How to Escape a Sinking Ship
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Much like how airing down your tires can save your life if you travel to remote places, it's possible one of you may someday be in need of these life skills.
Especially if you make extremely poor choices after discovering time travel.
The great ship takes nearly three hours to finally go below, and it’s almost graceful in its descent. It never capsizes nor even takes on a serious list. It sinks so slowly you could make an interminable movie out of its demise. As a result, you not only have extra time to prepare yourself in your bunk, but when you make it to the decks, instead of the sheer chaos that accompanies most founderings, you’ll find a sociological cocktail of gallantry, cowardice, courage, chivalry, sacrifice, prayer, panic, and even music.
Small wonder this has become a metaphor for long-running calamities.
Interesting footnote:
A ship’s stability in flooded conditions was such an extraordinarily complex calculation prior to computer modeling that it was like forecasting the weather using pen and paper. Wahl told me that when he did it longhand for a ship he designed, the arithmetic alone took him some six months.
(emphasis mine)
On walkabout. Back soonish.
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Don't make me do an everything wrong with this article...
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@exage03040 Well, obviously it is now mandatory for you to do so.
On walkabout. Back soonish.
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@exage03040 Please do.
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Nah man, when the siren sounds at 1AM right after shift change you grab some clothes for your naked ass, your floaty, and drag your half clothes self to the muster station for your fun ride down in the orange coffin packed full of 50 other dudes (are you serious w/this capacity when they are all above avg weight lol) and then you get the all clear because the smoke detector in the galley is on the fritz again. “Fuck you siren, go to hell. I’ll be in my bunk next time” you say - until that god damn galley smoke detector fritzes again. You’ll be at that muster station come hell or high water.
Someone fucking launch that fucking thing into the fucking sun! Goddammit!
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Kevin Escoffier's boat just broke up and sank in the Vendee Globe race a few days ago. Minutes from alarm to sunk. Made it to his liferaft, which was already under water on the aft deck. Rescued by another racer and later transferred to Nivose, a French war ship(?). Story and vids available at https://www.vendeeglobe.org/en. 4 boats were actually turned toward the rescue. In the middle of nowhere, help came thanks to modern satellite comms. We can still easily die out there and many do every year. But it is easier than ever to find help these days.
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@just-jeepin I feel like there's a metaphor here.
I start a new job with a new company on Monday.
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@baconsandwich said in How to Escape a Sinking Ship:
@just-jeepin I feel like there's a metaphor here.
I start a new job with a new company on Monday.
Congrats! And good luck.
Don't go down with the ship.
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I'll sort of summarize this.
The overall tone of the articles seems to hold the disaster and its failings to what they should have done in our modern times. It's easy to critique colossal failures after which that they've occurred.
The sinking of the Titanic itself was the genesis of our modern day shipping regulations regarding safety and safety equipment regarding vessels; SOLAS Convention [International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea] which was drafted up after the sinking and eventually put into place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SOLAS_Convention
Keep in mind that there was no safety regulations for vessel design, life saving equipment, emergency drills or anything of that nature at the time of the sailing of the Titanic.
I could argue that the fact they even put lifeboats on her is interesting considering that with the multitude of the watertight bulkheads and size she was considered the safest ship built and many touted unsinkable at that time.
If you think the vessel is unsinkable, then you're not going to do pax drills like life-jacket donning, muster station locations, crew emergency duties, passenger management and evacuation, lifeboat lowering drills etc. They also didn't have a ship wide PA system to tell crew and passengers what was going on in the event of an emergency.
Even then we have situations like the Costa Concoridia where everything went to shit with the majority of mariner staff onboard (particularly the master) panicked, despite stringent modern SOLAS standards, training, and equipment for passenger vessels.
In terms of being a passenger onboard a vessel in a modern country that is actually sinking today... We are significantly better prepared with regards to vessel design, communication, lifesaving equipment and training. With competent crew, we will tell you where to go and what to do in any emergency. All you have to do is be calm and follow directions of the crew and announcements. On the larger vessels like cruise ships they usually show you your muster location for emergencies and how to put on a life-jacket (and they're getting very simple to put on these days).
