question about shipwrecks

[BH]

Wikipedia a few days ago had a featured article about the S.S. Arctic sinking with great loss of life in 1854.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Arctic_disaster

Anyway, it really did touch my heart the way those people died, especially that poor captain seeing his own son killed by the paddlewheel case.

And it piqued my curiosity about sea ship disasters over all. I grew up hearing about the Titanic and knew about the Edmund Fitzgerald (on the great lakes though). I looked up this article about ships sinking in one small part of the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_of_Cornwall_(19th_century)


That seems like a *whole* lot of ships sinking for various reasons. I know I do not know the different types of ships, their sizes, ect and I know the tech was not as high back then today as it is now. But were the ships back then perhaps built quickly without regard for safety of the crew or was that just the nature of seafaring and the available tech back then consequently resulting in the sinking of many vessels? Could they have been built safer and more durable even back then?

 

[bilby]

Wikipedia a few days ago had a featured article about the S.S. Arctic sinking with great loss of life in 1854.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Arctic_disaster

Anyway, it really did touch my heart the way those people died, especially that poor captain seeing his own son killed by the paddlewheel case.

And it piqued my curiosity about sea ship disasters over all. I grew up hearing about the Titanic and knew about the Edmund Fitzgerald (on the great lakes though). I looked up this article about ships sinking in one small part of the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_of_Cornwall_(19th_century)


That seems like a *whole* lot of ships sinking for various reasons. I know I do not know the different types of ships, their sizes, ect and I know the tech was not as high back then today as it is now. But were the ships back then perhaps built quickly without regard for safety of the crew or was that just the nature of seafaring and the available tech back then consequently resulting in the sinking of many vessels? Could they have been built safer and more durable even back then?

They certainly could have been built safer; but there were few regulations, and many of those were either not well enforced, or were undermined by illegal activity in the dockyards.

One particularly nefarious practice was to cut the middle out of every second or third bolt or rivet, and to lightly tap the ends into the timbers they were intended to fasten; this leaves the appearance of a correctly assembled structure, and allows the thief to sell the valuable copper or iron as scrap; but of course it leaves the ship considerably weaker than its design intended, and liable to break up in heavy weather.

Timber vessels often suffered from poor quality or inadequately seasoned timbers used in their construction, particularly when supplies were hard to obtain due either to high demand (during the naval build-up at the beginning of a war for example); or due to being far from home, and having to make do with what was locally available. The Royal Navy and other British shipbuilders never found a better source of spar timber than Baltic Pine, for example; but finding a suitable piece of Baltic Pine for a repair on the other side of the Atlantic - or the other side of the world - was not easy, so sub-standard substitutions with locally harvested timber were common.

That said, even a ship well built to the top specification and crewed with highly experienced and skilled men was, in an age before decent weather forecasting, highly vulnerable to storms, or even to unexpected changes in the wind. Being trapped against a lee shore is very hard to survive for such a vessel, and a sudden change in wind could put any ship in that position with little warning. Situations that today would easily be fixed by starting a small motor were, in the days of sail, likely to be fatal for both ship and crew.

The absence of good charts, and the difficulty in navigation (particularly in regards to good measures of Longitude) also contributed; as did the lack of beacons, lighthouses and lightships to mark hazards.

Modern ships with good charts, powerful engines, steel hulls, and GPS, sailing in well marked and accurately surveyed shipping channels have far less to worry about.

 

[Ford]

I grew up hearing about the Titanic and knew about the Edmund Fitzgerald (on the great lakes though).

I grew up reading about shipwrecks on the Great Lakes...owing in part to the fact that my father was a bit of a Great Lakes history buff, and in part to the fact that I spent a whole lot of time on Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

One of the stories I read was from an old dog-eared book my dad had about shipwrecks that featured the Carl D. Bradley. Not quite as big as the Edmund Fitzgerald, but the loss of life was greater. Over 600 feet long, the Bradley snapped in half and sank in November 1958, taking 43 men to the bottom.


