Waverley has done it again.

[Kukri]

There is rather too much sanctimony and self righteousness on this thread for my taste.

It’s obvious that the Waverley, like other coastal paddle steamers in the past, has a fairly shoal draft, and that means that her rudder is small and shallow. That in turn means that she will lose steerage below five or six knots. Which is why she comes up to a pier that she is to stop at at a good clip. This isn’t carelessness; it’s how the ship was designed to operate. The point is that as a paddle steamer she can stop very quickly - much more quickly than a screw driven vessel. So that’s what she does. It isn’t that her crew are incompetent or, worse in the opinion of many of our resident experts - foreigners - it is what she is meant to do.

It follows that if there is any delay in throwing the engine into astern, she will clip the pier ahead of her, if there is one.

SO WHAT!

You would be astonished to learn how often merchant ships in the hands of honest British pilots and skilled British tugmen and line handlers clout dock walls and lock gates. I routinely have a couple of such cases on my desk at any given time.

This is a non story and I hope that I can carry on seeing and hearing the Waverley did many years to come.

 

[TernVI]

Injuring fare paying passengers as 'Business As Usual' won't wash.
Might be OK for 3rd world ferries, but this is ambulance chasing Britain.

Maybe they should open their minds and fit a bow thruster?
Something like that is probably our best bet if we want to see this thing working on a regular basis.

 

[LONG_KEELER]

I wonder who was negligent and caused this latest in a series of crashes?

Imagine the comments if it was a clipper yacht. Or a rib.

I know we all think we know what we are doing but we all get it a bit wrong sometimes don't we ? Even in our same old berth . The Waverley has a very full programme throughout the summer visiting lots of different ports with challenging berthing and we don't even know what happened yet.

 

[awol]

Can't we blame CMAL for changing their piers to linkspans?

 

[LittleSister]

I seem to recall that a previous prang that the Waverley had was the result of some breakdown in communication equipment between the bridge and engine - bridge called for more or less power, but didn't get it.

 

[dom]

Maybe they should open their minds and fit a bow thruster?
Something like that is probably our best bet if we want to see this thing working on a regular basis.

JD mentioned that there may be some structural issues. Perhaps he can illuminate but one can hazard a guess The Waverley would require stern and bow thrusters for full maneuverability, the bow rated at around 0.6kW/m^2 and the stern something like 0.25kW/m^25, possibly a tad less depending on expected operating conditions. Then there's the hydraulic pumps and pipes (unless it goes electric), integrated bridge control encompassing the paddles and goodness knows how that would work .

Then there is Kukri's point that the vessel requires 5-6kts for steerage, a requirement which may be largely independent of the side-thruster question. For a vessel travelling at such a speed will create a vacuum in the wake of a simultaneously operating thruster which will materially diminish its efficiency. Once again, there are engineering solutions to this but......

......costs and complexity soon mount up.

First step is probably to await the MAIB and/or possibly work-up some sort of an agreed solution with it. Most likely what the operators are doing anyway!

 

[JumbleDuck]

There is rather too much sanctimony and self righteousness on this thread for my taste.

It’s obvious that the Waverley, like other coastal paddle steamers in the past, has a fairly shoal draft, and that means that her rudder is small and shallow. That in turn means that she will lose steerage below five or six knots. Which is why she comes up to a pier that she is to stop at at a good clip. This isn’t carelessness; it’s how the ship was designed to operate. The point is that as a paddle steamer she can stop very quickly - much more quickly than a screw driven vessel. So that’s what she does. It isn’t that her crew are incompetent or, worse in the opinion of many of our resident experts - foreigners - it is what she is meant to do.

I think you're fighting a strawman there. I haven't seen anyone claim that she should be operated differently. And since I raised the issue of foreign crew, it was in the context of not having the same crew from year to year, which must surely make it difficult to build up and maintain the skills needed to operate a ship which, as you say yourself, needs handled in a very different way from most others.

