Anyone Interested in Ships

[admiles]

On 11/09/2024 at 23:50, St Enodoc said:

That "someone" might also provide western given names for Asian children. Some of those can be really unusual - although I have to say that the best belonged to a former colleague. His family name was Ho and his given name was Ivan...

 

Having dealt with companies in China and the Far East for many years I've known of a few slightly eye-opening "western" names Asian contacts have given themselves (presumably) as we westerners can't pronounce their names properly. 

 

Probably my favorite is a lovely lady working for my Shanghai agent - Miss Mini D o n g . Another classic was V a g i n a Ho (yes, I've spelt that correctly!) To this day I'm not sure if they were male or male (only ever emailed them). One not so dynamic character was called Reckless Zhou. We used to wonder if they just dropped an English dictionary on the desk and picked a word from whichever page fell open.

 

Edited September 13 by admiles

[jjb1970]

8 minutes ago, admiles said:

 

Having dealt with companies in China and the Far East for many years I've known of a few slightly eye-opening "western" names Asian contacts have given themselves (presumably) as we westerners can't pronounce their names properly. 

 

Probably my favorite is a lovely lady working for my Shanghai agent - Miss Mini D o n g . Another classic was V a g i n a Ho (yes, I've spelt that correctly!) To this day I'm not sure if they were male or male (only ever emailed them). One not so dynamic character was called Reckless Zhou. We used to wonder if they just dropped an English dictionary on the desk and picked a word from whichever page fell open.

 

 

One of the issues if you only know Chinese people via correspondence is that because names can be used for either gender it can be difficult to know. Most of my Chinese friends and professional colleagues use Chinese names though a few use western names, and I know several men and women who share the same name.

[jjb1970]

30 minutes ago, The Johnster said:

 

I imagine it helps keep things dry in heavy seas as well; I'm thinking of the North Pacific Great Circle in particular.  OTOH it has the potential to be a nuisance while slow manoevering (or transitting the Suez Canal) in a stron crosswind...

 

I think I'd want to paint wings or viking helmet horns on it.  Or 1st generation dmu speed flashes...

 

I don't think the wind deflectors will make much difference as windage is already so high from stacking containers up to 9 high on deck. Even in the old days when they were a lot shorter and only went 4 - 6 high on deck windage was a problem.

 

The big problem for the big box boats is and indeed a few other categories is torque at low revs. The engines have enough power at cruising speed, but picking up revs at low speed can be very difficult which has a terrible impact on manoeuvring. Unfortunately a lot of regulators don't understand the difference between power and torque and basically addressed the wrong parameter when considering minimum power. Although I see it a lot with rail enthusiasts too in conflating power and tractive effort.

[johnofwessex]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

I don't think the wind deflectors will make much difference as windage is already so high from stacking containers up to 9 high on deck. Even in the old days when they were a lot shorter and only went 4 - 6 high on deck windage was a problem.

 

The big problem for the big box boats is and indeed a few other categories is torque at low revs. The engines have enough power at cruising speed, but picking up revs at low speed can be very difficult which has a terrible impact on manoeuvring. Unfortunately a lot of regulators don't understand the difference between power and torque and basically addressed the wrong parameter when considering minimum power. Although I see it a lot with rail enthusiasts too in conflating power and tractive effort.

 

How do the regulators get involved with power?

[jjb1970]

10 hours ago, johnofwessex said:

 

How do the regulators get involved with power?

 

IMO developed guidelines for minimum propulsive power to support regulations governing energy efficiency of ships, namely the EEDI and EEXI. The easiest way to improve EEDI and EEXI values (thresholds are mandatory, and there is a market value for ships with low values) is to reduce reference speed and power for the calculation.

 

That resulted in a tankers and bulk carriers especially running into problems at sea, having insufficient power to maintain control of the ship, not necessarily to advance but just maintain a heading and control. So IMO developed guidelines which if adopted by the Administration are mandatory for industry.

 

The problem is that the limiting factor tends to be torque, not power. When I worked in class we had new build bulk carriers taking well over a minute to get through the barred speed range in calm conditions and incidents where ships couldn't increase engine revs at manoeuvring speed because of sea state and shaft load. At cruising speed most of them were fine.

[Ozexpatriate]

12 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

I know several men and women who share the same name.

It is very common for multiple people to have the same name - sometimes the Anglicized spelling is varied Xhiwei / Zhiwei / Shiwei to make them unique in a corporate directory.  Email addresses start accumulating letters for common names like Wang / Wong. I've seen many variations on email addresses with extra letters like "wwang" to create a unique handle.

