Anyone Interested in Ships

[jjb1970]

The CMA CGM Lyra, one of the last big ship designs before the machinery space casing and accommodation blocks were split, with the accommodation and wheelhouse being moved forward.

 

[jjb1970]

A picture showing cell guides projected above deck. Below deck the boxes are kept secure by tese guides, but above deck they usually use twist locks and lashing bars as such guides are incompatible with lift on/lift off hatchcovers. There have been open hatch container ships but it's one of those ideas that works better as an idea than in practice. However many ships do have above deck cell guides around the engine room where there is eithe no below deck stowage or it is a shallow hold above the engine room (which looks to be the case here).

[jjb1970]

This is a bit different, a Fed Olsen windfarm construction vessel out in the anchorage. Very poor photo because of distance, have and somebody being inconsiderate enough to anchor in front of it, but may be interesting.

 

[Wickham Green too]

Apologies from a newbie on this thread but I have ABSOLUTELY NO INTENTION of searching the whole two hundred pages to see if there's an answer here already - and from a taste of the thread I think most of it's about bigger things !

 

ANYWAY, I was in Gloucester on Saturday and photographed what looks to be an old sailing barge among other vessels in the docks ...

... not a fantastic photo but I got a better picture back in 2021 ...

... I couldn't identify her then and can find nothing obvious on the web ....... anyone here know what she was ??!?

 

( As for that tug with the peculiar boom thing across the bow - another mystery ! )

[admiles]

21 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. 

The lack of traffic through the Suez Canal must be costing the Egyptians an absolute fortune.

[WessexEclectic]

5 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

... I couldn't identify her then and can find nothing obvious on the web ....... anyone here know what she was ??!?

 

( As for that tug with the peculiar boom thing across the bow - another mystery ! )

Most likely a Severn Trow…

 

The ‘boom thing across the bow’ is most likely a plank of wood. See Sykes, Cooper et al. 1967… ;)  

Oh sorry, you meant across the tug’s bow - looks like a rig for pushing unpowered barges…

[Wickham Green too]

I see what you mean about a pusher tug - but that boom is festooned with large diameter pipework which runs down inside the side arm and is flexibly connected to the deck near the stern : could it be for pollution spraying ?.

 

As for the trow - Wikipedia reckons there are none afloat .... though it's not infallible, of course. Whatever it is, nobody seems to want to tell the outside world about it ! 

[Mol_PMB]

5 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

I see what you mean about a pusher tug - but that boom is festooned with large diameter pipework which runs down inside the side arm and is flexibly connected to the deck near the stern : could it be for pollution spraying ?.

 

As for the trow - Wikipedia reckons there are none afloat .... though it's not infallible, of course. Whatever it is, nobody seems to want to tell the outside world about it ! 

I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest it's been modified for dredging?

[Wickham Green too]

Dredging was, indeed, my first thought when I saw it ............. but I couldn't suss out how !

[Mol_PMB]

4 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

Dredging was, indeed, my first thought when I saw it ............. but I couldn't suss out how !

Well there are many types of dredgers!

Obviously this can't actually lift material and store it in the way that a bucket, grab or suction dredger would.

A plough dredger is basically a floating bulldozer and a tug is a good starting point for one of those. Good for levelling the bottom.

But there are also dredgers which use high-pressure water jets to dislodge silt from the bottom, and then rely on a natural water flow to carry it away before it settles again. Effective in rivers.

Neither of these types are as good as dredgers that actually take material away in their hold (or in adjacent barges) but they may be cheaper.

[KeithMacdonald]

8 hours ago, Wickham Green too said:

I couldn't identify her then and can find nothing obvious on the web ....... anyone here know what she was ??!?

 

2 hours ago, WessexEclectic said:

Most likely a Severn Trow…

 

I concur. At one time, I had a keen interest in Trows. But mostly the Llandoger Trow on Bristol Waterfront.

[KeithMacdonald]

Not the kind of news I like to share:

 

Quote

 

Shipbuilding company Harland and Wolff has confirmed the business is to be placed into administration for the second time in five years. Insolvency practitioners Teneo are being lined up to act as administrators and some "non-core" staff are being made redundant.

 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkddrv7v2po

and

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gdddp2pqyo

[Wickham Green too]

2 hours ago, Mol_PMB said:

... there are also dredgers which use high-pressure water jets to dislodge silt from the bottom, ...

Yes - looks to be a water injection dredger ( looking VERY closely at the photo you can see lots of nozzles in the underside of the boom ) ..... a number of rather different vessels found on the web so far - even at Gloucester.

[The Johnster]

 

7 hours ago, WessexEclectic said:

Most likely a Severn Trow…

 

I agree, as these were invariably single-masted vessels, either sloop or cutter rigged and sometimes with square sails as well.  Pictures of the larger sea-going trows usually show a squared-off transom stern, but I doubt that this feature was universal and a vessel whose trade required beaching (which trows often did once beyond the Mouth of the Severn) usually has a pointed stern to be able to run in to the beach through the surf.  They were flat-bottomed but used logs as keels when it was neccessary to tack into the wind or hold course on a reach.

