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[Colin Bishop]

A very interesting video giving an update on the encouraging efforts to reverse the decline in the Queen Mary as a tourist attraction. I found the improvements impressive and the ship looks better today than when Mrs B and I spent a night aboard in September 2001 (just before 9/11). She had to literally pull me off the ship the following morning...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfzmyTALCA8

It is fascinating to compare her interiors wih today's gigantic cruise ships. Whilst her interior decor is 'of it's time' it is arguably more classy than the glitz of the modern vessels. All that rare wood marquetry! Just imagine crossing the Atlantic on a ship like that!

Enjoying a cocktail in the forward observation lounge remains one of life's more memorable experiences.

Prior to that my previous memories of the ship are as a schoolboy watching her depart from Southampton in the 1960s.

[ballastanksian]

The transition from 'Pack em in' to 'Stack em high' means that all that heavy but gorgeous woodwork has been replaced by plastic, metal and modern materials by the looks of things. Also the idea of what cruising is has changed, and now we go for floating holidays rather than using them as floating trains to and from the US or other far flung destinations. I imagine the work it takes to keep such elderly vessels from rusting to oblivion must be super human.

[Colin Bishop]

Yes, QM would be considered dangerous as a ship by modern standards with all that woodwork and combustible material and there must be a lot of asbestos in there too!

Regarding rust, there is a only brief reference in the video, but when the ship was originally moored at Long Beach a sophisticated system of cathodic protection was put into place which they say has protected the hull very effectively.The ship is best kept afloat as the water supports her evenly and avoids the problems now being rectified with HMS Victory where the hull has slumped over the years due to insufficient support.

Parts of the superstructure have not fared so well however. The weight of the lifeboats and davits has damaged the supporting structure so the boats have been removed except for two. When we were aboard in 2011 the steel  lifeboats were in a dreadful state with the bottoms rotted out of many of them.

Interestingly, the lifeboats have also been removed from QE2 which is presently an attraction in Dubai.

Colin

[dodes]

I would say if the QM's steel scantlings were up to standard(i.e. not rusted away) I would rather sail in her than one of the new liners. Apart from the new Q M most of the others are not built for the North Atlantic winter time weather and are minimum scantlings allowed(i.e. weather /sea state restricted I hear).

[Colin Bishop]

Yes, quite right. Plus the older ships sat in the water rather than perched on top of it as do modern cruise ships. I did some comparison notes a while back, reproduced below. Modern cruise ships are not built to force their way through bad weather like the old liners were in order to keep to schedule. There are some interesting videos about showing what happens when they do get caught out. An interesting comparison between QE2 and Queen Victoria in the link below. I think the Queen Victoria, which was based on a standard cruise ship, design, did have some reinforcement made forward to help cope with transatlantic repositioning voyages.

Colin

The commonly quoted ‘size’ Comparison for passenger ships is gross tonnage which is actually a measurement of internal space. Queen Mary was 81,000 tons while QM2 is no less than 151,000 tons, almost twice as much. However, when it comes to displacement tonnage, which reflects the actual weight of the vessel, the two ships are much the same and in fact the earlier ship is quoted as 80,000 tons as opposed to QM2’s 76,000 tons. (The big American Nimitz class aircraft carriers displace over 100,000 tons!). Queen Mary was 1019 feet long (311m) with a beam of 118 feet (36m). QM2 is 1,132 feet long (345m) with a beam of 135 feet (41m).  But Queen Mary had a deeper draught of 39 feet (11.9m) compared with QM2’s 33 feet (10.1m) and a rather fuller underwater hull form. Basically what this means is that QM2 offers a huge amount of extra usable space on a similar displacement compared to Queen Mary which reflects shipbuilding progress over the last 70 years.

[dodes]

As a retired seaman Colin, what would interest me most would be a comparison of the stability curves and righting angle also at what angle they lose positive stability. 

[Colin Bishop]

That's an interesting one! I doubt if the figures are readily available though. I 'm no expert on that at all as it is a very technical subject but the old Queen Mary was a notorious roller and was reported to have come near to capsizing on occasion although I don't know how accurate the claim is. Before her the German liner Imperator of 1913 was dangerously unstable with her huge top hamper. At the end of a voyage when her coal supplies had largely been used up she would arrive in New York with a distinct list to one side or the other and was nicknamed Limperator. To restore stability her builders had to cut 9 feet off the funnels, rip out all the marble bathrooms in first class and install lighter furniture in her public rooms. 2,000 tons of cement was poured into her bottom as permanent ballast as well. After the war the ship was ceded to Britain and became Cunard's Berengaria where she had a successful career until 1938.