[jjb1970]

I have a lot of engagement with two professors, both called Zhang Shuang, one is a man and the other is a lady. 

[KeithMacdonald]

Here's an interesting article on the historic reasons we once had such a big navy and merchant fleet.

 

https://bigserge.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-shot-and-sail

 

How, for example, relatively poor small countries like Portugal, the Netherlands, and England found (almost by accident) that they had a technological advantage that would enable these countries to build vast empires that spanned the globe.

 

That technological advantage, and broadside cannon, gave rise to large navies, and a strategy and mind-set that worked for 400+ years. But technology also evolves and advances. With the more-recent development of missiles and drones, what was once a strength and an asset might gradually become a weakness and a liability.

[WessexEclectic]

9 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Here's an interesting article on the historic reasons we once had such a big navy and merchant fleet.

Are you a subscriber to that Substack? Other articles look equally good/interesting…

[KeithMacdonald]

Quote

How fast did HMS Rodney go when chasing Bismarck?

 

Please do feel free to skip the first two minutes (annoying advert).

 

The rest is interesting, on how to red-line your oil-fired turbines for so long that you start pumping raw cold sea water over them to cool them down.

 

 

[jjb1970]

Rodney and Nelson rank as the strangest looking of the post-Dreadnought battleships to my eyes. Even the Japanese battleship-seaplane carrier hybrids looked less odd. 

[WessexEclectic]

HMS Rodney - not a plonker…

[jjb1970]

On 14/09/2024 at 18:18, KeithMacdonald said:

That technological advantage, and broadside cannon, gave rise to large navies, and a strategy and mind-set that worked for 400+ years. But technology also evolves and advances. With the more-recent development of missiles and drones, what was once a strength and an asset might gradually become a weakness and a liability.

 

For the moment it seems the military pendulum has swung in favour of cheap and easily accessible drone tech. Ansar Allah have pretty much won the battle to control Bab Al Mandab for now at least using cheap drones and missiles any NATO force would deride as backwards. 

[pete_mcfarlane]

17 minutes ago, jjb1970 said:

For the moment it seems the military pendulum has swung in favour of cheap and easily accessible drone tech. Ansar Allah have pretty much won the battle to control Bab Al Mandab for now at least using cheap drones and missiles any NATO force would deride as backwards. 

What we've not yet seen is a proper war between a high end military power and people with lots of cheap drones. The UK/US/France seem to have easily stopped the Iranian drone attack on Israel earlier this year, but presumably there are only so many drones you can take out before you run out of missiles and the drones start to get through. 

 

We've seen drones used extensively in Ukraine v Russia, but how would that play out if one side had a decent ISTAR capability and could go after the drone operators. 

 

But then, if you are fighting somebody who's a bit rubbish, then drones may give you the edge. 

 

[jjb1970]

3 minutes ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

What we've not yet seen is a proper war between a high end military power and people with lots of cheap drones. The UK/US/France seem to have easily stopped the Iranian drone attack on Israel earlier this year, but presumably there are only so many drones you can take out before you run out of missiles and the drones start to get through. 

 

We've seen drones used extensively in Ukraine v Russia, but how would that play out if one side had a decent ISTAR capability and could go after the drone operators. 

 

But then, if you are fighting somebody who's a bit rubbish, then drones may give you the edge. 

 

 

The Iranian attack was choreographed and more performative political statement than serious attack. They all but told the US where they needed to be to shoot the drones down with a few ballistic missiles getting through to send a message.

In the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Ansar Allah are pretty much in control, with the US and Europe basically stalemated out. Most ships are going round the cape as the risks of going via Suez aren't worth it. When it kicked off the obvious question was what would we do if a few air strikes didn't work? Few want to get into a ground war in Yemen and the Yemeni's were bombed intensively for a decade in a war which killed 100,000's and which the Arab led coalition abandoned as a quagmire. At the moment it looks like the Suez route will remain closed off to most ships indefinitely. 

[pete_mcfarlane]

These are presumably the same tribesmen we had problems with in the 1960s in Aden? 

 

 

[Mol_PMB]

2 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

The Iranian attack was choreographed and more performative political statement than serious attack. They all but told the US where they needed to be to shoot the drones down with a few ballistic missiles getting through to send a message.

In the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden Ansar Allah are pretty much in control, with the US and Europe basically stalemated out. Most ships are going round the cape as the risks of going via Suez aren't worth it. When it kicked off the obvious question was what would we do if a few air strikes didn't work? Few want to get into a ground war in Yemen and the Yemeni's were bombed intensively for a decade in a war which killed 100,000's and which the Arab led coalition abandoned as a quagmire. At the moment it looks like the Suez route will remain closed off to most ships indefinitely. 

