Yes, second nature for them. Very observant, I missed that one…
The bridge in general makes it easy to imagine that the officers could get caught unaware by something not in their plans or not seen on their screens and instruments, isolated from the sea.
Gee, I lay them flat even on shore.
Reminds me for some reason of some ?Steiner? binoculars that failed a government acceptance test. When they inquired they were told the test was to take a stepladder out into the parking lot and drop them from the top of it.
Like a picture out of Star Wars: ‘Beam me up Scottie!’. You cannot even step directly from the wheelhouse onto the bridge wings either. What I understand is that the new generation of bridge officers hardly look out of the windows any more, just stare at the screens, like a kind of navigation computer game. In my time when you were caught sitting in the pilot chair you almost got fired.
I use to say that the feeling and knowledge of the sea is inversely proportional to the eye height distance above the sea. At over 40 meters, as in this ship, that doesn’t amount to much.
BTW I spotted a second pair of upright binoculars on the console…
The bridge on the Incat fast ferries has no wings and no outside access. It’s got three big chairs – ChEng on the left, skipper in the middle, navigator on the right. That’s the entire sailing crew except for a roving fire watch in normal ferry operations – a few hundred miles a day and alongside every night.
When my brother took one to sea for the Navy they found it needed a crew of 35 to stay at sea.
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This is the Offshore Supporting vessel Atlantic Tonjer which participates in the cleaning operation. She has been fitted with special side looking sonars and ROV’s to aid in the search.
Unexpected bycatch are parts of airplanes which were fished out of the water such as a plane’s tail, two incomplete airplane motor blocks and propellor blades.
The tail is of an American long distance Lockheed P38 Lightning fighter plane, the fork-tailed devil. The Airforce will try to identify which plane it exactly is and establish whether the crew is still missing or was saved. The US. Airforce has been notified about the findings.
Isn’t it a beauty of a plane!
The motor blocks have been identified as a Rolls Royce Merlin and a Bristol Hercules.
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Captain Eric Brown RN, a test test pilot during WWII didn’t think much of the lightning and recommended to General Doolittle that it should only be employed for photo reconnaissance over Europe. The aircraft was far more successful in the Pacific theatre.
Is that modern to you? Shit is this the valley of the dead?
Dinosaurs are extinct! Have you not get the memo?
I remember the pilot chair being lashed back in the far corner of the bridge where no one could use it.
Although MSC always said that they would pay for the damages caused by the loss of 345 containers the first invoices of the islands who had to clean their beaches has been bluntly rejected by the British insurance company without giving any reason why. The specified invoice of one of the islands amounted to € 36.000, peanuts really. The press isn’t getting any response from the insurance company either. Shameful business.
I must say that I am not surprised at all as insurers almost always try to avoid payment. This is probably the way they will handle the entire damage costs settlement, it is just a sort of prelude, setting the tone. A dog fight is imminent.
I already wondered before that MSC shortly after the accident was making that statement to pay for all damages. It looks like that they said that on purpose to clean their slate. Now they can point at the insurers and say sorry, not our fault, we were perfectly willing.
So submit the invoices to MSC and let them fight with the insurers.
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Good idea. I hope it is that simple because the world of ‘justice’ is a snake pit with their own peculiar rules and rites.
You know it won’t be. But they’re the ones who made the promise.
We will soon see what their real position is in this mess. Hopefully they will stand by their promise.
MSC has reassured the Dutch and German authorities shortly after the incident that the company would be responsible for all clean-up costs. Governments are often saddled with salvage costs because shipowners rely on their liability limitation. For example, the Netherlands paid the majority of the 67.5 million euros involved in the salvage of the car carrier ‘Baltic Ace’, that with its weight according to the current prices, only 17.6 million could be held liable after the shipowner renounced the ship and invoked its liability.
It was standard practice that shipping companies went to court to limit their liability. For instance APL immediately went to court after the incident with the APL China to limit its total liability to $50 million, the value of the ship.
The liability limit of a ship nowadays depends on the size of the ship. A certain number of units are allocated per tonne and are expressed in Special Drawing Rights. The first 2,000 tons of a ship is the most heavily loaded and for all subsequent tons an ever lower tax is charged. The Special Drawing Rights can be converted into an amount in euros and thus form the limit from which MSC could limit itself.
A container giant like the ‘MSC Zoe’, which is 396 meters long and 59 meters wide and can carry 19,224 teu, weighs 192,237 tons. That translates to 73,457,574 SDR, which converts to 89.5 million euros.
Therefore, even if MSC were relying on its liability limitation, the company would in any case have to pay that amount for damages. That contribution does not necessarily have to come out of pocket, because many ship owners are insured for such damages.
According to an counting exercise more than 24 million plastic grains are lying along the coast of the islands and the main land. Particles have even been carried inland by wind over a distance of more than 100 km. The island of Schiermonnikoog has the worst pollution.
A request was made to the public to count the plastic grains in for instance one square meter. The average count per square meter was 268 grains. With help of the public they will try next week to handpick as much as possible of these tiny particles from the beaches. This must be done soonest because the grains will fall apart in micro plastics which will then enter the food chain. For instance on plastic grains algaea will eventually grow and will be seen as fish food.
I wonder what can be done about the particles hidden by the sea. That area is much larger than that of the beaches. I suppose very little unless they develop a new sand filtering technique making use for instance of the fact that sand is heavier than plastic. They expect that the pollution will be there for decades to come. This is a real and serious disaster and MSC saw that it was good.
The MSC Zoe is on the move again. Proceeded from Bremerhaven to Göteborg, Sweden on the 20th and arrived early today in Aarhus, Denmark.
Just before departure of Göteborg the ship’s draft increased somewhat. Due to ballasting?
An interesting bycatch of the cleaning operation is the discovery of a ship built in 1540, the oldest wreck so far found in the Dutch part of the North Sea. The trees were cut in 1536 in Belgium and Germany but the ship was built in Holland. It is 30 meters long and 7 meters wide.
The cargo consisted of copper plates of 0.5 cm thickness and were probably intended to mint coins. So far 5000 kg of copper has been lifted. The copper was mined in the Slovakian Republic and probably transported by the river Donau that forms the border with Hungary.
The German family Fugger had the monopoly on all copper in Europe and became exorbitant rich. They were disliked by the northern Hanse cities like Hamburg and at some moment they refused to handle the Fugger copper. Dutch ships were then hired to transport the copper from there to probably Antwerp. All copper plates carried the Fugger stamp,
The ship was carvel built which is unique because in that time most ships were clinker built.
The wooden planking and beams are in surprisingly good condition after all these years! That is rather unusual as normally all wood is eaten by the woodworm. They were probably covered by sand preventing the woodworm to reach the wood. The Baltic Sea has brackish water in which the woodworm cannot survive and wooden wrecks which are found there are intact like the Swedish warship Vasa which is on display in Stockholm.
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Contrary to this rather robust statement all invoices that were sent so far to MSC have not been paid, not one. They didn’t even have the courtesy to confirm the receipt of these invoices. Nothing, nada, niente, rien, nichts, the middle finger to everybody. Things have been scaled up since even the State Attorney is now handling the affair. We have a saying: No Money No Swiss. They always have had difficulty with parting of this commodity. I am curious how this will end.
Hundreds of kilos of batteries are waiting for transport.
It is estimated that the ongoing cleaning operation is now just over halfway. About 2000 tons of material has been landed ashore, much more still to come.