Piffle at Posidonia
Posidonia has been and gone again and the organisers deserve congratulations for their efforts at putting on a show that perhaps demonstrated that all was not completely lost in the economic wreckage...
View ArticleNow wipe your feet
There are some days when you feel that the lunatics really have taken charge of the asylum. That estimable watcher of Washington Dennis Bryant notes in his excellent newsletter that the US Maritime...
View ArticleHow technology expands awareness
I visited the headquarters of MAIB yesterday, the United Kingdom government’s Marine Accident Investigation Branch, located in Southampton. The MAIB people are using advanced systems for recovery and...
View ArticleSlow, slow, slow the boat
What a mess we are getting into as we seek to balance the demands of the atmosphere with that of marine safety, the charterer and even the requirements of those whose cargo may be aboard the ship
View ArticleSchooner rigged, or what?
How many people would you estimate as being adequate for the safe manning of a 6000grt ship, a sizeable lump of metal by any standards, although a minnow by comparison with the monsters wandering...
View ArticleWatertight bulkheads – full of holes.
It is not a brilliant idea, once you have installed a watertight bulkhead of sufficient strength to withstand the sea, should it be lapping at one side of it, to then drill it full of holes to...
View ArticleSS Great Britain: A lesson for modern-day ship design?
A few days holiday last week, one of which was spent in and around the Great Britain, the ship built by Brunel in 1843, and which miraculously has been restored in the very dock where she was built in...
View ArticleHansa Brandenburg fire highlights design flaws
This week’s containership fire was located once again in the Indian Ocean, with the Hansa Brandenburg abandoned by her crew, after the container deck stacks ignited and blazed in an exceedingly...
View ArticleDeath off Cebu
There is an awful inevitability about the sinking off Cebu with heavy loss of life of the Philippine domestic ferry St Thomas of Aquinas, after a collision with a cargo vessel. Both ships were 41 years...
View ArticleShallow water – deep trouble
In days of dead reckoning, thick weather and a certain imprecision about where the dickens you were, the occasional grounding was easy to explain and probably attracted a good deal of comment from...
View ArticleLIVE FROM POSIDONIA: Class to benefit from new US laws
At a Posidonia presentation by one of the leading classification societies, it was noted that the uncertain legal and legislative climate in the United States would generate a real need for a legally...
View ArticleFlexibility is vital for future ship design
A memorable description of how a ship is planned, designed and built is in "The Building of the Ship", written by a poet named Longfellow in the late 1840s:
View ArticleFuel of the future
We are now, it seems, in the early stages of yet another oil price shock. But who ever heard of a gas shock? The answer is that gas shocks don’t happen.
View ArticleEngine design to play ‘fuel’ part
The oil price crunch that is now upon us, together with tougher emissions regulation, are a “double whammy” for operators, engineers and yards.
View ArticleFollowing the old Silk Road
In 1998, in Indonesia, a few sea-cucumber divers made a discovery that has changed how we think about the history of seaborne trade, and the background of China’s maritime commerce. The divers had come...
View ArticleGreat time at ABS Gala dinner
I recently attended the American Bureau of Shipping's 150th Gala dinner celebration in New York and had a wonderful time - congratulations ABS for reaching such an important milestone.
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