BS: Ships and boats

Subject: BS: Ships and boats
From: Peace
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 11:22 AM

Mudcatters: I need help with the following, and I am appealing to all maritimers and landlocked sailors for assistance. In larger ships (boats, tankers--I'm living on the Prairies, and they's all boats to me) there are 'baffles' put in the hull to compartmentalize the cargo and prevent the load from shifting and causing the ship to roll. What are those things called? Are they baffles? When did that first begin to happen? Thanks for any info you can provide.

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Amos
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 11:40 AM

Baffles is what they were called when I learned about them. They put them in fuel tanks and water tanks.

There are other similar devices used in holds meant to hold grain and such -- baffle-boards or some such name which I forget.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: DonMeixner
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 12:03 PM

Baffles in tanks were to reduce the surge of fluids back and forth when a ship or delivery truck rolled or moved about. It is better to have 5 one thousand gallon tanks with their contents moving about that it is to have 1 five thousand gallon mass of fluid surging back and forth. The fluid is more easily controlled this way. The baffles are usually connected to allow the liquid to pass back and forth through the tanks and there by keeping the volume of the tanks equal. This becomes much more involved but this is the basic desription of how they work.

There are also dry container baffles but they usually served as compartments to keep things in place.

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Peace
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 12:28 PM

Thanks, Amos and Don. Do either of you know when ships first began to be designed that way? That is, was it in the time of sail, steam or combustion engine?

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: RichM
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 12:52 PM

dictionary.com defines "bulkhead" as
"One of the upright partitions dividing a ship into compartments and serving to add structural rigidity and to prevent the spread of leakage or fire."

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Gareth
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 01:01 PM

Tankers - tend to have "baffling plates" within the tanks. Modern Construction tankers also have segregated ballest tanks and double bottoms.

Bulkers, such as OBO's (Oil/Bulk/Ore hybrides), and pure bulkers have sepperated holds.

Grain can shift in a seaway, and it was customary with a consiencious Master to place temparary baffles known as "shifting Boards" in the grain, or wall it off with part of the cargo being shipped in sacks, and these sacks were stacked to form baffels.

Bulk Ore's or Coal duff can be dangerous if shipped with certain moisture contents in them. The vibration turns them into a slurry, which does not enhance stability. The "Lovat" cargo coal duff, Briton Ferry to Rotterdam was lost this way in moderate weather off Penzance some 20 years ago.

With the natural viscosity of most crude oils VLCC's were not built with many baffels. Bluntly you have to heat the crude to pump.

Unfortunately this meant that that the extraem size of the tanks allowed large static electrical charges to build up, and the spark could ignite petroleum vapour resident in the tank. It is believed that the "Mactra", and the "Marpessa" were lost this way. The "King Haakon" suffered a tank explosion which blew most of the deck off, but fortunately the hull remained watertightt and she was salvaged and repaired.( Again Static charges were believed to be the proximate cause.)

As with most bulk cargo containing organics (grain, coal) the dangers of spontaneous combustion, or dust explosions can be high without careful stowage.

These problems were known in the days of sail. But it must be remembered that in those days grain, rice etc were shipped in bags, which meant for easier handling or stowage.

Any wooden hull will leak to a lesser or greater extent This meant that shipping bulk grain was problamatical due to the seepage infiltrating and spoiling the cargo. I suspect, tho I have no evidence at hand, that large scale bulk (ie loose) shipments of grain was not feasable till the developement of Iron Hulls.

If brucie or any others are interested PM me, I can direct you to various books and papers on this subject.

Gareth ( A former Adjustor of Marine Claims )

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Charley Noble
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 06:27 PM

For reasons unclear to me cargos such as guano (seabird do-do) were unloaded from bags loose into the holds of 19th century sailing ships, and then scattered evenly about with shovels. Shifting boards were also used as mentioned above but I can't imagine why they didn't just stack in the guano as sacked. What a hard miserable job that must have been in the heat of the South American coast, and the smell of the guano!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: TheBigPinkLad
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 06:32 PM

I think you mean 'ballast'

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Gareth
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:00 PM

Charley, the BigPinkLad has got it in one - Fossilised Bird Shit aka Guano - was used as a ballast Cargo, under the copper Ore, returning to Swansea, or Llanelli, under sail.

But as thread drift I wonder if that was the source of the following lines from that Folk Classic - "The Good Ship Venus"

"Oh the Bosun's Mate the Bosun's Mate,
He was a dirty b****r,
He was not fit to shovel sh*t,
From one ship to another !"

