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Author Topic: HMS Endurance nearly sinks  (Read 17642 times)

Bee

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HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« on: January 04, 2009, 09:19:25 pm »

http://www.newsoftheworld.co.uk/news/116058/Disaster-as-HMS-Endurance-floods.html

So it looks like ship designers don't have the wit to think about the value of kit within each watertight compartment and maybe put a few more bulkheads in?
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Colin Bishop

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #1 on: January 04, 2009, 09:53:01 pm »

Sounds like a seawater junction on the hull failed. Very cold water can make metal brittle and susceptible to fatigue, particularly if there is vibration present. This could just have been unfortunate rather than a design fault.
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Bee

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #2 on: January 05, 2009, 05:21:15 pm »

I was alerted to the story on another forum where someone had experienced a condenser feedwater pipe corrosion failure.
It is the cost of the damage that staggers me. I suppose nobody believes an accident will happen until afterwards but in an icebreaker someone should have been thinking that the risk of puncture is rather high and built in a lot of bulkheads (actual cause being irrelevant to argument). I know electronic survey equipment is expensive but did they have to cram it all into one leaky section?
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Colin Bishop

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #3 on: January 05, 2009, 05:48:11 pm »

Something similar happened to Brittany Ferries new flagship Pont Aven om August 2005. A cooling water intake fractured causing 1,200 tons of water to enter the engine room. She was unable to move from her Plymouth berth until the water had been pumped out and then had to be towed to Brest for repairs. Very embarrassing on a brand new ship.

Colin
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RantandRave

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #4 on: January 05, 2009, 05:59:51 pm »

A flooded engine room... even if they replace all the engine equipment with gold plating, it's never going to cost £150 Million!
They could build two replacements for that!
 £150 Million!... idiot press speculation!

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Garabaldy

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #5 on: January 05, 2009, 06:03:51 pm »

the cost of the damage could be exagerated.  The media often twist the truth.
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cos918

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #6 on: January 05, 2009, 06:40:17 pm »

the cost of the damage could be exagerated.  The media often twist the truth.

Your to true there. When Qe2 was converted from steam to diesel in 1987 the cost was only 90 million and that include a lot of work around the rest of the ship. QE2 had 9 new engines. Well if the navy wait they could get one of her old engines when they are ripped out for peanuts but wait a minuet here what the forget to print new engines 10 million and consonant fees 140 million. Yep some one is in dream world at 150 million.

john
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dan

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #7 on: January 05, 2009, 07:21:23 pm »

is the ship even  worth £150
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BarryM

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #8 on: January 05, 2009, 08:55:49 pm »

How can you doubt such an authority on naval architecture and marine engineering as the News of the World?  :o
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farrow

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #9 on: January 05, 2009, 10:36:33 pm »

From my experience with MoD vessels and repair yards I am not surprised at the initial estimate. When the MoD is mentioned all contractors including the privatised dockyards multiply the cost by at least 10 fold, the MoD has always been an easy kill, ask shipmate60. In 2000 the RMAS Salmoor had a refit in Devonport Naval Base, admittedly 45% of the hull plating was replaced, but that was the biggest job on a 1997 grt hull and that exceeded £4.5million!
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BarryM

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #10 on: January 05, 2009, 11:44:08 pm »

Which "assessors" provided the £150 million figure? An official Navy source or some hack with nil knowledge of shipbuilding but ready to fill in the first number he thought of? I know where my bet would lie.

Journalists are well aware that even if they make a mistake the general public knows damn all about the cost of a ship and there is another news story ready to take the place of the first one which will remove it from the memory quite quickly. "Fool some of the people all the time and all of the people some of the time."

Barry M
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TCC

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #11 on: January 06, 2009, 01:34:01 am »

The 150 figure might be true if they cost in non-repair things like cost of wages, lost productivity or tendered & contracted work they can't undertake, having to hire another craft, maybe insurance premiums have gone up as a result. I'm not saying the it's these actual things but things like them.

.. and then just imagine what contractors charge the Andrew for a skilled tradesman to travel anywhere in the world to fix something for them.. I'm scared to ring plumbers here at home so I'd hate to pick up the tab from getting a machanic/electrician to the South Atlantic or whereever.

Won't there be a full crew sitting on their XXXX somewhere doing nothing?
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BarryM

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #12 on: January 06, 2009, 09:22:02 am »

Something like supply new vessel, designed and built under normal commercial conditions to ice-class in commercial dockyard in twelve months = £20 million max.

Allow for the fact it will be MoD contract subject to numerous reviews, re-designs, consultations, political interference, over-manning, cancellation, revival in time for an election with no firm date for delivery..........

Yes, suddenly that journalist's wildly ignorant estimate starts to look realistic.

