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    #76
    Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

    Worn Old Motorbike wrote:
    trimster wrote:
    Jimbags wrote:
    These new giant cruise ships look damn ugly. Floating apartment buildings.
    Yeah, they don't look seaworthy. Same with those modern cargo vessels that stack towering piles of containers on their decks.

    What has happened to those thousands of years worth of knowledge of the sea and ship design, so painfully acquired by mankind? Abandoned, along with common sense, in the pursuit of the almighty dollar.
    Not a bad tirade, but what's it to do with this? Whether they look seaworthy or like apartments or that people like to make money is neither here nor there. This ship was crashed into a rock by a hot-dogging captain who then waited almost an hour before following procedures and then abandoning ship. No amount of good design is going to mitigate for all of that.
    Has everything to do with this topic... a proper ship would not have capsized as quickly as this top-heavy monstrosity; regardless of whether the captain was a coward or a hero. The death toll may well have been zero.

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      #77
      Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

      What's a 'proper ship'? Has anyone built a ship that won't capsize, or take on water if its side is ripped open? I mean, ships generally don't fail on their own. It take a special kind of stupidity, proudly displayed by the good Captain Schettino.

      That cargo ship in New Zealand, regardless of design, would have failed eventually given the pounding and heaving and metal fatigue it was experiencing. There's no such thing, as we've learned 100 years after Titanic, as unsinkable.

      Comment


        #78
        Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

        I bet a nimitz class aircraft carrier is pretty unsinkable, by anything other than a nuclear weapon strike.

        Comment


          #79
          Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

          I know this is wholly inappropriate and all that but I have to share it. A colleague of mine is apparently sleeping on the sofa tonight for an ill-timed glance at his wife.
          It was, rather unfortunately, right after the Sky News presenter, talking about this sad tragedy said "as you can see, she's laying there on her side with a gash the size of a tennis court..."

          Comment


            #80
            Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

            that's nearly as bad as a joke I saw on facebook. I can't believe that someone said that on television.

            Comment


              #81
              Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

              Nick FTSU wrote

              From personal experience gained during a 4month loan service on HMS Invincible, I believe that other compartments on the opposite side would be deliberately flooded to balance the vessel out to try and keep it afloat.

              So I wonder if the crew over compensated and the bloody thing keeled over like the top heavy unstable piece of engineering it appears to be.
              Counterflooding depends on a well-trained and well-directed crew, and warships have much better compartmentalisation. I don't think any of this applied in this instance.*

              I've been talking to a couple of UK merchant mariners, and they say that a lot of Italian masters are 'a bit flash'; they're shocked but not all that surprised by what happened.

              The Nimitz class are indeed just about unsinkable - they have fantastic damage control and firefighting capabilities (the USN has always been tops in this), but I suppose if you have an idiot in command, anything can happen.

              * i was on India a few times in the late 80s-early 90s: horrible seaboats, with that corkscrewing in any kind of cross sea.

              Comment


                #82
                Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                Worn Old Motorbike wrote:
                What's a 'proper ship'? Has anyone built a ship that won't capsize, or take on water if its side is ripped open? I mean, ships generally don't fail on their own. It take a special kind of stupidity, proudly displayed by the good Captain Schettino.

                That cargo ship in New Zealand, regardless of design, would have failed eventually given the pounding and heaving and metal fatigue it was experiencing. There's no such thing, as we've learned 100 years after Titanic, as unsinkable.
                Calm down, deary.... don't get your knickers in a twist...

                Comment


                  #83
                  Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                  oldjack wrote:
                  Nick FTSU wrote

                  From personal experience gained during a 4month loan service on HMS Invincible, I believe that other compartments on the opposite side would be deliberately flooded to balance the vessel out to try and keep it afloat.

                  So I wonder if the crew over compensated and the bloody thing keeled over like the top heavy unstable piece of engineering it appears to be.
                  on a well-trained and well-directed crew.
                  Haha. It was a (un) able seaman who left a sea - cock (?) open while at sea causing the serious flooding of some forward compartments which resulted in what I described. I suppose, like an aircraft, a ship needs to be trimmed?

                  Due to their role I would imagine warships are more compartmentalised, so maybe this lack of compartments explains why the damage is visible. Maybe. Perhaps.

