Hello, my grandfather escaped out of Cuba to the United States on the Nigella in the 70s.. He has since passed away and we are trying to write his story.
He was hiding in the room in the ship where there were many chains and the anchor was stored. He said he was vomiting and very sick and could barely breathe. He says he passed out and it smelled like paint in the room. He thought it was because of the paint, but it appears from my limited research that it could be because of the reaction between the chains and the salt water? I’ve read that many people die in that room and workers have to wear oxygen when they go in there? Can you confirm this? About what size is this little room? He also says there was a tube of sorts that went up that had fresh air if he stayed right beside it. He says he tried to squeeze himself into the tube but it got narrower as it went up. Does anyone have an image of this tube? What would the tube be for?
The compartment your father was talking about is the one labeled ‘chain locker’ here. The tube(s) he is talking about is labeled ‘spill pipes’. They are the tubes the anchor chains drop down through to the chain locker after being hoisted aboard by the anchor windlass. He is a bit mistaken about the anchor being stored in there. You see the actual arrangement here. The anchor chain is stored in the ‘manger’ part of the chain locker, though on some ships there is no real division between the two. Yes, the chemical process of rust in the compartment would reduce the amount of free oxygen in the air.
(Image from Coastal Transportation Inc.’s ‘Seamanship’ comic book.)
I remember stacking chain in the ‘chain bin’ after it came down from the ‘spurling pipe’. At the time I used one term to refer to them all: ‘mother fucker’.
Some of the posters on here from very big ships will answer you. Also depends on the size of the guy.
Air can come down the spill pipes, but not readily. Hence the near asphyxiation your father endured. I don’t know–maybe on larger ships the chain locker would also have a ventilator associated with it. But on smaller vessels this would not be the case because in rough weather the bow gets buried in waves and flooding down the ventilator would occur.
Because of this the tops of the pipes where they meet the deck are often sealed with foam or cement in areas where rough seas are the norm. A precaution sometimes omitted in areas where calm seas are the norm (Caribbean).
You’re in luck - I have some old drydock project photos laying around that will give you a better idea of what these things are. For reference, my ship is bigger than the one you’re talking about, but the scale of these things shouldn’t be very far off.
Up first is an anchor chain link, with a hand for scale. When the anchor is up, there’s about eight hundred feet of this chain piled up in the chain locker.
Our spillpipe is very short, other ships have longer ones. This is what ours looks like from underneath. Normally you can’t see this space because it’s behind a large bolted plate and not meant to be accessed in regular service.
And this is the chain locker (or manger, or chain bin, or whatever you want to call it) with all the chain pulled out and freshly cleaned. The ladder is temporary. You can see there’s still a lot of rust on the steel even after cleaning, which consumes oxygen in this enclosed space. Imagine it if it hasn’t been cleaned in years with eight hundred feet of rusty chain piled up in it.
I imagine that he’s not the only man to try it, but you should consider him a lucky one - confined spaces like this kill people all the time just from bad air, even without the extreme danger posed by that massive chain flying out around him if they dropped that anchor before he could get out again.
