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A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars

jalopnik.com

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Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars

#41

Post by jandrese »

q-base wrote: post #18

Interesting 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.

They are leaving the power plant for last (cutting nose to stern) so the remaining part will always be the heaviest.

Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars

#42

Post by tsjq »

q-base wrote: post #18

Interesting 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.

Yes. The article mentions sections 3 to 6 aren't strong enough, so a drydock will be used instead of the chainsaw cutting.

Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars

#44

Post by [deleted] »

gnu8 wrote: post #21
tmhrtly wrote: post #16

Does 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?

The insurers of the ship and/or cargo would be paying to salvage whatever value they can extract from the wreck, to reduce their losses. You’re right about the non-zero chance of insurmountable loss, which is why the owner of the ship and the owner of the cargo would both have a shitload of insurance. Read about Lloyd’s and the shipping insurance business. People have been doing this for hundreds of years.

[deleted]

Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars

#45

Post by JustARandomGuy »

TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #4

What astounds me is that the "cutting chain" appears to be just a normal chain, albeit a very large one. I would have thought they would have made something that cuts it more like a giant chainsaw.

It surprises me that the chain cuts so neatly - if you look at the images the cuts look rather clean and surgical. I would have expected it to be more of a crushing and jagged cut.

The gear used in these large scale engineering ops is absolutely remarkable, it makes me wish I had a better understanding of our physical world.

Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars

#46

Post by Pfhreak »

tsjq wrote: post #43

Wow! How did that chain do the cutting without any sharp things?

Sharp is relative. A weed eaters string isn't sharp, but it cuts through plants. A baseball bat would be sharp if used on a six foot stick of butter.

The ridges and valleys on a chain effectively are the teeth of a saw.

Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars

#47

Post by yohannparis »

112012123 wrote: post #37
tmhrtly wrote: post #16

Does 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?

Depends on the jurisdiction. In many countries, yes there are insurance requirements. Even in ones where there aren't, most vessels owned by larger companies carry insurance for the same reason anyone else does. On the other hand, since oceangoing ships are (mostly) regulated by the countries they're registered in, which is frequently a regulation-light jurisdiction like Panama, Liberia, or the Marshall Islands - the…

The ship in the article left Georgia to Baltimore, you cannot move goods from and to the USA with a boat that is not registered in the USA.

That's is why only few cruise ship start and end their trips in the USA.

Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars

#48

Post by kortex »

jandrese wrote: post #40
rob74 wrote: post #10

Really fascinating! And I can only imagine the infernal noise this process produces, with a gigantic "chainsaw" and a whole ship as a resonance chamber...

Remember that the chain moves very slowly—-7 feet per minute.

Talking "feeds and speeds", 7 feet per minute (1.4"/s) as a feed rate would obviously be crazy fast, so I presume this is the "speed", the linear reciprocating speed of the chain.

It's less "cutting" and more "crunching" its way through. Sheer brute force plastic deformation.

Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars

#49

Post by yohannparis »

bagacrap wrote: post #33
xmodem wrote: post #15

Shit 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.

if you buy cars manufactured overseas, then in a sense you contributed to this too

Those were cars made in the USA (Georgia) and shipped to USA (Maryland). It's just a more economical way that by land.

Re: A chain cuts through a capsized cargo ship filled with cars

#50

Post by falcolas »

bagacrap wrote: post #33
xmodem wrote: post #15

Shit 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.

if you buy cars manufactured overseas, then in a sense you contributed to this too

Sure, somewhere around 1/1000000 of a contribution. One ship grounded out of how many successful trips? One car out of how many shipped per trip?

Plus, the cost for cleanup for this kind of disaster is built into the price of each car/phone in the form of shipping costs, which include insurance costs. So while they contributed to the damage, they also contributed to the cleanup.

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