                  Comment


                    #84
                    Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                    I bet a nimitz class aircraft carrier is pretty unsinkable, by anything other than a nuclear weapon strike.
                    A sentence last spoken by a 10 year old playing Top Trumps

                    Comment


                      #85
                      Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                      trimster wrote:
                      [quote]Worn Old Motorbike wrote:
                      Calm down, deary.... don't get your knickers in a twist...
                      Ah. Is this what we're doing now when we don't like the way the discussion is going?

                      Comment


                        #86
                        Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                        A sentence last spoken by a 10 year old playing Top Trumps

                        hah. in my defence, it is probably true. Indeed It would have to be pretty much a direct hit if operation crossroads taught us anything.

                        Comment


                          #87
                          Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                          Worn Old Motorbike wrote:
                          [quote]trimster wrote:
                          Worn Old Motorbike wrote:
                          Calm down, deary.... don't get your knickers in a twist...
                          Ah. Is this what we're doing now when we don't like the way the discussion is going?
                          I'm quite happy with the way the "discussion" is going...it's just you telling me that my post has no relevance to the thread that I take exception to. It was just as relevant as anything you have posted, numbnuts.

                          Go off and have a massive flounce and stamp your little feet...

                          Comment


                            #88
                            Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                            More news from merchant mariners on this. Good friend knows someone who actually served with the same line, Costa Cruises. The captain (not Schettino) of one of their floating pleasure barges went two miles further inshore than the recommended distance, and ordered the helmsman to take her further in still, so that the passengers could see something better.

                            The helmsman (English – most merchant navies are multi-national) refused. This is serious – disobeying an order from the captain. The captain insisted, upon which the helmsman requested that he be relieved, and that someone else could drive the ship aground. The captain actually backed down and belayed the order. No action was taken against the captain by the owners.

                            So, not an isolated incident.

                            The “unsinkable” Nimitz-class CVNs. Warships’ vulnerability is measured in terms of how difficult it is for a hostile power to destroy them, rather than in the Titanic (non)sense.

                            A CVN never operates on its own*: it is the centre of a battlegroup, always being accompanied by extremely powerful anti-submarine and anti-air escorts, which have their own anti-surface and land strike capabilities. Further support comes from satellite recon, shore based aircraft, USN attack submarines, and fixed sonar arrays located in more areas of ocean than people imagine.

                            Extremely difficult to sneak up on them, though Sandy Woodward managed it once, on an exercise (his County-class destroyer impersonated an Indian liner).

                            Unless you can get a nuke through multiple levels of defence, or get the CVN to sail over one, you have to use conventional weapons, which means a lot of platforms launching a lot of weapons, and enough of them getting through to inflict critical damage. USN systems, particularly Aegis, are designed to deal with this type of mass attack. Or you could drop something from orbit, I suppose.

                            *Another reason - as if one was needed - why Top Gun is such an appalling film.

                            Edit:

                            TAB wrote

                            hah. in my defence, it is probably true. Indeed It would have to be pretty much a direct hit if operation crossroads taught us anything.
                            Quite so. God, it's ages since I read anything on this: so I'll recommend the relevant Wiki page, which is very thorough and has some good free downloads.

                            Comment


                              #89
                              Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                              trimster wrote:
                              I'm quite happy with the way the "discussion" is going...it's just you telling me that my post has no relevance to the thread that I take exception to. It was just as relevant as anything you have posted, numbnuts.

                              Go off and have a massive flounce and stamp your little feet...
                              Jeez, trim old man, you're bound to make a guy feel bad. But look, to clarify, I didn't mean that your post has no relevance to the thread. I meant that the comments that you made regarding the looks of the ship and 'the almighty dollar' and cargo containers piled to high seemed, well, irrelevant to the incident being discussed here.

                              Bad ship design, greed and ungainly looks had nothing to do with why this ship sank. It didn't capsize due to bad design. It wasn't top-heavy. It wasn't overloaded. It didn't have insufficient lifeboats. It was down to pure and simple human error. The captain went 'rogue', gouged the side with a boulder and then basically beached it.

                              Your 'tirade', as I perhaps over-exaggeratedly called it, seemed like a bit of an ad-hominem attack. But, considering your adolescent name calling and invitations to flounce, maybe that's your thing.

                              Comment


                                #90
                                Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                over-exaggeratedly
                                This has to stop, WOM. Unless you really mean that there was an amount of exaggeration which would have been acceptable, but this was more than that.

