It’s not Sod’s Law or Murphy’s Law; it’s Holt’s Law:

14K478

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From a speech given to the Institute of Civil Engineers on “The Progress of Steam Shipping in the Past Quarter of a Century”, in November 1877:

“It is found that anything that can go wrong at sea generally does go wrong sooner or later, so it is not to be wondered that owners prefer the safe to the scientific … Sufficient stress can hardly be laid on the advantages of simplicity. The human factor cannot be safely neglected in planning machinery. If attention is to be obtained, the engine must be such that the engineer will be disposed to attend to it.”

Alfred Holt invented the marine compound expansion steam engine, built the first steam ships able to travel under steam alone to China and back without a mail contract subsidy, founded the Blue Funnel Line with them, and much more.
 

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One of the “things that went wrong” with his first ships happened when one of the three was alongside in the Huangpu River in Shanghai and her Chief Engineer decided to free the shaft coupling without first securing the shaft - the propeller started to spin in the tide and pulled the shaft out - the ship promptly sank… and was eventually refloated, at considerable trouble and expense.

Another was when one of them went aground in the Yangtze and was eventually refloated by one of his friend John Swire’s ships. Holt had shares in Swire’s ships and Swire had shares in Holt’s. The underwriters queried the bill for the salvage - Holt was so disgusted by having his integrity impugned that he stopped insuring his fleet. He took the risk himself, and his fleet was so well built and well handled that he made money by doing so.
 
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I thought civil engineers only built stuff on land.

All of the marine engineers I've know have always said let's get the ship to sea and we'll fix it.
The Institute of Marine Engineers, now IMarEst, was founded in 1888.

History

Holt was speaking in 1877.

It can be said that Holt helped to invent the profession of marine engineering…
 

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One of the “things that went wrong” with his first ships happened when one of the three was alongside in the Huangpu River in Shanghai and her Chief Engineer decided to free the shaft coupling without first securing the shaft - the propeller started to spin in the tide and pulled the shaft out - the ship promptly sank… and was eventually refloated, at considerable trouble and expense.
A proof of the corollary to the above-mentioned law: Nothing can be made foolproof because fools are so ingenious
 

gordmac

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I thought civil engineers only built stuff on land.

All of the marine engineers I've know have always said let's get the ship to sea and we'll fix it.
I believe at one time we had military engineers and civil (short for civilian I assume) engineers.
 
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