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@exage03040 I'd disagree, but tone is a hard thing to measure in text.
On walkabout. Back soonish.
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@just-jeepin said in How to Escape a Sinking Ship:
I'd disagree, but tone is a hard thing to measure in text.
I'd put it more in the context that if you were a passenger in 3rd class, you would have no clue the extent of the damage of the vessel at the time of strike even if you were near it. Even the bridge wouldn't get an immediate report back in those times.
Even if you felt it and some crew told you a few minutes after there's a very good chance you wouldn't believe it until the vessel began taking a serious bow pitch some time after. To everyone, crew included this was unbelievable in every sense of the word.
I can't fault the actions of the crew or the passengers in how they dealt with this because even today I've watched inexperienced crew go to shit in a drill, even when they know the scenario, let alone when peoples lives are actually in jeopardy and you're not sure.
In terms of detailing that you actually had a chance to react and save yourself on the Titanic situation is laughably naive.
Drawing any parallels to that situation and how we deal with it on a modern vessel is apples and orangutans.
The bridge and myself in engineering have an immeasurably better vessel, with better crew training, communication, and lifesaving equipment to deal with emergency situations.
It came directly from this incident.
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@exage03040 I don't disagree with anything you're saying except that you seem to feel the author is taking potshots at the passengers or crew, and I don't see it.
For example, you say:
I'd put it more in the context that if you were a passenger in 3rd class, you would have no clue the extent of the damage of the vessel at the time of strike even if you were near it.
The author says:
You’ll be one of the closest passengers to the impact, but even so the jolt will feel relatively benign. Perhaps even anticlimactic. One fireman bunked even closer to the collision than you claimed to have slept through the incident entirely...Because the lurch is so mild, few of the passengers will initially suspect a serious problem.
It sure feels like you're on the same page.
The closest thing to criticism that I can find comes here:
OF COURSE, Titanic’s slow and steady drop revealed the many other inequities and paltry safety precautions that occurred.
Not only had there been no lifeboat drills, the crew provided steerage passengers almost no direction at all. Few had any notion of how to rise up to the otherwise-forbidden decks. So instead of heading upward, most of the third-class passengers headed toward the back poop deck.
But that's effectively a recitation of the facts. Safety precautions were paltry; you're correct that was the industry standard, but they were regardless inadequate.
So I don't understand why you're so upset at the tone. The rest is relatively lighthearted, as much as you can be about such a tragedy.
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Because it's a bullshit article that neither details how any passenger would have reacted on the Titanic, nor how a passenger should react on a modern vessel. The Titanic was a serious tragedy and this article isn't informative to modern practices, representative of what a passenger would have known on the Titanic or enjoyable given my knowledge of both its incident and the vessels designed because of it.
Today we take a very authoritative approach, none of this Lone Ranger left to own device shit. You will not be familiar with the vessel or it's safety equipment, we are and we know exactly what to do with passengers for their safety and the safety of the crew.
After you’ve changed, put on your life jacket (called a "life belt" here on Titanic). It should be stored above your bunk. You’re likely to need it. Getting dressed will take a few extra minutes, but don’t worry. Titanic is sinking, but it’s doing so slowly.
You do not put on your life jacket in your cabin for example. You grab it if you are in your cabin and take it with you to muster on OUR command, WE will tell you when to put it on. Life jackets can also be found at the muster stations, so if you are far from your cabin and get the call to muster, just go to muster.
This whole "you have time" is a piss take, the quicker we the crew are able to get our situation sorted with you in the event we need to abandon the vessel, the safer the evac is.Vessels sink rate depends on many factors. It could be 3h, a day, or it could be free surface effect on a ferry car deck as detailed and it'll go below in 15-20min. We may also loose main power or other equipment. You don't know, we won't have an exact time, and we won't tell you extent of damage. When WE tell you to go muster, that's when you go muster.
