Marine Pictures and Videos.

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Caption for this pix on a shipping site I visit is:
'HMS Ark Royal off the East coast of the United States.'
No date given and quite a collection of aircraft onboard her. Perhaps some kind of friendly visit ?

HMSArkRoyal.jpeg
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Interesting to see the double-fold of the Gannet wings, a much bigger thing than it appears to be when seen in isolation.

And the Buccaneers with their airbrakes open, to cut the length down.

And the rather larger intakes on the FAA Phantoms, compared to the USN ones.
 

staffordjas

Well-Known Forumite
Going to the county showground for covid jabs this week has brought back memories of HMS Collingwood visiting Stafford to take part in the Royal Navy Field Gun event at County Show many years ago in the early 70's.

Me & my mate met them in the Grapes the night before , as they were staying on the RAF camp , Beaconside.

They told us to walk up there , and nip through the gate ( covid jab entrance) before official entrance and sneak through a gap in the hedge to get in free. It worked... :ninja:

And a most impressive Field Gun event.

( I applied for the Royal Navy , but had to be 5' 3" for women those days. I only managed to stretch myself up to 5' 2 & 1/4 " on the interview )
 
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BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
In 1976 I did a trip on this ship, big tanker Mobil Pegasus. I used to run around the deck each day, as you can see there’s a fair bit of open space, and since she was well over 1000 feet long, three circuits of the deck was more than a mile.

On the way from the Gulf to the USA via the Cape of Good Hope we picked up a huge ugly looking African bird … which are collectively known as ‘Shitehawks’ to seafarers. This bird stuck with us across the Atlantic, then flew off as we neared South America on our way to the LOOP (LOuisiana Offshore Pipeline.)

The bird, which we’d named as ‘UglyF*cker,’ used to sit on the rail of the main deck and it had a beak that looked as if it could peck through a Chubb safe. When running I would curve inward when passing it, because it looked at me with an expression that said: ‘I wonder what that tastes like.’ I’m convinced its grandparents were pterodactyls.

When fully loaded there’s not much freeboard on these big tankers, i.e. there’s literally only a few feet between the sea and the main deck. In the pix below she is unloaded, so there's a lot of freeboard. That is much reduced when you put over 200,000 tons of crude oil in the tanks. As I passed this bird on one circuit a larger than normal swell came along and breached the deck, a foot or so of water swept me off my feet and slid me into some pipes. I got up sputtering and could hear the Second Mate laughing high above me on the bridge wing.

When I looked at the bird, I’ll swear blind it was laughing too.

That ship had a chequered history having blown up (a couple of years before I joined her) and had all sorts of mechanical failures as you can see from the link below. She got off to a bad start being built, as a shipyard worker was killed during her construction.

Mobil Pegasus (II) - (1969-1979) (aukevisser.nl)

MobilPegasus.jpg
 
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Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
In 1976 I did a trip on this ship, big tanker Mobil Pegasus. I used to run around the deck each day, as you can see there’s a fair bit of open space, and since she was well over 1000 feet long, three circuits of the deck was more than a mile.

On the way from the Gulf to the USA via the Cape of Good Hope we picked up a huge ugly looking African bird … which are collectively known as ‘Shitehawks’ to seafarers. This bird stuck with us across the Atlantic, then flew off as we neared South America on our way to the LOOP (LOuisiana Offshore Pipeline.)

The bird, which we’d named as ‘UglyF*cker,’ used to sit on the rail of the main deck and it had a beak that looked as if it could peck through a Chubb safe. When running I would curve inward when passing it, because it looked at me with an expression that said: ‘I wonder what that tastes like.’ I’m convinced its grandparents were pterodactyls.

When fully loaded there’s not much freeboard on these big tankers, i.e. there’s literally only a few feet between the sea and the main deck. In the pix below she is unloaded, so there's a lot of freeboard. That is much reduced when you put over 200,000 tons of crude oil in the tanks. As I passed this bird on one circuit a larger than normal swell came along and breached the deck, a foot or so of water swept me off my feet and slid me into some pipes. I got up sputtering and could hear the Second Mate laughing high above me on the bridge wing.

When I looked at the bird, I’ll swear blind it was laughing too.

That ship had a chequered history having blown up (a couple of years before I joined her) and had all sorts of mechanical failures as you can see from the link below. She got off to a bad start being built, as a shipyard worker was killed during her construction.