Gareth

(Asterix given as this is a familly thread)

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Peace
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:43 PM

The cabin boy, the cabin boy,
The dirty little nipper,
Shove broken glass up the first mate's a##
And circumcised the skipper.

Thank you all very much for the information. It's for a story I'm writing and I wanted to get the facts straight.

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: kendall
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 07:58 PM

And when we reached our station
Through skillfull navigation
The ship was sunk in a wave of spunk
From too much fornication.

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Padre
Date: 01 Dec 03 - 10:59 PM

Bat Guano was one of the Boarding Party's shipmates along with Strokeman.

Padre

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: mack/misophist
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 12:48 AM

One of the very last commercial sailing vessels, the Omega carried guano from Chile. Not only is it valuable fertilizer, it was once the main source of nitrates for explosives. Thats why they did it.

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Hrothgar
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 04:00 AM

Why would they need ballast with something as solid as copper ore? I would have expected the copper to be stowed below the guano if the ship was carrying mixed cargoes.

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Teribus
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 05:19 AM

Gareth,

I read you remarks about VLCC's, the vulnerabilty caused by the extreme size of the tanks ("allowed large static electrical charges to build up, and the spark could ignite petroleum vapour resident in the tank"). From dim memory I can remember some lecture on damage control where the lecturer mentioned something to the effect that in ballast with tanks discharged a droplet of water formed from condensation could drop from the top of such a tank, pick up enough ststic electric charge to cause a spark and ignite the fumes in the tank. Hence VLCC's never sailed empty, they were either full of crude or filled with water taken on as ballast.

In RN, damage control, things called dwarf bulkheads were rigged in flooded compartments to break up free-surface water. Failure to do so caused the loss of the Ark Royal on 14th November, 1941. Although torpedoed by U-81, 4 inches of free-surface water put the ship into a state of "loll" and caused her to capsize and sink.

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: GUEST,bassen
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 07:07 AM

Stevens on Stowage
5. edition 1869

Grain (short excerpt from 50 pages concerning the stowage and carrying of grain!)

"Before engaging to load, a master should consider if his vessel is qualified in all respects to take grain. … It is not sufficient that she should be what is termed "tight, staunch, and strong"; for if built or repaired with any timbers or planking liable to produce an injurious steam when saturated, or liable themselves to steam when heated by grain, the consequences will be very unsatisfactory. … The effects of bilge-water are most insidious and pernicious with such cargoes, as with tea; and the mischief is increased by the introduction of loose grain into the limbers, where decomposition creates an exhalation of a very offensive and detrimental character; this liability is increased by rats, which sometimes "eat" holes through the ceiling; the pumps are likely to be choked by this or other means, and should be well protected…."

Anyone interested in what the practical side of seagoing trade was like in the age of sail should make a serious effort at tracking down one of the early editions of this book (it was constantly being revised). Fascinating reading, both content and language. "An exhalation of a very offensive and detrimental character" indeed!

Bassen

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: NH Dave
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 07:28 AM

If memory serves, one of Forester's Hornblower books had the then young officer losing a prize ship because a below the waterline shot hole allowed sea water to get at the rice, whoich then expanded as it absorbed the water, and split the hold and the ship wide open. The tricky bit which escaped him was that due to the rice absorbing the water no free water was found whenever they measured the bilges for loose or free water.

If this was common enough to be included in the book then I can only assume that it was a problem merchant men faced while hauling cargos of this sort.

Dave

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: GUEST,Schantieman
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 09:26 AM

And then, of course, there was the Herald of Free Enterprise. She capsized having shipped some water on the vehicle deck where it was free to flow athwarthips and exaggerate any heel, becoming a loll. Since then (not that I've been on a ferry lately) i understand that the deck is subdivided by fore-and-aft bulkheads which should solve the problem but make loading more of a headache.

The problem is caused by excess 'free surface' which allows a liquid to flow about. That's why tanks are subdivided (or entirely separated)and kept full. It applies to any liquid - fresh water, fuel or a liquid cargo.

Steve

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Willie-O
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 01:02 PM

Bulkheads didn't save the Titanic--if the scene in the movie is to be believed, they made it easy to predict that the ship was doomed after the accident. "A mathematical certainty".

So what's the difference between bulkheads and baffles?