[jjb1970]

6 hours ago, KeithMacdonald said:

Not the kind of news I like to share:

 

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crkddrv7v2po

and

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4gdddp2pqyo

 

It's not just wisdom in hindsight to say a lot of people were rather taken aback when H&W were part of the new RFA stores ship program given the state of the company and the investment and skills needed to try and build such ships (even if the difficult bits will be done by Navantia).

[Wickham Green too]

8 hours ago, The Johnster said:

... They were flat-bottomed but used logs as keels when it was necessary to tack into the wind or hold course on a reach.

With a single mast VERY close to the bow this thing would have been really tricky to operate unless the wind was astern.

[WessexEclectic]

44 minutes ago, Wickham Green too said:

With a single mast VERY close to the bow this thing would have been really tricky to operate unless the wind was astern.

Much like Humber Keels or Norfolk Wherries - fortunately navigating rivers means that round the bend the next reach usually offers a better wind angle. In meantime, a rope could be used to harness a human/animal from the bank. Going with the tide is without question and momentum is your friend.

[The Johnster]

Going with the tide is usual practice in the Bristol Channel, which is the area in which the sea-going abilities of trows were needed.  Tidal currents get stronger the further upstream you go, and the prevalining winds are southwesterly, so reaching ports like Watchet or Aberthaw would be feasible before they dried out on a falling tide on most days, easier with a northeasterly of course, and returning up-channel/upstream as soon as the rising tide had floated the trow.  One might moor or anchor when the tide turned and ride it out until the next incoming tide took you further towards Worcester. 

 

These vessels worked upriver as far as Monmouth on the Wye and Shrewsbury on the Severn, but of course working upstream was more labour intensive than downstream.  The mast stepped forward is a common feature of coastal trading vessels, leaving more room for cargo stowage and enabling the craft to be a good platform for the mast when it is lowered for passage beneath bridges.  The rig is designed for rapid lowering and raising of the mast, and the high arch of the iron bridge at, um, Ironbridge, is designed to enable them the clear undereath without having to lower the mast in order to reach the ironworks wharf at Coalbrookdale.  I don't think much river traffic got as far as Shrewsbury by that time...

 

They regularly worked down-channel as far as Padstow or Tenby, and round Land's End to Par for china clay for the Worcester potteries.  Rounding Land's End, ideally at low tide, or running the Lundy Race would have been interesting (by which I mean absolutely terrifying) in lively weather.  Nor was the adrenaline allowed to take a rest in the rivers; shooting bridges needed enough water to float obviously but too much would mean fouling the bridge, so this could be an *rse-clencher as well!

 

They were replaced in the 20th century, by which time any survivors would have had engines, by motor barges run by the oil companies or Harker's, who also ran barges on the Trent system.  Harker's and BP were a common sight in my childhood, mostly with their decks awash off Porthcawl coming up from Swansea or Briton Ferry.  What conditions were like aboard them is difficult to imagine, and Harker's had a bonus system for early delivery based on the number of trips you made in a month, which encouraged risky tide-catching behaviour like running inside the Nash Sands, or scraping over the Sully Island causeway, and they got into trouble sometimes; I can remember one beached at Nash Point.  The famous incident is of course the Severn Bridge tragedy, an illustration of how powerful tidal currents are in this part of the river.l

Edited yesterday at 15:56 by The Johnster

[figworthy]

6 hours ago, The Johnster said:

Going with the tide is usual practice in the Bristol Channel, which is the area in which the sea-going abilities of trows were needed.  Tidal currents get stronger the further upstream you go, and the prevalining winds are southwesterly, so reaching ports like Watchet or Aberthaw would be feasible before they dried out on a falling tide on most days, easier with a northeasterly of course, and returning up-channel/upstream as soon as the rising tide had floated the trow.  One might moor or anchor when the tide turned and ride it out until the next incoming tide took you further towards Worcester. 

 

These vessels worked upriver as far as Monmouth on the Wye and Shrewsbury on the Severn, but of course working upstream was more labour intensive than downstream.  The mast stepped forward is a common feature of coastal trading vessels, leaving more room for cargo stowage and enabling the craft to be a good platform for the mast when it is lowered for passage beneath bridges.  The rig is designed for rapid lowering and raising of the mast, and the high arch of the iron bridge at, um, Ironbridge, is designed to enable them the clear undereath without having to lower the mast in order to reach the ironworks wharf at Coalbrookdale.  I don't think much river traffic got as far as Shrewsbury by that time...

 

 

As memory serves, in the pre-engine days, most traffic upstream of Gloucester (and the further up you went, the more it applied) was bow hauled.  Not by horse (that came later), but by teams of men, who could make navvies look like pillars of society.

 

Adrian

[The Johnster]

Hence the Song of the Vulgar Boatmen...