                                Comment


                                  #91
                                  Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                  Worn Old Motorbike wrote:
                                  trimster wrote:
                                  I'm quite happy with the way the "discussion" is going...it's just you telling me that my post has no relevance to the thread that I take exception to. It was just as relevant as anything you have posted, numbnuts.

                                  Go off and have a massive flounce and stamp your little feet...
                                  Jeez, trim old man, you're bound to make a guy feel bad. But look, to clarify, I didn't mean that your post has no relevance to the thread. I meant that the comments that you made regarding the looks of the ship and 'the almighty dollar' and cargo containers piled to high seemed, well, irrelevant to the incident being discussed here.

                                  Bad ship design, greed and ungainly looks had nothing to do with why this ship sank. It didn't capsize due to bad design. It wasn't top-heavy. It wasn't overloaded. It didn't have insufficient lifeboats. It was down to pure and simple human error. The captain went 'rogue', gouged the side with a boulder and then basically beached it.

                                  Your 'tirade', as I perhaps over-exaggeratedly called it, seemed like a bit of an ad-hominem attack. But, considering your adolescent name calling and invitations to flounce, maybe that's your thing.
                                  This is all a bit of a storm in a teacup, but, if you remember rightly, the thread was titled "nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?" That would seem to inivite a broad discussion of many aspects of this event: crazy captains, poorly trained crew, wealthy passengers, ship design, maritime history etc.

                                  Sorry about the "juvenile" language- I must have spent too much time looking at my son's internet chat forums lately; either that or my pills are wearing off and I need a trip to the chemist...

                                  Comment


                                    #92
                                    Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                    A sentence last spoken by a 10 year old playing Top Trumps

                                    hah. in my defence, it is probably true. Indeed It would have to be pretty much a direct hit if operation crossroads taught us anything.
                                    In your defence, it was what popped into my head rather than a pop at you.

                                    Comment


                                      #93
                                      Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                      oldjack's anecdote is finding significant support in Italian media, which have now found multiple cases of Costa captains performing manoeuvres like this, to the point where they actually had a name ("inchini" or bows) in Costaspeak.

                                      We now seem to have evidence of around 50 of these in the last couple of years.

                                      We also now have video and audio evidence of the crew giving the passengers materially misleading instructions after the incident (describing it as an electrical fault, telling them that the fault had been repaired, instructing them to return to their cabins, etc.)

                                      This is going to end up costing Carnival a hell of a lot of money; the first US class action has already been filed.

                                      Comment


                                        #94
                                        Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                        To be honest, I can see why the crew may have given false information to the passengers, as telling them all that they had hit a rock and there was a fucking great hole in the side would have sent them into a panic way before they had turned the ship round and manoeuvred as close as they could to Giglio and could quite easily have led to more losses of life.
                                        Costa have apparently suspended the Captain and stopped paying his legal fees. They have signed on as a civil party in the prosecution, which presumably would allow them to claim damages from Schettino should he be found guilty. Hopefully this does not exempt them from their own responsibilities with regard to and failures that led to this disaster.

                                        Comment


                                          #95
                                          Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                          Isn't it about time they started removing the fuel and oil from the boat? I know they don't want to destroy the last speck of hope of the relatives of the twenty people still missing, but any logical conclusion would be that there are not any more survivors. Even if they had found an air pocket in a submerged room, they would have died from hypothermia. The boat has already shifted a couple of times, they shouldn't give it any more time to break up and spill it's contents into the water.

                                          Comment


                                            #96
                                            Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                            trimster wrote:
                                            Sorry about the "juvenile" language- I must have spent too much time looking at my son's internet chat forums lately; either that or my pills are wearing off and I need a trip to the chemist...
                                            No harm done. And cheers. My tone was a bit shit so I probably got things going on the wrong foot.

                                            Comment


                                              #97
                                              Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                              TonTon wrote:
                                              over-exaggeratedly
                                              This has to stop, WOM. Unless you really mean that there was an amount of exaggeration which would have been acceptable, but this was more than that.
                                              Guilty as charged. Suitably chastened.

                                              Comment


                                                #98
                                                Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                                To come back to Sean's point, they have begun to remove the fuel and other toxic material from the ship.

                                                There was also a pro-Schttiino banner at Napoli's match yesterday.

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                                                  #99
                                                  Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                                  Also 'Schettino è della Lazio' from Roma fans at the weekend

                                                  Comment


                                                    Nothing on the Italian cruise ship, then?

                                                    I always thought of Italian football culture as one massive train wreck but it seems I had the wrong transport form.

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