OOCL Hong Kong

[John Arton]

Watched a documentary on the t.v. last night about the maiden voyage of this vessel, the largest container vessel sailing, 21,400 containers. Like all documentaries it was heavily edited and did not give a true picture from a professional seafarer's point of view with the odd stupid pieces, such as the captain using dividers on a chart to measure distance by just placing them randomly anywhere on the chart, which was daft as views of the bridge showed the dual ECDIS screens and what modern vessel carries paper charts?the program only. Showed the ship calling at Shanghai, Singapore and Rotterdam with a Suez canal transit and the 70 year old canal pilot never asked the captain for his " presents". What was interesting was the sheer scale of the vessel, container's 12 high both below and above check, Singapore container Terminal completely automated with operations controlled using joy stick in the control room to move the straddle carrier's around and also to remotely operate the container cranes, along with the mass of automation in the engine room. Another b.s. bit showed the chief officer drawing up the loading/ discharge plan which most of us know is a lot d one ashore with the mate on board just putting the plan into t.he ships loading computer to check stress/ draft/ trim etc and ballast/ deballast needs. Another b.s. claim was that if they loaded the ship with too much weight on one side she would capsize!
Prior to hand over every single cell guide had been checked to ensure a container would actually slot in.
The cost of the lashing gear carried on board was $1,000000.
Think the program is on UTube, on t.v. it was on Freeview and called " Mega Movers".
Rgds
J.A.

[Bill Morrison]

Hi john. A lot of good programmes on the freeview channels of this nature. I usually come across then when flicking through the channels. Impossible Engineering, Abandoned Engineering, Mega Shipping to name a few, all up my street along with How It's Made on Ch.37 week/ends.

[john walker]

John #1 I watched the programme also, It was interesting to see how modern shipping is progressing but worrying to realise that the safety features of these ships appear to me especially fire or anything else in/ or about that amount of containers with so few crew could ever be contained or fought. There seems to be a race to build larger/bigger more carrying capacity on these ships. I never sailed on (Thank f***) such a behemoth. I sailed on numerous ships including about 10 product/chemical tankers during my sea going career carrying some extremely dangerous and volatile cargoes and new 'WHAT EVER' the ship was carrying we had the people/equipment/training that if things went wrong we might be able to fight and contain a fire. On that sort of ship maybe such a thing as an engine room/accommodation fire can be contained. A fire amongst such an array of containers (Containing goodness knows what ) above or below decks should be worrisome to the crew who sail on them, the owners and in my mind the insurers. These thoughts are from a bloke that worked in catering over about a 20+ years sea going career that would like to hear the thoughts of others with more knowledge than mine on the subject.

[John Arton]

John
Re#3
Totally agree with you regarding a fire in one of them containers in those huge stack. In the program it showed the crew doing a fire drill assuming a fire in a deck container. Firstly they had to take the portable monitor up something like 20 metres up one of the lashing towers and fix it in place, then haul up a 2 inch canvas hose by hand to connect the monitor to the fire main. Looked totally ineffective to me a new a waste of time, no protective clothing worn, why great big canvas hoses? they went out years ago. For below deck fire they had a large number of CO2 cylinders to fight hold fires with, think they had separate banksm for hold and engine room.
The fire on deck of the maersk honam burnt for days before eventually being brought under control with the aid of fire fighting guys and I think she carried around 15,000 containers. 5 of her crew were killed fighting the fire
Rgds
J.A.

[Peter F Chard]

Ports of Auckland have just taken delivery of three new container cranes built in China by ZPMC. Each weighs 2100 tonnes, are almost ninety metres high and can handle four shipping containers each at a time, loading or unloading. Now for the scary bit, they can be programmed for remote operation !! Regards Peter in NZ.

[happy daze john in oz]

Peter, we had six of similar installed here in port Melbourne last year.
My neighbor works them and can control all six from one computer terminal, the fully automatic ones are well into use in some European ports.

[John Arton]

Another thing I saw in that program was the engineer going round and daily recording by hand all the temperatures of the reefer containers connected to the ships electric supply. Each reefer is fitted with a fridge unit driven by electricity when on board and by the inbuilt diesel motor when it is ashore, either in storage or when being transported by road. So on board all those reefer containers carry a ready source of fuel should a fire break out. I cannot recall ever emptying reefer container fuel tanks prior to loading them on board and hooking them up to the ships electric supply.
Rgds
J.A.

[Keith Tindell]

One thing is certain, it will happen one day!. The same as the cruise ship construction, using I believe a lot of aluminium to save weight, no fire precautions will cover every eventuality. It is looking like the aluminium framing on the cladding of Grenville towers was one of the main causes of rapid spread, kt

[cappy]

###300 passengers on the mv aida prima throwing out both ends after leaving palma majorca ......and its spreading ........its a big prob cruising certainly.... cappy

[Tony Taylor]

One thing is certain, it will happen one day!. The same as the cruise ship construction, using I believe a lot of aluminium to save weight, no fire precautions will cover every eventuality. It is looking like the aluminium framing on the cladding of Grenville towers was one of the main causes of rapid spread, kt

Good point Keith, I remember one job while working ashore, we supplied some 2" stainless steel pressure gauges to the NCB, only to have them rejected because the pointers were aluminium, Apparently there is a maximum aluminium content which is allowed underground, I cant remember exactly but it is a tiny percentage of the total weight of the component; why? aluminium oxide is primary constituent of thermite, or so I was told.