Barry M
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Colin Bishop

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #13 on: January 06, 2009, 10:13:43 am »

Saw on the news this morning that it's been towed to the Falklands.
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chingdevil

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #14 on: January 06, 2009, 11:35:37 am »

Forget the money, you can pick a figure out of a hat as to how much it will cost with the government involved. We should be thankfull that someone did not loose their life in this incident.


Brian
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SteamboatPhil

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #15 on: January 06, 2009, 10:55:45 pm »

So does that mean its going to sit in the Falklands for 80 years, then be towed back, a charity set up, a dry dock found, and millions spent over a many years to restore it
(deja vue--SS Great Britain)
Or is it me just being synical again------- {:-{ {:-{ {:-{
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Colin Bishop

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #16 on: January 07, 2009, 10:51:19 am »

The suggestion is that as it is a naval ship they wanted it in a British port for security reasons. Bit of a long tow back to Portsmouth!
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BarryM

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #17 on: January 07, 2009, 11:49:59 am »

A lot of very sensitive elecronics on board that they would not want prying eyes to see. She's not down there just to measure the ice; the Argentines know that.

Barry M
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TCC

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #18 on: January 07, 2009, 04:38:13 pm »

A lot of very sensitive elecronics on board that they would not want prying eyes to see. She's not down there just to measure the ice; the Argentines know that.

Barry M

Has it got a self destruct lever (a la James Bond?) :-)

[I believe that that Gary Powers, U2 shot down in Russia in the 60s?, woudn't pull that when ejecting as he didn't trust the CIA not to have the equal aim of destroying pilot along with the plane. [no pilot = no embarrassing US personel in USSR territory]

The paranoia must have seeped from the walls in those U2 crew rooms at getogethers! :-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-2_Crisis_of_1960
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snowwolflair

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #19 on: January 07, 2009, 06:17:50 pm »

If it just a seavalve gone then the bulk of the damage will be seawater and chlorine gas corrosion.  she wont need drydocked and they may have replaced the valve already.

They can fix sea water dammage at the Falklands with a short refit and not need to bring her back.  Any failed parts can be flown out.

Depending what was powered up at the time its a lot of work with toothbrushes and distilled water.
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Shipmate60

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Bryan Young

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #21 on: January 07, 2009, 07:42:59 pm »

Another bemusing subject.
One of the first things we were taught at "Phoenix" was the practical application of Damage Control procedures. This included being hit by shells, torpedoes and so on. In a war it is very likely that an aiming point would be the engine room area. So for a properly trained RN crew the breach (although in a non-naval hull) should not have been more than a very big nasty, rather than a cataclysmic event...unless there is more to the story. All RN and RFA ships have masses of damage control equipment...and the training to use it. If the breach was caused by a "simple" (I use the word with reservations) valve failure then although the lads and lassies would get very cold and wet the use of the "shell boxes" would have been enough. So perhaps there is more to be said.  Having said that, I must agree that some journalistic "off the peg" guess at £150m seems a bit steep even given the incompetence of the MoD(N) suits to ever battle for a "fair" price for anything, and so they get ripped off by pretty savvy businessmen. We shall have to wait and see (again), but I bet you it will all turn out to be a face-saving exercise again.
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Notes from a simple seaman

BarryM

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #22 on: January 07, 2009, 07:59:59 pm »

If it just a seavalve gone then the bulk of the damage will be seawater and chlorine gas corrosion.  she wont need drydocked and they may have replaced the valve already.

They can fix sea water dammage at the Falklands with a short refit and not need to bring her back.  Any failed parts can be flown out.

Depending what was powered up at the time its a lot of work with toothbrushes and distilled water.

Just a seavalve? It may have been a SW line after a hull injection in which case closing the valve (if accessible) would stop the flow. It may have been a spool between hull and valve or the valve body itself which is far more serious.

Stripping, rewinding and reassembling electric motors. Flushing/drying/replacement of all other affected electrical systems including starters, transformers, DB boxes, lamp holders and switchboards. Draining,flushing, refilling affected hydraulic/fuel/lubes systems including pipework, sumps and coolers.  Stripping machinery to clear cylinders and bearings. The list goes on. I hope you've got a b......y big toothbrush?
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farrow

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #23 on: January 07, 2009, 09:28:09 pm »

She could be on the way to the Falklands for assisted maintenance, is the Diligence there at the moment as she is normally based there with a full RN maintenance team for such emergencies. But talking of silly money, I know that the MoD originally programmed to refit and upgrade all the RFA Sir class landing vessels at £20mil each instead of replacing them with new. The first one was taken in hand at Rosyth, when the total came to £139mil before completion the secret stamp came down and the rest of the class were not upgraded and were put on the disposal list, then the Bay clas where ordered.
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snowwolflair

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Re: HMS Endurance nearly sinks
« Reply #24 on: January 07, 2009, 10:25:00 pm »

Quote
The list goes on. I hope you've got a b......y big toothbrush?

No just "many"  :-))
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