That’s interesting, I’d sort of assumed yard-and-stay (aka union purchase) was considered obsolete though I never understood why.
From my experience ship-to-ship transfers with a ship equipped with a crane was the crane was slower because slewing quickly (or ship motion) will cause the load to swing
With yard-and-stay the winches could be run at full speed and the load moves in an arc-like path without swinging.
At least with relativity light loads. Doubling up with a yard-and-stay rig could really slow things down.
Here’s the Snowbird doing a ship-to-ship with a Russian ship using their (yard-and-stay) gear.
Ship-to-Ship near the Shumagin Islands, outside the 12 mile limit, Gulf of Alaska.
Yep. Also, on our boats the gear operating station is placed so the operator can see clean down to the lower hold. They need no spotter to direct them. Whereas with the crane set ups I’ve seen you need a person to spot and give signals, which is less efficient.
We have more than enough mates and ABs. Good ordinaries are plentiful. Cooks are the issue. We have some great, steady cooks but in the summer we run short and the pickings out there are light.
That is probably why even the newest reefer ships (except banana boats etc.) are using derricks, not cranes.
Many of them are used to collect frozen fish directly from factory trawlers or processors at sea.
Hence you see large Yokohama fenders carried onboard:
Back in the day when ships looked like ships most of the cargo was worked in Union Purchase. Some vessels like the colliers working our coast stowed the derricks vertically because of the length of the yard and stay. they were thus able to plumb wagons over two tracks of rail lines. Refrigerated ships running Europe to Australasia had a Stulken Heavy Derrick between 2 and 3 hatch with a 250 tonne SWL . This was used for Locomotives and transformers etc outward from Europe. Last spot in the hatch square was the mail. Another swinging derrick was the Hallen. We had one on the small
ex Norwegian ship the Fetu Moana. With a SWL of 20 tonnes we had a fine old time discharging a 19 tonne airport fire tender into 2 surf boats lashed together while anchored off Aitutaki outside the reef. Job done and beers alround.
That is her. She had a pallet loader on the port side as well. The two derricks just forward of the house were swing derricks driven at the base, 5 tonne crane amidships between the two hatches and Hallen derrick forward.
Number 2 lower hold and number 2 lower tween deck were refrigerated , 1 lower hold and lower tween deck general as was the shelter deck.
The concept of palatized cargo handle through side ports were invented by Fred Olsen Jr. in the late1950s, First used on his ships carrying fruit from Canary Isle to London. (First at Canary Wharfs, later at Millwall Docks) :
(Photographs provided by Fred. Olsen & Co, Oslo)
Source: Fred. Olsen & Co. and the Millwall Docks | Isle of Dogs – Past Life, Past Lives
As the story goes the dock workers didn’t like this development. They insisted that a full gang, incl, winch operators and signal man, had to be employed for discharging.
(Forklift drivers were not incl, in the “gang”)
The then very young Fred Olsen Jr. met with the stevedores to put his side of the story. He apparently made such a forceful argument that one of the union reps said; “Damn, if he wasn’t a shipowner, we could elect him as our Union boss”.
For ship-to-ship cargo ops with the discharging ship equipped with cranes the most common routine was for the discharging ship to set each lift on their deck and we’d pick it from there. It was quicker than waiting for them to swing the load over to our deck.
If the discharging ship also had yard-and-stay there was a method called (non-pc) jap-rigged. The hatch runner of each ship would be married and and one runner was run by the discharge ship and the other by the loading ship.
Sounds unwieldy and most mates didn’t want to do it but it was sometimes the fastest way. After a few lifts it’d go smoothly. Once the load was on the other ship’s runner it was mostly just a matter of keeping sufficient slack.
It eliminated the problem of the load and the cargo hook moving due to sea/swell of the other ship.
I think Spliethof uses a giant version of the side cargo discharge / elevator on some of their vessels carrying cardboard paper rolls ex-Finland. It’s very fast.
I think there was another name for it, but I can’t remember what it was. I tried it a few times, but it never really seemed to be much quicker than just setting the load on my deck and letting them pick it from there. It does illustrate the flexibility of yard-and-stay gear, though. It can be rigged in ways only limited by your imagination, or that of a guy who did it a hundred years ago. I’m disappointed that I ended my career in that segment of the business before I ever got to set up a housefall rig at the dock.
That’s probably correct, maybe even a bit slower in some cases.
With each ship using it’s own gear, ship’s runner and hook moves with own ship but the other ship’s runner moves with the other ship. The other ship’s hook raising and falling independent of own ship could make it more difficult to get the load hooked up. Once the load is lifted clear of the other deck the motion of the other ship doesn’t matter.
The main advantage of married falls was in rough weather. With married falls (jap-rig) it’s always own ship’s gear that has the load, the other ship’s runner is slack.
The amazing thing about married fall is that two guys who never met each other before, never practiced working together, didn’t even speak the same language, could safely pull off a cargo transfer in a blizzard, hour after hour, while mooring lines were parting bow and stern.
When I first started doing cargo ops in the Pribilofs and St. Matthew Island I assumed one or two men must be killed a year doing it, what with the boat motions being so kinetic, the high winds, and snow and ice. But I never saw an injury caused by “the gear” in all that time.
There’s something about being isolated far from hospitals and home, surrounded by danger, that focuses the self-preservation principle.