The Capt will ring crew to emergency stations likely before you have any inclination to grab a life jacket and head someplace in a slower flood, we will begin assessing damage, our goal will be to save the vessel by any and all means possible. Abandon ship is our worst case scenario.
If it is determined that the vessel is doomed. The Capt or senior bridge officer will then make an announcement to you the passengers after all crew are ready to guide you on safe routes and are able to start to preparing life saving devices.
Alternatively, if for some reason you find these doors still locked, go to the forward steerage deck and use the escape ladders to climb up the successive levels. A few third-class survivors who used these report hearing a few crew members asking them not to. Apparently, they ignored them. You should too.
Don't EVER ignore a crew members direction in the event of an emergency today. If we tell you to not to go somewhere on the vessel, it's for a good reason, likely concerning your or the crews safety.
Once you’re on the top level, you’ll find lifeboats on both the port and starboard sides readying to launch. Which side you use is important, and the best choice depends on your age and gender. Titanic’s crew preferentially loaded women and children into lifeboats, but we can see from passenger manifests that the crew on the port side followed this policy more strictly.
Lifeboats are not a free-for-all. You are assigned a muster to a designated boat or raft by the vessels plan [or crew for smaller vessels]. In the event something happened to it and it's not functional WE tell you what life saving appliance to go to next.
Crew will prepare lifesaving equipment but will not begin boarding anything until the Capt says "Abandon Ship" [typically 3 times]. That is when we begin mass evacuation of all passengers simultaneously while taking a passenger count to ensure we evacuate everyone on the passenger list.
If you can catch a ride on one of these first boats—fantastic! You’re saved. But sadly, even if you arrive early and even if you’re dressed in your finest, the chances you are selected may be no better than a coin flip.
No, today we have enough lifesaving devices on one side of the vessel to evacuate all passengers, crew, and even a few more people. It's a SOLAS passenger ship Reg.
If you arrive at deck D when Nichols does—presumably by 1:30—you might find an open door and a steady stream of half-filled lifeboats being lowered right by you. Thomas Jones, the crew member in charge of lifeboat 8, later testified that he would have rescued passengers at the gangway doors had he seen any. “If they had been down there, we could have taken them,” he told the commission.
There was no steady stream of lifeboats, those old gravity davits took forever to safely lower with a team of crew, especially those that hadn't drilled.
We will not jettison lifesaving equipment that isn't completely full, if passengers are still onboard. When you are off we will then drop the rest of the lifesaving equipment if it is still safely possible and evacuate ourselves.
The water you’re about to enter is a few notches below freezing. At this temperature, it will take around 45 minutes for your body to drop below 80 degrees and for you to go into cardiac arrest. But in reality, you’ll have far less time to swim the 500 yards. After only 15 minutes your arms and legs will numb to the point of incapacitation. If you fail to make it to a lifeboat in time, you’ll bob about helplessly in your life jacket while you await cardiac arrest.
If you're in the drink somewhere cold like the North Atlantic without a survival suit. You could possibly just enter shock on hitting the water. I doubt you'd have 15min of swim time in reality, more like 5 even with the pdf. He's detailed times just above freezing, not below it.
Here is an older video on the effects of low temperature water on the body at 10C/50F
Once again, the chance of you hitting the drink today are pretty slim with a decently competent crew. Today we launch fast rescue craft to pick anyone out of the water and tow life-rafts. Also we have hydrostatic releases for the life-rafts. They will cut loose and automatically inflate the life-rafts clear of the vessel when it sinks, if they're not launched by crew.
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@Exage03040 Most of your criticism is aimed at this notion that it has anything to do with modern shipwrecks, which clearly this wasn't. I recognize your vastly superior knowledge of how things work now, and then, but I still think you're misinterpreting what this article purports to be.
On walkabout. Back soonish.