Modern cruise ships are more stable than they look as all the heavy stuff is down in the barge liike lower hull and the superstructure is often either inset as with Queen Mary 2 or arranged in two blocks along the sides of the ship with much of the middle left as open space (this allows inside cabins to have an internal view into the ship's atrium). They are still indifferent seakeepers as they are relatively shallow draught and have a huge amount of windage. The loss of the Costa Concordia illustrated how uncontrolled flooding allowed the ship to capsize although it took a while despite her Captain having ripped most of one side out. Interestingly she didn't capsize to that side but to the other. I have read that this may have been because cruise ships are designed to flood level with no longitudinal bulkheads, only transverse ones so once there was enough water onboard to destroy stability she could have gone either way!

When it comes to stability curves, the most intersting account I have read was the loss of HMS Captain in 1870 described in the book 'Black Night off Finisterre'. There is a lot of technical detail from the original enquiry into why the ship suddenly capsized. She had a very low freeboard to accommodate the new gun turrets but was bult to be be very stiff to stand up to her canvas. However, in a gale, once the deck edge went under, the righting moment of the hull was reduced to zero and she just kept going. It is a very intersesting read.

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22803845471&ref_=ps_ggl_2039220669&cm_mmc=ggl-_-UK_Shopp_Tradestandard-_-product_id=UK9781840370959USED-_-keyword=&gclid=CjwKCAjwv8qkBhAnEiwAkY-ahuOxtaxvdVA7kYTFh8yy69fMczpInAIrhbnvQQBjtpEhXvlRfaYaNRoC56QQAvD_BwE

Colin

[tonyH]

No Idea what "Intact" stability is apart from them mentioning "dead" which I suppose might mean "dead in the water" This certainly relates to Costa Concordia!  https://www.intmaritimeengineering.org/index.php/ijme/article/view/10

[Colin Bishop]

An internet check explains that intact stability refers to the hull integrity being intact ie no water ingress, as opposed to damaged stability when compartments are flooded.

Colin

[roycv]

I was on the new Queen Elizabeth in 2016, September after a Mediteranean cruise coming back through the Bay of Biscay in a gale.  We were doing 18 knots with the wind dead ahead.  No-one allowed on deck 60+mph wind but the stabilisers kept her very steady. 

 Wlile dancing that evening, now and again the floor moved away but no problem.
 I used to do a lot of ballroom dancing and I think my partner and I were the first to dance on the Queen Victoria's dance floor.  This was the day before the naming ceremony and our very distant picture was in Ships Monthly magazine when they 'welcomed' QV.  There was a lady's string quartet playing and I asked for a Tango and they duly obliged!
During the voyage there were a lot of interesting lectures, mainly to a full theatre audience, but with the modern ships you just turn on your TV and select the lecture and watch in comfort.  The food was excellent, I found out afterwards we were on a shake-down cruise with all operations etc being monitored and marked accordingly.
Nice memories, excuse me for side tracking the thread.

Regards
Roy

[dodes]

Hi Colin, yes the Captain went, because of her deck edge going under(barge stability problem) and her meta centric value decreased rapidly so that the centre of buoyancy went below her centre of gravity. Remember in my days at nautical college seeing stability?meta centric height for a 1200ton freighter and hers was 16 inch's. On the RMAS Salmoor with no extra mooring gear just the usual mooring repair stock in her lower hold she had one of nearly 2 metres and she was very stiff in a blow, very uncomfortable But getting back to the Captain was there not a problem with water tightness with her turrets, which with water ingress would give her free surface effect if it gets into the bilges.

[Circlip]

      While dancing that evening, now and again the floor moved away but no problem.

      I have same problem but I attribute it to Lager.




  Regards  Ian.


 Coat, got.

[Colin Bishop]

The Coles turret, as with many others, did have the weakness of a leak path around its base as it was supported on the deck below and protruded through the upper deck. The gap was normally sealed with canvas or similar when the ship was not in action. (I have read of a leather seal being used in some ships).

In the case of the Captain, the ship was suddenly blown over, there are no reports of water entering the ship beforehand. A couple of crew members walked round the hull as she capsized and found themselves standing on her bottom with the ship rapidly sinking according to the book. Presumably by then the turrets would have fallen out leaving huge holes and there is a graphic description of what it must have been like below decks for the mostly sleeping crew. The ship had been built heavier than intended and the limited freeboard was significantly lower than originally designed so making her even more vulnerble to capsizing.

Roy, thanks or your comments, sound like you had a good trip. We did a Transatlantic on QM2 in 2011and the ship was very stable although she did pitch on the long Atlantic swells for the first day or so.

Colin

[Colin Bishop]

While dancing that evening, now and again the floor moved away but no problem.

In 1964 I was aboard the Devonia, an educational school ship converted from the troopship Devonshire. She was only 11,000 tons and we ran into a gale after passing Gibraltar on the way home and had to heave to for 8 hours or so until the weather eased. The ship was moving around quite a bit and we were enjoying a disco down in what used to be the forward hold, Searchers, Dave Clarke 5 , Hollies etc. (proper music!) One lad leaped into the air just as the ship hit a trough. He jumped 3 feet up and it was nearly six feet back down!

We also had fun riding deckchairs down the wet foredeck as the ship pitched until the Chief Officer put a stop to it. 

Colin