I wonder how much money they expect to make doing this.
A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
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Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#12I was in St. Simons a few months ago, and was able to see this ship first hand. It’s enormous, sitting on its side in what looks like just a few feet of water. It’s close to the shore, maybe a thousand or 1500 feet out. A temporary information placard had been put on the fishing pier explaining what it was.
At the time it was all in one piece, but you could see them attaching the lifting equipment along the length, and it was clear it was going to be cut into pieces.
It must take an enormous amount of work to build an internal framework that can support the cut section being lifted from the side. I’m not surprised it’s taking so long so salvage.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#13I was in St. Simons a few months ago, and was able to see this ship first hand. It’s enormous, sitting on its side in what looks like just a few feet of water. It’s close to the shore, maybe a thousand or 1500 feet out. A temporary information placard had been put on the fishing pier explaining what it was. At the time it was all in one piece, but you could see them attaching the lifting equipment along the length, a…
>It must take an enormous amount of work to build an internal framework that can support the cut section being lifted from the side. I’m not surprised it’s taking so long so salvage.
Ships have to be able to withstand substantial side forces (in both tension and compression) as part of torsional loading in normal operation. There's no internal framework needed. Even if there was that would require a stupid amount of effort compared to just adding more lifting points.
It's stupid easy to figure out lifting solution in this case because this is a new enough ship that CAD models exist. If the owner doesn't have the CAD files you pay whoever you need to to get them (you just need a low detail model of the hull and bulkheads, not the high detail models that include plumbing and whatnot, those would be needlessly expensive), then import the models and then run numbers until you get numbers you like (e.g. section sizes the crane guys won't complain about and a safety factor corporate won't complain about). Then you tell the intern to use the CAD models to whip up a set of matching plates for lifting. If they have extra time on their hands maybe they'll make some random feature dong-shaped. Then you forward that attachment to the sales guy at the steel supplier you usually use.
All this stuff is routine business for the parties involved.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#14Hope this interests someone else, the size of the engineering seems impressive. I've had to cut down the title slightly to make it fit the HN character limit; hopefully it's still readable.
Thank you. The quality on HN is falling fast. Quality content like this is awesome.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#15Shit like this makes me feel a lot less guilty about my own environmental impact of getting a new phone every 1-2 years and a new laptop every 3.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#16Does anyone know who pays for this process? I would imagine the owner of the ship, but I imagine there's a non-zero likelihood that something like this could bankrupt them. In that case... is there mandatory insurance or similar?
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#17I can't help but cringe at all the motor oil and other fluids leeching out of the ruined cars that were on board.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#18Interesting to see whether this will work for the "last" part. I can understand why it works while cutting off smaller parts of a longer ship, but at some point I would expect the ship not to be heavy enough. At that point I would expect it to be lifted and turned by the chain instead.
But they probably already thought about that and I just missed it in my rapid skimming of the article.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#19I can't help but cringe at all the motor oil and other fluids leeching out of the ruined cars that were on board.
There were about 4000 cars on board. If each car has 10 quarts of oil, that's 10000 gallons or about 32 tonnes.
Oil tanker spills are typically in the range of tens to hundreds of thousands of tonnes of oil.
So, don't waste cycles worrying about it; it's a rounding error in the general scheme of things.
Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars
#20Would recommend the Smit Salvage YouTube channel for those interested in seeing more examples: https://www.youtube.com/c/SmitSalvageTowage