Interesting. I can't imagine that the Egyptians are enthusiastic about the situation.

At this rate they'll have to start importing cigarettes rather than relying on the canal pilots' dues ;-)

[burgundy]

3 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

 

For the moment it seems the military pendulum has swung in favour of cheap and easily accessible drone tech. Ansar Allah have pretty much won the battle to control Bab Al Mandab for now at least using cheap drones and missiles any NATO force would deride as backwards. 

As with many types of  military  equipment, there is an iterative process of threat and counter threat. Rather than shooting down cheap drones with expensive missiles, Russia and Ukraine are using electronic warfare (jammers) to disrupt the control commands or the video feeds to and from the drone. You can harden the communications links to make them less susceptible to jamming - which will thereby create a rather less cheap drone. And so it will evolve.

Best wishes 

Eric 

[jjb1970]

I think we are at a major inflexion point in military technology and it is unclear what the long term outcomes will be.

 

The Ukraine war is the first major war between armies equipped with modern technology and the benefits of high end intelligence and surveillance,  precision strike capability etc. 

 

Something which is very apparent is the importance of numbers and industrial capacity.  After the cold War NATO armies were largely reconfigured as small high end boutique forces set up for limited conflicts and an assumption of firepower and air power dominance. We no longer have the capacity to surge production and ultimately 'good enough' in quantity matters more than a handful of tip top weapons.

 

Which I suppose is an example of how what goes around comes around. In 1914 the BEF was the best army in Europe but tiny and in WW2 Germany made all sorts of weird and exotic stuff which in many but not all cases was more advanced and capable than Allied stuff but built in trivial numbers (assuming it even made it into service).

[jjb1970]

7 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

These are presumably the same tribesmen we had problems with in the 1960s in Aden? 

 

 

 

Pretty much. Allied to a political movement. I deliberately use the term Ansar Allah in preference to Houthi as when the media and politicians talk about the Houthis it gives an impression that we're facing a bunch of primitive tribesmen. While many of their foot soldiers probably fit that description (and can be superb fighters) it's a well organised and capable force. If looked at purely from a military effectiveness perspective the way they have choked off the Suez route to most shipping has been well done given the balance of forces.

[jjb1970]

7 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

Interesting. I can't imagine that the Egyptians are enthusiastic about the situation.

At this rate they'll have to start importing cigarettes rather than relying on the canal pilots' dues ;-)

 

It's hammering Egypt. Suez income, which is a major source of foreign earnings, has plummeted.

[Ozexpatriate]

11 hours ago, pete_mcfarlane said:

presumably there are only so many drones you can take out before you run out of missiles and the drones start to get through. 

More specifically how expensive the intercepting antimissile / anti-drone materiel is compared with the cost of the attacking missiles/drones. 

 

It is very asymmetrical and has been for years now. Israel's Iron Dome is vastly more expensive than the attacking rockets fired by either Hezbollah or Hamas.

[Ozexpatriate]

7 hours ago, burgundy said:

You can harden the communications links to make them less susceptible to jamming - which will thereby create a rather less cheap drone. And so it will evolve.

Much is made of Hedy Lamar's (the actress) concept for radio-controlled torpedoes - a frequency hopping solution to avoid jamming - but this was the idea. The problem existed as early as WW2.

 

Edited Tuesday at 01:52 by Ozexpatriate

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, jjb1970 said:

Something which is very apparent is the importance of numbers and industrial capacity.  After the cold War NATO armies were largely reconfigured as small high end boutique forces set up for limited conflicts and an assumption of firepower and air power dominance. We no longer have the capacity to surge production and ultimately 'good enough' in quantity matters more than a handful of tip top weapons.

This is true, but 1930s Britain did not possess the capacity for 'surge production' either. Until massive investments in the very late 1930s, aircraft production was very much configured for small boutique production - and it wasn't even very high-end. It was addressed by moving to a war footing - which was of course ruinously expensive.

 

The US fared better by being able to convert large manufacturing (like the automobile industry) for war materiel - tanks and aircraft.

 

A good example is the Consolidated Liberator (B-24).  Of the 18,493 built 9,779 (53%) were built by Consolidated. 6,784 (37%) were built by the Ford Motor Company in a factory built during the war in Willow Run Michigan. North American Aviation and Douglas Aircraft built the rest.

 

The Sherman tank was built by the likes of Baldwin, Lima and Alco (locomotive manufacturers) and the Detroit Tank Arsenal (built by Chrysler).

 

  

[jjb1970]

One of CMA-CGM's latest, delivered about three weeks ago. Quite an interesting design, you can see the LNG tank at the back.