Recent content by Frank Holden

About 2700 built, about 300 were war losses. The props dropped off early in their life , from Sawyer and Mitchell's 'The Liberty Ships' - 'propeller-dropping occurred quite frequently. The latter problem arose simply because of the mass building of the ships. Previously a ship's propeller was...

Not unknown for them to just fall off. Company I was with in the early 70's had that happen to a 30,000(?) ton bulker in mid Atlantic. Just reading the other day that war built Liberty ships had an issue with them falling off as with the mass production they didn't have the skills to put them on...

Tree(Conspic) are also to be avoided.

Try Chile 'In common with the rest of the Americas Chile is an IALA B country ( 'red right returning'). 'From seaward' is taken to mean from south to north through the channels ( an exception being Canal Magdalena ) unless they have east-west orientation in which case the buoyage runs from west...

I was going to say - but had chosen not to - that all the incident reports I had seen over quite a few years involving small ships in 'Home Trade' waters involved a/ eastern europeans b/ fatigue c/ vodka - sometimes independently , sometimes together.

I was up for masters in London when the Royston Grange collision happened. In 1968 I had gone 'East of Suez' for the last time and never went back west - apart from three trips 'round the Cape' - one to Le Havre, 2 to Brazil - in the early 70's.

1974. The gas tanker was inbound with propane, butane, and benzine(naptha?) The cargo ship punctured one of her benzine tanks which then burnt for quite some time , incinerating all but one of her crew. The Yuyo Maru was towed outside with the intent of scuttling her which proved quite hard...

You sound old enough to remember the Royston Grange / Tien Chee collision in the River Plate. 50 something years ago. The Yuyo Maru #10/ Pacific Aires collision in Tokyo Bay had a similar outcome although that was gas - not oil. The oil on the surface of the sea effectively using the cargo ship...

I would expect a watchkeeping officer to be on watch even if the ship was in the Humber Deep Water Anchorage.

The 'hitter' is not a big ship, just a lowly feeder container ship. Registered in Madeira, Portugal's second registry, so probably not a portuguese citizen on board. Probably very spartan manning - maybe just a master and one mate working 6 on 6 off seven days a week for the duration of their...

Eyesight brings a lot unstuck - it's not just about reading an eye chart.

More than once I wished Carter was in my crew . You know - when the wind didn't blow and the ship didn't go ...

Oh I don't know. Ecuador was OK. I didn't see the boat for over two years but she was in good enough shape when I got back. Only took a year to get back on the dustless road again. Spent some of that time in the interior, lovely place, nothing like what I expected. You were lucky to have your...

Something I found in Valpo which you may find interesting - see the pic below - its in the port at Valpo. Worth doing a bit of research on. Pablo's house is just south of Algarrobo. Ah - Chilean politics -sigh We left the boat in Ecuador for a few months in late 2019 - November. We had a few...

Moving right along and heading right off topic once again. This is for Wandsy. Previous pics showed murky water - I thought it was industrial pollution at the time but was some dying sea creatures. Normally looked like this first pic... my Belgian crew mate Tin Tin with Snowy. Bloke on the...