Freighter (Mis)Adventures

[lpetrich]

Freighter Bum - Admiral Judd's Adventure on the High Seas Judd Spittler rode a freighter on a run in the Caribbean Sea between Florida, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela. Steam is long gone: the ship is propelled by a giant diesel engine. The crew spends much of the time doing maintenance, like keeping the engine room clean, painting the outer parts of the ship and hosing down the ship's decks. It's all shirtsleeves; only the captain wears a uniform. The crew is from the Germany, the Philippines, Portugal, Romania, and Ukraine. -- and the ones from the poorer countries have good pay by those countries' standards. The captain grumbles about all the paperwork that he has to do. There is usually only one or two officers on duty in the bridge, and they rotate that duty. At sea, their main job is to watch out for possible collisions. Judd Spittler got to steer the ship for a bit.

The misadventure: “The Clock Is Ticking”: Inside the Worst U.S. Maritime Disaster in Decades | Vanity Fair: "A recording salvaged from three miles deep tells the story of the doomed “El Faro,” a cargo ship engulfed by a hurricane." around October 1, 2015. That ship's captain was less-than-successful in evading Hurricane Joaquin, a rather erratic. He and the other 32 crewpeople were lost and likely died as a result.

 

[lpetrich]

The Secret Language of Ships | Hakai Magazine

Like symbols for the maximum safe load. These are lines on the side that indicate how far the ship may sink in the water with its load. A ship may safely do so farther in freshwater than in seawater, and farther in warm water than in cold water, from thermal expansion.

W marks the maximum load in winter temperate seawater, S in summer temperate seawater, T in tropical seawater, F in fresh water, and TF in tropical fresh water, like that of the Amazon River.

From bottom to top, W, S, T and F, TF.

Many ships have a bow bulb (bulbous bow), a projection that sticks forward just below the waterline. That makes it move through the water more easily, but it can be a hazard for tugboats. Many ships also have bow thrusters, propellers embedded in the hull that make water go sideways through it. That is good for maneuverability. Both bow bulbs and bow thrusters have their own symbols for warning tugboat operators.

Some ships have markers to point out places to attach ropes for tugboats. Such spots may also indicate the maximum safe pull force, like 50 tons in one case.


Turning to ship propulsion, it's been hard for me to find out when giant diesel engines became common. In The Freighter Bum's freighter, the engine is a direct-drive one, and to reverse it, one must stop it and restart it in the opposite direction. That requires compressed air that was compressed by an auxiliary diesel engine.

Though most ships continue to use fixed-direction propellers and rudders, some ships use AziPods, pods with attached propellers that can be rotated. This makes for more maneuverability at the expense of greater mechanical complexity.

Also, some ships don't have a mechanical linkage between the engines and the propellers, but are instead diesel-electric. The diesel engines drive electric generators, and these are connected to electric motors that drive the propellers. Many locomotives are also diesel-electric, and hybrid cars are essentially gasoline-electric ones.

 

[crazyfingers]

I'll admit that that was interesting.

Reading up on freighters for any particular reason?

 

[lpetrich]

Reading up on freighters for any particular reason?

Not really. But it's interesting to see what present-day ships are like.