I am glad that they got her up and can return the last of the Crew to the Family. R.I.P.
Just wondering if anyone else has seen the pictures of the Specialist since they raised Her?
Anyway, one of the shots (not mine, they were shared with me and I am not sure who took them) show the Starboard Side of the Deck house ripped open. To me it looks as if the plate was fractured or maybe it was a really bad patch job. She did not seem to have a Loadline, so I am assuming that she was not classed.
The Upper Deck is ripped and pushed up but if you look close at the picture, it looks to me as the hole in the side of the deck house shows signs of the plate fracturing as you really can’t see where the plate would be pushed in. I might be way off base but it just looks strange to me.
You can tell that she got caught by the rake of the barge and that some of the waist is pushed in but outside of the side of the House and upper deck she looks pretty good. If whatever happened to the side of the deck house did not happen, I think she might have stayed afloat as it looked like all of the W/T Doors were closed when they first raised her.
I worked on some boats very similar to her and had water well over half way up the side of the deck house but with everything buttoned up we made it. This is one of the biggest fears of all that work on Tugs, they sink like a rock once you get water into the E.R.
I’ve noticed that for years as well I always assumed it was for ventilation. With the low freeboard most tugs have even in protected waters id be nervous as hell riding around with the doors open all the time.
I can’t speak for all tugs, but the one I worked on, yes we left the doors open and the portholes open as well for ventilation for the ME. If it rained we still had to leave them cracked open.
Some tugs leave doors open for eng. room ventilation if they dont have blowers amd also for deck crew to come in and out quickly when doing harbor work like dressing a line and cooking dinner at the same time.
Most tugs have rules like all water tight doors secured during barge shift or pushing on stern of ship going around bergen pt when the tug has a tendency to lean over considerably.
Once while towing a light barge astern on a short wire through hell gate a deckhand made a huge argument to the captain amd I about closing water tight doors to galley. He didnt want to close them because if we were tripped amd started to sink he wanted to be able to get out😉
Pretty normal on certain boats for certain doors to almost always be open. Usually older boats though. Typically a galley and fidley door. All about air and noise. You don’t want to hear a watertight door open and close your whole off watch. We close doors before doing certain things as well though.
From the pictures of the damage I doubt it would have mattered. Pinned between the corner of the rake of one barge, and the weeks barge she was made up on. Driven right down the rake and under.
Looks to me like the impact was almost 90 degrees to the keel, with very little fwd motion. Kinda like that when they found out they were too far to the right they turned left, kicking the stern to the right. Maybe a back full on the port side boat? Way worse than getting scraped off. WT doors not so important when the house is shredded… Somewhere I have a picture of my boot prints on the inside of a six dog door from standing on it trying to dog off the other five, water streaming in all the way to the top… Learned a lesson there, “Better sweaty than swimming”.