Probably the conversation was regarding the ships that had been converted to container. Don’t recall for sure. I was working on the West Coast at the time.
When I sailed with Waterman on their LASH ships to the middle east drafts of 40 ft were not unusual. The whole down by the head thing was to try to minimize the amount of that flat stern in the water. The ships that were converted to containships never ran that deep. The one I was on (from SeaLand to Horizon) ceased running down by the head early on as we rarely were deep enough to put the flat stern in the water. We found it didn’t affect performance. If anything, to try and continue would mean running at dangerously high hull stresses. Running down by the head also caused issues in the cargo holds as water would always accumulate at the forward ends of the cargo holds. Our sistership continued to try and operate “down by the head” for many years which I considered a mistake as the reasons to do so were no longer valid.
3 Likes
Same issues we are having nowadays with the office requesting the ships to run down by the head for fuel efficiency. Not very efficient for stripping your tanks and getting all that fuel out amongst other things like increased hull stress. A whole lot of blank stares from those same office folks when explaining the challenges of such requests and the fact that the vessels were not designed for such load conditions.