back in the day i recall a few of us talking about a ship somewhere. We had big plans of sailing it to where there was a market for it, cashing in and going home with stuffed pockets, you know, BIG plans etc.
I only know enough now to do it when you’re young with nothing to lose but it is still like a siren call.
A engineer making his first trip on a car carrier was talking to the mates during the meal one time and he asked how many cars did we have aboard?. About 4000 he was told.
He said we should find a port to sail to and sell the cars for $200 each. Would be $800,000 total or divided between 20 crew would be $40,000 each.
Be less of course, not every crew member would get the same size share.
$40K? Geez, that idiot didn’t put much value on the rest of his life did he?
I keep forgetting Poe’s Law. I edited my post.
well, at that rate i guess they may as well be selling the ship too … i never cared much to sail those things, the msc ships would carry that many cars but were no doubt a much more stable ride … i bet being on one of those car carriers is like being in a tanker in ballast? i’d bet they have to spend a lot of money dealing with ballast? they sure couldn’t get into port with empty tanks in one of those things unless there was no wind, water like a lake … ?
yea, hard to say what i’d read or whatever when creating that but it can evoke some seldom remembered incidents or something. i don’t think i’ve encountered ‘poes law’ or if i did used it so seldom to of forgotten.
Cars don’t weight much. Ballpark 1.5 tons per is good number and makes the math easy. So 6000 tons of cargo.
Often end up with more ballast then cargo. We had 4 big sea water ballast tanks that were permanent ballast by class rules.
Car ships are a little stiff on a ballast voyage but a nice ride with a good load when the GM can be taken down near min allowed by getting rid of some ballast.
Usually more than min allowed ballast to avoid excess wind heel.
Did you mean stealing a ship? This book is based on that premise:
yea, i just bought two of that authors books, including ‘‘western limit’’. they’re “in the mail”.
They are definitely interesting reading. You can read them in any order, they are stand-alone.