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@exage03040 There is a fantastic article out there about a lost boat up in the European north where many people died,and the complete chaos involved. It can go ugly, really fast. Ill try to find it. It was a car carrier where the bow opens up to let cars on and off, and the bow hinge broke. Entire bow came off, and shit went bad, fast. Every man for himself type shit
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@exage03040 https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-story/302940/
Its an amazing read
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@just-jeepin Want to read an amazing article, and be terrified?
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2004/05/a-sea-story/302940/ -
@cash-rewards Yeah no kidding, that sounds like complete and utter chaos. Terrible tragedy.
2009 Corvette Coupe, 2004 BMW 330Ci, lots n lots of pedal powered things!
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@stuckmtb someone in the old kinja-verse (deadspin maybe) pointed out a few articles by that author and they are all incredible reads on absolutely insane circumstances.
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Yes, well familiar with the Estonia. She popped up in the news recently in that some have a theory she struck something which caused water to enter the deck. I personally still think it was the visor that put her under.
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@just-jeepin said in How to Escape a Sinking Ship:
Most of your criticism is aimed at this notion that it has anything to do with modern shipwrecks, which clearly this wasn't. I recognize your vastly superior knowledge of how things work now, and then, but I still think you're misinterpreting what this article purports to be.
To wrap this up,
It doesn't really account for being on the Titanic either by being a whimsical and varying hypothetical account of a passenger to detail the events of the disaster. I find it's an inconsiderate approach to present certain facts about what unfolded. You know I'm a goofball, but this article really doesn't amuse me.
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@exage03040 the whole thing is fairly terrifying to me, with how fast a boat like that can go. Something similar happened recently z too, where a similar boat just left port with the ramp open?
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@cash-rewards said in How to Escape a Sinking Ship:
@exage03040 the whole thing is fairly terrifying to me, with how fast a boat like that can go. Something similar happened recently z too, where a similar boat just left port with the ramp open?
I'm not familiar with any more recent incidents. I know the M/S Harold of Free Enterprise sailed out with her bow doors open, squatted, took water on the car deck, and rolled due to free surface effect in '87.
You may be thinking of the the M/V Golden Ray which capsized for the same reason but different application.
My most starred response on Jalopnik is in response to the M/V Golden Ray as to why she likely rolled over pre-TSB reports. I detailed the vessel design and free surface effect due to accumulating water from fire fighting:
https://jalopnik.com/1841894911
Marine Engineer here.
Ro-Ro (Roll-on Roll-off) Car Carriers such as this vessel and Ferries have extremely poor stability compared to other ships when water is on the vehicle decks.
Due to design of the vessel and the need for cars to drive forward thru lanes there are no transverse bulkheads (as opposed to virtually every other vessel manufactured) and few longitudinal ones. And while there are scuppers (drains) they can be overwhelmed by fire suppression deck equipment [deluge] continuous output.
If you want a real practice, take your largest widest flat baking pan outside and fill it with water and then try to walk around with it. Chances are you’ll spill quite a bit of water. The mass and inertia of even the slightest tilt causes the water to go to the side of the pan and off. It’s much more stable when it’s baffled such as an ice cube tray.
For a similar incident check out what happened decades ago on the Herald of Free Enterprise in the U.K. It actually doesn’t take a lot of water to capsize ro-ro vessels. So it’s very important for the crew to understand the reduction of vessel stability due to water on the vehicle deck. Fire is bad but usually you can still be mobile and launch life saving equipment, when she starts to go over it, gets much harder if not impossible to quickly and safely abandon.
Thus the Senior Officers: Master/Capt, Chief Mate, and Chief Engineer should be in contact with each other to figure out the best solution. Safety of Life, Safety of Ship, Safety of Environment. That’s the fundamental emergency list in order of priority for the Master/Capt. No point in putting peoples lives on the line with an unstable ship trying to mitigate a fire. If she’s real bad, it’s time to think about GTFO. They weren’t far from shore so it’s not like they were going to be in the water long.
Hope this is interesting...
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