In addition to the already mentioned problems of ship construction and weather forecasting, the Great Lakes presented a challenge not seen on the oceans. Fresh water is less buoyant than salt water. Ships on the lakes ride lower than ocean going vessels, and a fresh water wave hits you like a twice larger seawater wave.


http://www.lakeeffectliving.com/Jun13/Shipwrecks-Carl_D_Bradley.html

 

[Bronzeage]

A ship is like any other machine, perhaps more complicated than other, but still a combination of systems which require constant maintenance and repair. Also, a ship has a design capacity for a certain load and if that load is exceeded, bad things will happen.

Most shipwrecks are not the result of a single catastrophe, but a culmination of several at the same time. The Titanic was going too fast for the conditions and in it's path was a "blue" iceberg. This is an iceberg which has just rotated and exposes a smooth polished ice surface, instead of a frosty white surface. This makes it almost invisible in the dark because it reflects the water and sky.

The Titanic was brand new and a worst possible case scenario happened on it's first trip. Most shipwrecks are actually old and decrepit ships which are overloaded and pushed beyond reasonable capacity, but this can destroy any ship. The Korean Ferry disaster of earlier this year was caused by overloaded cargo an improper storage procedures. The Costa Concordia was in excellent condition, but had an incompetent Captain, who sailed too close to shore, hit a rock, and was one of the first ones into a lifeboat.

These are just our most recent shipwrecks of modern well built ships. In earlier times, the hazards were greater, but they were the same hazards. In the late 1400's, there were about a dozen small fleets which set out across the Atlantic, with the hope of reaching China from the east. The reason we all know about Columbus is because his fleet was the first to actually return. The others were never heard of again.

 

[BuffaloBill]

I read this Wiki article as well, and was taken by the tragedy on so many levels. That the US Congress was culpable and quietly swept it under the rug is disheartening. It seems so obvious that lifeboat shortages on passenger vessels should have been addressed, preventing the later Titanic fiasco.

 

[Clivedurdle]

The Plimsoll Line!

But which ship sank?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

 

[Bomb#20]

The Plimsoll Line!

But which ship sank?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.

Let’s say you have an ax. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter Winter day, you use said ax to behead a man. Don’t worry, the man was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who shot him.

He had been a big, twitchy guy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps, a tattoo of a swastika on his tongue. Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs — you know the type. And you’re chopping off his head because, even with eight bullet holes in him, you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face.

On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the ax snaps in a spray of splinters. You now have a broken ax. So, after a long night of looking for a place to dump the man and his head, you take a trip into town with your ax. You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce. You walk out with a brand new handle for your ax.

The repaired ax sits undisturbed in your garage until the Spring when, on one rainy morning, you find in your kitchen a certain creature that appears to be a foot-long slug with a bulging egg sac on its tail. Its jaws bite one of your forks in half with what seems like very little effort. You grab our trusty ax and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however, the ax strikes a metal leg of the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade.

Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. They sell you a brand new head for your ax. As soon as you get home, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded earlier. He’s also got a new head, stitched on with what looks like plastic weed-trimmer line, and it’s wearing that unique expression of “you’re the man who killed me last Winter” resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life.

You brandish your ax. The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he screams, “That’s the same ax that beheaded me!”

IS HE RIGHT?

-- "John Dies at the End"​

 

[skepticalbip]

The Plimsoll Line!

But which ship sank?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

IS HE RIGHT?

It has always amazed me that philosophers can argue for years (or even centuries) over these kind of questions that are only a matter of definitions. Any conclusions argued on either side are conclusions based on different definitions of the terms so they are not even discussing the same thing. This and the Ship of Theseus argument are avoided in science by first defining terms so everyone is talking about the same thing.

 

[bilby]

IS HE RIGHT?

It has always amazed me that philosophers can argue for years (or even centuries) over these kind of questions that are only a matter of definitions. Any conclusions argued on either side are conclusions based on different definitions of the terms so they are not even discussing the same thing. This and the Ship of Theseus argument are avoided in science by first defining terms so everyone is talking about the same thing.

