie container terminal in Antwerp this year. I would like to work for Shell… I’m also looking into the RFA! But I think only Commonwealth members are allowed there.

Which carrier and which route(s) will you be working for? I work at a transport company that every day ships over a load of containers between Europe and North America. You might be hauling my containers!