Oooooooooooooooops

Looks like the vessel was under control of the tugs when the bridge hit the arm of the crane.
I thought they routinely raised the arm when berthing/casting off?
 
Apparently a crane was damaged in Felixtowe some years ago & the insurance claim was a nightmare to sort. The ship was owned by one firm, chartered to another, under the control of tugs at the time. The crane was being installed by another party for Felixtowe & all companies were international. Press reports say that the claim took ages to sort.
 
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According to reports, high wind caused the ship to break free from its moorings and drift into the crane.
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If that's correct, there probably wouldn't have been any tugs attached.

[FONT=roboto, sans-serif]The port is up the river, so no fetch to make waves. All the same, someone, probably a few someones, must be a bit worried about their job this morning. Who's responsible for deciding what lines to use and for making sure it's done right? The OOW? If the weather's bad, I'm guessing that would be the captain, who would also be ultimately responsible if a line was defective.[/FONT]
 
Presumably one of the Antwerp pilots was on the bridge as well. Definitely not the tug's responsibility! There would I guess have been somebody on that bridge wing, watching the crane get closer and closer, but too late to do anything..
They will park the cranes with the 'jib' raised in future, that looked a very avoidable prang..
 
This also happened at Tilbury docks back in the 80's, incoming ship nudged a gantry crane on the outside berth. We had a temporary replacement crane up in ~3 months, and took it down 2y later. Made enough money to put myself through uni.

Boom down berthing saves a lot of time, but adds considerable risk. One persons nightmare is anothers dream
 
Ohlin Karcher said:
Presumably one of the Antwerp pilots was on the bridge as well. Definitely not the tug's responsibility! There would I guess have been somebody on that bridge wing, watching the crane get closer and closer, but too late to do anything..
They will park the cranes with the 'jib' raised in future, that looked a very avoidable prang..
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It may be that due to strong winds the crane boom was lowered to reduce windage / tipping moment
 
I can bore for Britain on container port gantry demolitions. Including the Felixstowe one where there was much more than met the eye going on and the Class Society were in part to blame. (I'll spare you, but as a clue, think of one of the things that you might want to change when turning a tanker into a gantry crane carrier...)

But I will tell you the tale of a particularly unfortunate mishap at Antwerp where one of my former employer's Ice 1A Super bulk carriers rammed the lock revetment. She was an expletive deleted awful ship, thrown together in what was once East Germany, which left a trail of destruction behind her wherever she went as one thing after another failed, all her equipment being Communist Engineering* at its finest, but on this one occasion it wasn't the fault of some component of the ship. The Master (who was an old friend and a particularly fine seaman) came from darkest Yorkshire and didn't speak fluent Flemish. The Pilot was on the bridge and four tugs were connected when the Pilot had a heart attack... he survived but the bulbous bow got a bit crumpled. The Belgians must use good concrete because there was no damage to the lock entrance.

The three rules of Communist Engineering:

1. It must look pretty
2. Labour is free so don't bother to make it easy to maintain
3. The materials can be ratshit.
 
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(I'll spare you, but as a clue, think of one of the things that you might want to change when turning a tanker into a gantry crane carrier...)

OK, I'm curious.

First guess is ballast. My plan A would be to pour several lorryloads of redimix into the main tanks, which has the advantage that a few labourers with pneumatic drills (first world) or sledge hammers (third world) could get it out afterwards.
 
Slight drift but I found those crane carriers quite a sight. Algecieras port in southern Spain was massively extended around ten years ago and watching those container cranes arriving and transferred to dockside was very impressive.
 
Stemar said:
(I'll spare you, but as a clue, think of one of the things that you might want to change when turning a tanker into a gantry crane carrier...)

OK, I'm curious.

First guess is ballast. My plan A would be to pour several lorryloads of redimix into the main tanks, which has the advantage that a few labourers with pneumatic drills (first world) or sledge hammers (third world) could get it out afterwards.
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The Equipment Numeral - which determines the size and number of mooring warps, mooring winches, anchors, chain cables and windlasses - hadn't been changed. The windage of a deck load of gantry cranes is just a bit different to that of a tanker...
 
Champagne Murphy said:
Looks like the vessel was under control of the tugs when the bridge hit the arm of the crane.
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RichardS said:
It looks to me as if they were docking the container ship and dragged it onto the overhanging crane.
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Ohlin Karcher said:
Presumably one of the Antwerp pilots was on the bridge as well.
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News reports say that the ship broke free of its moorings in high wind and started drifting out to sea.

"Because the container was moored, it was not under direct Vessel Traffic Service guidance. On reports of the boat drifting out to sea, the service dispatched tugboats and a pilot boat to stop the vessel in its tracks. 'We saw the ship make a strange and sudden movement,' said the VTS watch officer on duty, according to The Maritime Executive. Crew on board the carrier were unable to control the boxship causing the APL Mexico City to strike the outstretched gantry of the crane."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ne-crashes-ground-1-000ft-container-ship.html
 
pvb said:
News reports say that the ship broke free of its moorings in high wind and started drifting out to sea.

"Because the container was moored, it was not under direct Vessel Traffic Service guidance. On reports of the boat drifting out to sea, the service dispatched tugboats and a pilot boat to stop the vessel in its tracks. 'We saw the ship make a strange and sudden movement,' said the VTS watch officer on duty, according to The Maritime Executive. Crew on board the carrier were unable to control the boxship causing the APL Mexico City to strike the outstretched gantry of the crane."

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ne-crashes-ground-1-000ft-container-ship.html
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It would have to have "drifted" some 40 mls to get to sea
 
I do not want to spoil the fun of guessing, but these are the facts as we know them now:
The containership broke its mooring lines less than an hour after it had been berthed, probably as a result of high winds. I take it by that time the pilot and the tugs would have left.
The ship drifted across the Deurganck Dock, so space was limited.
The crane was under maintenance, which is why the gantry was not vertical. The maintenance crew noticed in time what was happening, so they got off and secured the area. No one was hurt.
The tug in the video was not attached.
 
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