Yeah, the whole argument is monumentally silly. Where the continuity of pattern is of primary concern - as is often the case with a ship, or a person, it is irrelevant whether the same atoms are still in use, it is the same ship. Where the atoms that make up the object are of primary concern, (regardless of their arrangement), it is not the same ship.

That people don't differentiate between materials and their arrangement is not a problem for objects; it is only a problem when philosophers seek to earn a living by debating as though they were the same. I for one am not about to pay someone to debate such a non-question.

 

[Dutch_labrat]

(This turned a bit ranty, oh well )

First what we need there first is some historical perspective. You might want to read up on the history of load and plimsoll lines. Then on scuttling and insurance fraud in the shipping history.

Now for a broader view: look up OSHA rules before 1970 (...) See a trend? I don't want to go all Marxist on you but personnel and crew are assets of very limited value. The very idea that an employer was in any way responsible for the safety or health of their employees is a very modern one and still not that common. When not forced by law and regulation businesses don't care and never will. Caring costs

Listen to your basic right wing rhetoric when they use the word "regulation" and how it is evil to them that industries no longer can poison, injure or kill their employees by the thousands in callous disregard.

Now to answer the OP: They could, often they didn't. There are stories of owners putting load lines on masts or chimneys, what does that tell you? Only ever serve on a ship where the captain is the sole owner of the ship and its business.

 

[Clivedurdle]

I don't want to go all Marxist on you but personnel and crew are assets of very limited value. The very idea that an employer was in any way responsible for the safety or health of their employees is a very modern one and still not that common. When not forced by law and regulation businesses don't care and never will. Caring costs

Isn't that a serious and devastating condemnation of humanity? That without regulation we do put Plimsoll lines on masts and the equivalent?

I'm not sure. I think we can be co-operative. I wouldn't trust a sole owner either! They may be a drunk!

Elinor Ostrom, defender of the commons, died on June 12th, aged 78
Jun 30th 2012 | From the print edition
Timekeeper

IT SEEMED to Elinor Ostrom that the world contained a large body of common sense. People, left to themselves, would sort out rational ways of surviving and getting along. Although the world's arable land, forests, fresh water and fisheries were all finite, it was possible to share them without depleting them and to care for them without fighting. While others wrote gloomily of the tragedy of the commons, seeing only overfishing and overfarming in a free-for-all of greed, Mrs Ostrom, with her loud laugh and louder tops, cut a cheery and contrarian figure.

Years of fieldwork, by herself and others, had shown her that humans were not trapped and helpless amid diminishing supplies. She had looked at forests in Nepal, irrigation systems in Spain, mountain villages in Switzerland and Japan, fisheries in Maine and Indonesia. She had even, as part of her PhD at the University of California, Los Angeles, studied the water wars and pumping races going on in the 1950s in her own dry backyard.

All these cases had taught her that, over time, human beings tended to draw up sensible rules for the use of common-pool resources. Neighbours set boundaries and assigned shares, with each individual taking it in turn to use water, or to graze cows on a certain meadow. Common tasks, such as clearing canals or cutting timber, were done together at a certain time. Monitors watched out for rule-breakers, fining or eventually excluding them. The schemes were mutual and reciprocal, and many had worked well for centuries.

http://www.economist.com/node/21557717

 

[Keith&Co.]

Could they have been built safer and more durable even back then?

Safety measures are written in blood. Every sinking, where they could determine the cause, has contributed to the body of knowledge used to design newer ships. Until the Thresher went down, no one designed submarines to provide a way of reducing moisture from the air stored in the banks. It seems obvious in retrospect that when dumping air into ballast tanks rapidly, the depressurization will lower the temperature and cause water vapor to form into ice which blocks the piping... But no one readily saw that as a hazard until someone went down for that.

 

[Underseer]

Could they have been built safer and more durable even back then?

Safety measures are written in blood. Every sinking, where they could determine the cause, has contributed to the body of knowledge used to design newer ships. Until the Thresher went down, no one designed submarines to provide a way of reducing moisture from the air stored in the banks. It seems obvious in retrospect that when dumping air into ballast tanks rapidly, the depressurization will lower the temperature and cause water vapor to form into ice which blocks the piping... But no one readily saw that as a hazard until someone went down for that.