Mobil Pegasus (II) - (1969-1979) (aukevisser.nl)

View attachment 10013
It's a lot of work to knock up something that size and only use it for a few years.
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Yes 10 years isn't much but she had a very poor history of failings. When I joined her in Marseille she'd lost one anchor in heavy seas (and the anchor and cable had taken much of the winch and other fittings with it when it went) and her turbines and boilers were semi-destroyed and contaminated. I was hardly ever out of the engine room on that ship, having just acquired my ACME ticket. (Advanced Course in Marine Electronics.) Marconi paid me an extra £12 per month for this, which worked out at well under 50p an hour given all the time I put in the engine room. (I left Marconi after this trip, pretty much in disgust.)

However bear in mind these ships made a phenomenal profit in the 70's given the amount of oil they carried. I think Mobil just gave up on this ship as it seemed knackered from square one.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
However bear in mind these ships made a phenomenal profit in the 70's given the amount of oil they carried. I think Mobil just gave up on this ship as it seemed knackered from square one.
I worked with a chap whose brother was a shipping agent - this involved sitting at home, ringing the odd person up now and then and getting something like a quarter of a cent per ton when a deal was finally arranged to move some.

But, he was swimming in money - there were a lot of tons.
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Crude oil tends to be priced in barrels. There are about 7 barrels in a tonne. So you can see how valuable the cargo of a VLCC (Very Large Crude Carrier) was. They're up to about half a million tons deadweight in size these days (deadweight basically means how much cargo can be carried.)

Serious money. This was the world of the oil companies back then.
 

Chillybean

Well-Known Forumite
A couple of years ago I spent some time working on the Ensco Drillship DS 9 now the Valaris DS 9, at the time to lease these beasts for drilling operation was $600k to $800k per day. At the time the price of oil was +$100 per barrel, now with the price dropping to between $50-$60 the day rate is closer to a more reasonable $160-$230k to lease. Given the cost and the fact that the wells could easily take 35-150 days the risk and possible reward was shared between a number of oil companies. The deepest water depth on one of the wells drilled was just over 11,000 ft all drilled through a hole in the middle of the ship called the moon pool for some reason.
 

Noah

Well-Known Forumite
There are about 7 barrels in a tonne.

Originally a tun was a cask of 252 gallons capacity, equivalent to 7 barrels. (Cask were used as general purpose containers rather than just for liquids). A ship's tonnage was the number of tuns it could carry in its holds.
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
These are the final moments of the Stellar Banner. A huge ore carrier (bigger than the Mobil Pegasus I mentioned above) which ran aground off the coast of Brazil last year after loading about 300,000 tons of iron ore in São Luís. She was so badly damaged that they removed her fuel and much of her cargo, floated her off and then towed her out to deep water and scuttled her. For the enormous size of the ship, she goes down very quickly, spewing iron ore up out of her hatches. The scuttling job seems very efficient. :(

I'm really not sure why that guy is cheering as she goes under. Personally I don't see much to cheer about. :mad:

 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Captain Edward Smith who went down with his ship the RMS Titanic.
He was a Staffordshire man, born in Hanley in 1850. He became the White Star Lines most senior Captain. Some accounts say the Titanic was to be his final pre-retirement voyage.

CaptainSmith.jpg
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Captain Edward Smith who went down with his ship the RMS Titanic.
He was a Staffordshire man, born in Hanley in 1850. He became the White Star Lines most senior Captain. Some accounts say the Titanic was to be his final pre-retirement voyage.

View attachment 10051
Although he was from Stoke, his statue is in Lichfield.

statue-of-titanic-captain-edward-smith-in-beacon-park-lichfield-16133040.jpg


There are, however, conflicting theories about the reasons behind the choice of location.
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
I've been fascinated with this ship since I was a kid. I think it got started with the film 'A Night to Remember' made in 1958, at the time one of the most expensive British films ever made. This was decades before the wreck was located and photographed, or the actual way she sank was better understood.
In terms of safety at sea, this ship changed everything, particularly with respect to my former job as Radio Officer.
Largest ship in the world, maiden voyage ... !!
When you look at this picture, even more than a century on, you still can't get your head around it. :(

TitanicStern.jpg
 

staffordjas

Well-Known Forumite
Captain Edward Smith who went down with his ship the RMS Titanic.
He was a Staffordshire man, born in Hanley in 1850. He became the White Star Lines most senior Captain. Some accounts say the Titanic was to be his final pre-retirement voyage.

View attachment 10051
My mum and Gran used to live in Hanley. I can't remember exactly who gave it to my gran, but she had a cross and chain which belonged to Captain Smith and his family. Mum had it in her jewellery box , which I was supposed to be inheriting. But the cross and chain , along with a lot of other good items including my grans and mums rings which she always said I could have, had disappeared out of the box by the time I got to go through everything when mum died.
 
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