"The Wreck of the Mary Deare" by Hammond Innes contains an account of a coal-hauler sinking because the cargo turned to slurry--in this case as a result of deliberate sabotage by a Welsh dockworker who didn't like the captain's affair with a Mrs Morgan in their port city. Which was all a setup for the delivery of the immortal line "Twill teach you to keep your organ out of Morgans in Glamorgan".

W-O

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Amos
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 01:05 PM

The Titanic's bulkheads didn't go all the way up to the overhead, a design feature that turned out to be a serious flaw.

A bulkhead runs wall-to-wall athwartship. A baffle is much shorter and is either welded inside a liquid tank, or is a board that can be used to configure a hold into sections as for carrying grain, or sand for example. The boards can be dropped into slots in stanchions.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: HuwG
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 01:44 PM

Where cargo which did not mix well with water (grain, cotton, sugar etc) was carried in small containers such as sacks or bales, "dunnage timber" was used. This was a grid-like pattern of planks laid on their edges, which kept the cargo several inches above the floor of the hold (or off the ballast, in the case of sailing ships before 1850 or so).

Where such cargo is carried in bulk, the risk of having the bottom few inches or feet of the cargo waterlogged has to be run. In the case of some ores, explosives or pneumatic drills must sometimes be used to break up the resulting cake, which has set to the consistency of the original rock.

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Peace
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 01:58 PM

Y'all gotta know how blown away I am by the information people on this site have: general and specialized. Wow!

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: early
Date: 02 Dec 03 - 09:14 PM

many modern ships have cofferdams ( double bulkheads) when I served my apprenticeship as a shipwright we used to build obo's refrigeration ships and oil tankers the first ship I worked on was the liverpool bridge or the devonshire as she later became known. this was one of the largest ship ever made and you could fit two football pitches on the decks. often holds would have stringer plates as I recall these were at various levels and ran horizontally at each corner of the hold.
LIVERPOOL BRIDGE/DERBYSHIRE (4) was built in 1976 by Swan, Hunter Shipbuilders Ltd at Haverton-on-Hill with a tonnage of 91655grt, a length of 965ft 1in, a beam of 145ft 2in and a service speed of 15.5 knots. Launched on the 5th December 1975 she was the sixth and largest OBO built at Swan, Hunter's Haverton-on-Hill yard. When she was delivered to Bibby Tankers Ltd in the following June for charter to the Seabridge Consortium she was the largest ship ever owned by the Bibby Group.

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: jets
Date: 03 Dec 03 - 09:14 PM

I was on a Libery ship in 1947 that carried the last load of grain from Portland ME.
We had loose grin with bagged grain on top to hold every thing in place,
Upon arrival in Portugal,women came aboard to off laod the cargo by hand But first they had to dump the bags of grain and rebag to the proper size bag. Then of course the loose grain was bagged and hoised out with the winches. I spent most of the days uptown with the men of the town BSing, drinking coffee, etc

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Donuel
Date: 04 Dec 03 - 01:38 AM

I do a lot of unique nautical illustrations:



http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/watership3.2.jpg


http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/staycourse1.jpg





http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/watermist4.jpg

http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/waterboat3.jpg





http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/wavey.jpg


http://www.angelfire.com/md2/customviolins/watershipa1.jpg

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Peace
Date: 08 Dec 03 - 02:03 PM

I wanted to thank all of you for your help, comments and observations. I got the story finished thanks to you. I truly appreciate what you have done for me. Bruce Murdoch

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Hrothgar
Date: 09 Dec 03 - 04:13 AM

Jets, was that grain unloaded by the winches or the wenches?

Don't VLCCs pump inert gases into their holds to reduce the chance of fire and'or explosion from fumes?

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Amos
Date: 09 Dec 03 - 02:37 PM

Yes, and it was winches. Using wenches proved much too distracting to the stevedores.

A

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: Peace
Date: 09 Dec 03 - 03:30 PM

OK, if we're gonna talk about wenches, y'all have my undivided attention.

Subject: RE: BS: Ships and boats
From: GUEST,skipy
Date: 09 Dec 03 - 04:13 PM

nobody mentioned "cladispoium resenea" (pretty much spelt phonetically)
This is a fungas that grows between the interface of sea water and fuel oils when water is taken aboard as ballast.
The result is that when the water is removed and more fuel oil pumped in the fungas contaminates the oil and many years ago caused various problem in avaiation.
There I feel better noe!
Regards skipy