So ship builders use libertarian-style disaster management? Wait for people to die, then fix the problem?

 

[Clivedurdle]

Of course, that is precisely what the free market is - actually safety should always be minimised to allow greater profits, so that the market decides.

anything else, any planning, consideration of effects is nothing but communism, socialism and kitten eating atheism.

There is no need for any safety rules as god will provide - there were sinners on that submarine getting the judgement of god.

 

[Keith&Co.]

But no one readily saw that as a hazard until someone went down for that.

So ship builders use libertarian-style disaster management? Wait for people to die, then fix the problem?

No, they use capitalist-style disaster management. They won't spend money on a problem until someone shows that it IS a problem.
Which usually requires someone to get hurt, or a whole lot of close calls of people nearly getting hurt.

 

[skepticalbip]

So ship builders use libertarian-style disaster management? Wait for people to die, then fix the problem?

No, they use capitalist-style disaster management. They won't spend money on a problem until someone shows that it IS a problem.
Which usually requires someone to get hurt, or a whole lot of close calls of people nearly getting hurt.

I wouldn't call it capitalist-style. It is human style. No one can fix a problem until something is known to be a problem. No one is omniscient so there is no way to divine all possible problems. The only way to guarantee that there will be no problem with some new technology is to stop developing new technology. The best we can do is try to design out any problems we can think of.

And there are problems with old technology. Horses buck people off, bite, kick, and trample people.

 

[credoconsolans]

Safety measures are written in blood. Every sinking, where they could determine the cause, has contributed to the body of knowledge used to design newer ships. Until the Thresher went down, no one designed submarines to provide a way of reducing moisture from the air stored in the banks. It seems obvious in retrospect that when dumping air into ballast tanks rapidly, the depressurization will lower the temperature and cause water vapor to form into ice which blocks the piping... But no one readily saw that as a hazard until someone went down for that.

So ship builders use libertarian-style disaster management? Wait for people to die, then fix the problem?

Sounds more capitalist than libertarian. Big corporate owners don't want to spend money unless the danger to their fleet is substantial enough to warrant the costs.

Safety is written in blood for airliners too. Things aren't fixed until a crash happens caused by the problem. And sometimes the problem is known - faulty insulation/old wiring - or sometimes there isn't enough foresight (engine falls off plane, but plane is still flyable, but goes into a stall, but pilots aren't warned about the stall because the stall warning system was powered by the engine that fell off and ONLY that engine).

 

[Keith&Co.]

I wouldn't call it capitalist-style. It is human style. No one can fix a problem until something is known to be a problem.

I am not talking about omnisciently detecting faults, or divining them by sacrificing a safety monitor on the deckplate. The problem is the phase between 'I notice there's a problem (or a possibility of danger/failure/exception/misunderstanding)' and 'Okay, you're right, let's (spend the money to) fix it.'

It requires a perception that the effort to repair/redesign/upgrade the system will be worth the cost in sales, lives, quality of living or some other benchmark. The cost/benefit analysis is purely capitalistic.

 

[Hickdive]

There is another capitalist pressure to improve the safety of shipping and that is the interest of insurance companies.

Lloyds have been examining and registering ships for safety since the 18th century.

 

[BH]

Anyway, that featured article from Wikipedia got my curiosity riled up and it turns out that a man named David Shaw wrote a book called The Sea Shall Embrace Them about the sinking of the SS Arctic. I bought the book used from Hastings and read it.

The Captain of the ship, a Robert Luce, did all he could do for the passengers, and then took his crippled son on top of one of the paddle wheel casings. Captain Luce put a life preserver on the boy no doubt hoping he would somehow survive, but did feel he as captain should go down with the ship instead of running off like his crew did. Just curious, but for those of you more knowledgeable than I, did the captain pick that spot of the ship perhaps seeing some sort of advantage?