How to Survive A Freak Wave-- And Avoid Whining

Wall Street Journal ^ | 22 Apr o5

[rellimpank]

BY BARBARA D. PHILLIPS Friday, April 22, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

NEW YORK--Rough seas buffeted the Norwegian Dawn cruise ship on its way from Miami to New York last Friday and Saturday, turning a pleasure cruise into a thrill ride. Then a "freak" seven-story wave hit the bow on decks nine and 10.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

2000 people times the 2 hours it took to sink equals 4000 man hours of labor.

I think part of it is the fact that it took a significant amount of time for the engineer to tumble to the fact that the ship would in fact go down . . . which explains why some of the adventurous passengers boarded rafts - and were later faulted for cowardice for not having stayed with the ship and gone down with her, giving place in the lifeboats to women/children.

So that slashes the number of man-hours. What slashes it even more is that well over half of the people would have been women and children not able to do much physical work. And lastly, there was no plan and no tools in place to make use of the manpower that was available.

And as to making a refuge on the iceberg, the ship had no facility for deboarding onto the berg and no way to approach it safely without probably colliding and doing further damage, accelerating the sinking of the ship.

There are plenty of things that coulda, woulda, shoulda after the fact - but the bottom line is that if the ship you're boarding is gonna sink, don't board her. They should have had lifboats enough for the entire population on board, but they didn't. And even the ones they did have were, predictably, not all available due to the listing of the ship. Well, duh! - if you're gonna have to abandon ship it probably will be listing!

The fundamental problem was hubris. The ship "couldn't" sink, so why bother with lifeboats, and why worry about icebergs. It was all downhill from there.

[cherokee1]

Yeah but Halsey had a pistol to take care of Vermin on the Bridge---your pic poses curiosity flashes---was this freak part of the show on the freak wave boat?

[e_engineer]

I think Michael Jackson was in court at the time the rogue wave struck the ship.

[Boiling point]

My thought was that groups of men could use the life boats to approach the icebergs, use tools from the engine room to chop access ways or anchor rope ladders to allow people and supplies to be loaded onto the icebergs and shuttle people over with the lifeboats. I understand that many people were unable or unwilling to work, but you'd be surprised how much say, 100 men could do if faced with the alternative. The anchors and anchor chains on the Titanic weighed many hundreds of tons. If aloud to drop from the ship, this would raise the damaged areas, reducing the speed/pressure, of water infiltration, increasing the effectiveness of the pumps. That would at least buy time which (unknown to them at the time) could have allowed the Carpathia to arrive before going under. Anyway, Just some fantasy engineering on my part, I have several other ideas that would have slowed or stopped the ship from sinking.

[Age of Reason]

Another thought would be to transfer as much weight from the bow to the stern raising the damaged areas out of the water. If the average weight of the people was 150lbs, the people alone would have shifted 150tons.

I always wondered if they could have stopped the flooding of additional forward compartments by counter-flooding the stern.

But even if that would have kept the water in the forward compartments from spilling over more bulkheads, there's still a possiblitiy the ship would have broken in half.

[mountn man]

Another thought would be to transfer as much weight from the bow to the stern raising the damaged areas out of the water. If the average weight of the people was 150lbs, the people alone would have shifted 150tons.

Lets say water is rushing in at 250 gallons a minute, at approx. 8# per gallon that would be 1 ton a minute. As the ship gets deeper water comes in faster. Also there is one other factor, and that is boyancy. As a ship takes on water, and loses boyancy, its not just adding weight to one side of the scale, its knocking weight off the other side.

Plus, eventually so much water was in the ship that the ship ripped in half.

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

No more calls please, we have ourselves a winner!

[supercat]

But even if that would have kept the water in the forward compartments from spilling over more bulkheads, there's still a possiblitiy the ship would have broken in half.

Compared with the guarantee that it would sink otherwise.

I have been curious about how much weight could have been offloaded from the bow and either moved astern or jettisoned. An iron ship is going to be pretty amazingly heavy, so there will be a lot of weight that can't be moved, but counterflooding might have helped things somewhat.

[cubreporter]

but she should be more sympathetic to people who are far more frightened of unusual events on the sea.




Then stay out of the water for heaven's sakes? Who are they wanting to blame? The Cruise ship? Sorry, Mother Nature is in charge out there in that big wide ocean and you take your chances being out there. Would I go? Nope. I like my feet on terre firma however, if a rogue or giant wave came up I wouldn't be blaming the cruise line. That's pure assinine.

[Travis McGee]

I read a report of a contest by a class of engineering students, asked to prepare their best Titanic solutions. The winner was using their existing lifeboats as makeshift catamarans. In the very calm water that night and the following day, lashing two boats together with scavenged timbers would have allowed the lifeboats to carry the entire number of passengers and crew. They would not have capsized, and the reduced freeboard would not have mattered in the flat sea.

20-20 hingsight.

[Solamente]

A friend of mine in Ireland told me you could "trick" the ocean that you had a bigger boat by casting a looped rope and dragging it along the surface!

I suppose it's possible...?

[Age of Reason]

If they could remain sure of the seams remaining air-tight, perhaps turning the lifeboats upside down and then lashing them together in pairs would have kept the people afloat even if the water did become a little choppy.

Lashed together, the upside-down boats would be stable, unlike the collapsible that entered the water upside down, but carried a number of survivors who, led by an officer (Lightolier?) constantly needed to shift their weight in unison to keep the upside down boat stable.

But then they would have no other choice--i.e., if it became necessary for the men to enter the water because of even rougher seas, it would be unlikely they could right the boats.

Also, it would probably be impossible to row the upside down boats away from the sinking ship, and thereby avoid being sucked down as the water entered ths ship through various openings in the hull, and also to avoid being swamped by those in the water trying to scramble aboard.

[Travis McGee]

I see no reason to turn them upside down. They only needed to stay afloat overnight in very calm water. Lashed together, "catamaranized" lifeboats would have been stable enough to carry double their rated passenger loads. In calm water, of course.

[Age of Reason]

The idea behind turning them upside down would be to prevent swamping should the seas become rough.

[cherokee1]

The calculation is fun but you need a couple more zeros on the flow rate . The iceberg split was over 100 feet long and busted rivets went much farther. To be meaningful you would have to step up to more like 25,000 GPM flood rate. But there's plenty of evidence the whole bunch stood around like dunces. A few engineering students might have helped. My thot over the years has been that getting at least some people onto the berg and rigging extra floatation should have helped. But now everyone would just be shooting video hoping for the best!

[Cultural Jihad]

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty & well preserved body, . . .

"Go out into the world and gather your experiences. Once you have gathered your experiences and have become sick of the world, then come to me for the cure." - Sri Ramakrishna

[Unknown Freeper]

Interesting suggestions upthread bump

[cherokee1]

I used to own a couple of those old lifeboats---not quite as old as Titanics but the same basic style. They are "self-righting" and have canned built-in floatation so even fully flooded they don't sink. Even on dry land the shape of the roundy hull makes them difficult to flip. We put a motor in one once and the result was not impressive---best described as a "water plow". So flipping them would serve no purpose but adding floatable stuff to them certainly could have helped.

[Vince Ferrer]

...asked to prepare their best Titanic solutions.

My best Titanic solution would be that instead of trying to turn, they simply give up and ram the iceberg head on. The Titanic would suffer damage on the first compartment, but it would not have received a long gash through the majority of them, and would probably still have stayed afloat.

[Travis McGee]

Probably, but that's not the survival situation presented by what did happen.