Ship repairs
4 August 2018 01:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI've been flicking through "The Cruise of the 'Conrad'" by Alan Villiers -- which happened to be on the shelf beside Shackleton's "South", and contained exactly what I was looking for in the latter but failed to find, viz. hull and deck plans showing the internal layout of the ship.
(Here are some plans of the "Endurance": http://www.ernestshackleton.net/endurance-expedition/)
Incidentally, I had had no idea that the "Endurance" was originally constructed as a cruise ship to take tourists round the Arctic -- hence why she had so many individual cabins and no cargo hold :-p
But the details of the "Joseph Conrad" were actually much closer to what I was looking for; she was an iron ship built in 1882 (the "Endurance" was built in 1913 of wooden construction), and the book not only describes the difficulties of handling a square-rigger against an adverse wind (they were blown 200 miles offshore while hove-to during an Australian gale) but also goes into considerable detail about an occasion when she was driven ashore in New York harbour and holed on rocks, and almost sank while she was being salvaged. She continued to float under tow even after filling so much that the water came in at the hawse-holes and the scuppers -- "more than three parts full of water" -- thanks to her watertight steel bulkheads; evidently they were in existence decades before the "Titanic" boasted of hers! So it is not unrealistic for the "Requin" to remain afloat after water having flooded in :-)
The holes in her bottom were patched by a diver before the salvage attempt, using what Villiers calls a "leakmat", "a temporary patch of mattresses and the like", "the diver's plug". After the (almost fatal) attempt to tow her off, the diver makes a more permanent "strong patch of baulks of wood" so that they can safely be towed into drydock for repairs -- invaluable information on how exactly one goes about patching a riveted iron hull without a furnace to hand, which was worrying me :-p It took them a week in drydock to repair the hull, but sadly the author doesn't explain how that bit was done...
The wreck and salvage of the "Great Britain" in Dundrum Bay involved boilermakers to do the repairs. (Report on boiler-makers and engine-room artificers (Lagarde?) in Royal Navy, 1877: https://books.google.co.uk/books?pg=PR43&id=rzVcAAAAQAAJ&output=text )
NB they built a coffer-dam in the engine-room in "Endurance" when her seams began to open up in the ice so that they could keep up steam: the steam pumps were kept working constantly https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/antarctic_ships/endurance.php
Edit: how to replace a riveted iron plate (in drydock, presumably) https://maritime.org/conf/conf-dvorak.htm
Note that 'weepers' will naturally tend to seal themselves as the iron rusts a little.
"the injuries are generally external, and confined to a single spot, and may in most cases be sufficiently repaired by any ingenious man, if the ship be but provided with a few drills, some spare plates, bolts, and other necessary articles, which no captain should neglect to carry amongst his stores" (Iron as a Material for Ship-building, John Grantham, 1842)
"An Unfair Advantage" proved immensely and somewhat inexplicably popular (it didn't even benefit from being displayed as part of a "Writers Anonymous" Challenge); between July 16th and July 31st, it received 223 hits from 169 visitors, which I think is probably higher than anything else I've ever posted. Interestingly, people who read "Unfair Advantage" clearly went on to check out "Don Juan Rehearsed" as well, presumably because they were looking for more Piangi-fic; that story got a subsidiary bulge of 32 views/23 visitors!
(Here are some plans of the "Endurance": http://www.ernestshackleton.net/endurance-expedition/)
Incidentally, I had had no idea that the "Endurance" was originally constructed as a cruise ship to take tourists round the Arctic -- hence why she had so many individual cabins and no cargo hold :-p
But the details of the "Joseph Conrad" were actually much closer to what I was looking for; she was an iron ship built in 1882 (the "Endurance" was built in 1913 of wooden construction), and the book not only describes the difficulties of handling a square-rigger against an adverse wind (they were blown 200 miles offshore while hove-to during an Australian gale) but also goes into considerable detail about an occasion when she was driven ashore in New York harbour and holed on rocks, and almost sank while she was being salvaged. She continued to float under tow even after filling so much that the water came in at the hawse-holes and the scuppers -- "more than three parts full of water" -- thanks to her watertight steel bulkheads; evidently they were in existence decades before the "Titanic" boasted of hers! So it is not unrealistic for the "Requin" to remain afloat after water having flooded in :-)
The holes in her bottom were patched by a diver before the salvage attempt, using what Villiers calls a "leakmat", "a temporary patch of mattresses and the like", "the diver's plug". After the (almost fatal) attempt to tow her off, the diver makes a more permanent "strong patch of baulks of wood" so that they can safely be towed into drydock for repairs -- invaluable information on how exactly one goes about patching a riveted iron hull without a furnace to hand, which was worrying me :-p It took them a week in drydock to repair the hull, but sadly the author doesn't explain how that bit was done...
The wreck and salvage of the "Great Britain" in Dundrum Bay involved boilermakers to do the repairs. (Report on boiler-makers and engine-room artificers (Lagarde?) in Royal Navy, 1877: https://books.google.co.uk/books?pg=PR43&id=rzVcAAAAQAAJ&output=text )
NB they built a coffer-dam in the engine-room in "Endurance" when her seams began to open up in the ice so that they could keep up steam: the steam pumps were kept working constantly https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/History/antarctic_ships/endurance.php
Edit: how to replace a riveted iron plate (in drydock, presumably) https://maritime.org/conf/conf-dvorak.htm
Note that 'weepers' will naturally tend to seal themselves as the iron rusts a little.
"the injuries are generally external, and confined to a single spot, and may in most cases be sufficiently repaired by any ingenious man, if the ship be but provided with a few drills, some spare plates, bolts, and other necessary articles, which no captain should neglect to carry amongst his stores" (Iron as a Material for Ship-building, John Grantham, 1842)
"An Unfair Advantage" proved immensely and somewhat inexplicably popular (it didn't even benefit from being displayed as part of a "Writers Anonymous" Challenge); between July 16th and July 31st, it received 223 hits from 169 visitors, which I think is probably higher than anything else I've ever posted. Interestingly, people who read "Unfair Advantage" clearly went on to check out "Don Juan Rehearsed" as well, presumably because they were looking for more Piangi-fic; that story got a subsidiary bulge of 32 views/23 visitors!