 

[TernVI]

The reality is that it's unlikely to be viable if they don't address the issue of banging into things.
Maybe they can do that with better trained personnel.
Maybe they can just operate where it's easier not to hit things.
Maybe they need to look at the hardware.

 

[JumbleDuck]

JD mentioned that there may be some structural issues. Perhaps he can illuminate but one can hazard a guess The Waverley would require stern and bow thrusters for full maneuverability, the bow rated at around 0.6kW/m^2 and the stern something like 0.25kW/m^25, possibly a tad less depending on expected operating conditions. Then there's the hydraulic pumps and pipes (unless it goes electric), integrated bridge control encompassing the paddles and goodness knows how that would work

I'm only going on hazy memory, but I think it was perhaps to do with her being very fine and very shallow at the bow, and the difficulty of finding a big enough space into which to fit a bow thruster.

Can't we blame CMAL for changing their piers to linkspans?

Paddle steamers ran on the Clyde for 125 years largely without event, although as Kukri says, whanging piers came with the territory ... which is one reason why almost all steamer piers were wooden where the ships tied up. Gave a bit of bounce. It may well be that the less forgiving structures now put up are a problem for traditional paddler operation.

By the way, she is still at Brodick. This suggests to me some significant problem with her machinery, although if she is going to use a dry dock in Ayrshire it might be as good a place as any to wait.

 

[stevie69p]

I'm only going on hazy memory, but I think it was perhaps to do with her being very fine and very shallow at the bow, and the difficulty of finding a big enough space into which to fit a bow thruster.



Paddle steamers ran on the Clyde for 125 years largely without event, although as Kukri says, whanging piers came with the territory ... which is one reason why almost all steamer piers were wooden where the ships tied up. Gave a bit of bounce. It may well be that the less forgiving structures now put up are a problem for traditional paddler operation.

By the way, she is still at Brodick. This suggests to me some significant problem with her machinery, although if she is going to use a dry dock in Ayrshire it might be as good a place as any to wait.

She usually goes into Dale's Marine at Greenock, but their dry dock has a large, yet to be completed CalMac ferry in it at the mo!

 

[mainsail1]

Bow thruster...........where there is the will there is a way!

 

[JumbleDuck]

She usually goes into Dale's Marine at Greenock, but their dry dock has a large, yet to be completed CalMac ferry in it at the mo!

Oops. Didn't she use a dry dock somewhere in NW England after a previous prang?

 

[Elessar]

Why was anyone negligent? That we don’t know at this stage, it’s possible that you are right but not helpful. Let’s wait for the investigation.

You may have missed the sarcasm I assumed in his post.

 

[capnsensible]

You may have missed the sarcasm I assumed in his post.

Yeah, I guess that I was too far ahead on the sarky front. Guilty. Has thrown up some interesting responses though.

I know that merchant vessels ding docks quite often. If you ever sail around an anchorage, lots of scrapes and bashes can be seen. A good friend of mine worked for Gibraltar Port Authority for a while on the rope handling crews. As an amateur yachtsman, he was surprised at the poor ship handling and yelling that goes on.

I'm gonna pose now too to add to my sins. I was behind a merchant vessel going into the lock at Seville some years back. It hit one of the lock gates so hard that it took several days to extract it and repair the gate, thereby ending our visit to the city.

Even posier, I was in front of a car transporter going through a Panama Canal lock when it clouted the reception jetty. That was good for breathing excercises.

So yeah, vessels do have accidents. But my dig was aimed at the blame culturistas! ?

 

[stevie69p]

Oops. Didn't she use a dry dock somewhere in NW England after a previous prang?

I think she went into Dale's for the last bow prang. She went there for the new boilers. I suppose a lot of it depends on the yard's availability, and they always seem to be busy.

 

[DJE]

Bow thruster...........where there is the will there is a way!

Suggest they talk to the operators of the Kingswear Castle in Dartmouth. See post #27 above.

 

[Kukri]

Here’s a report from someone who was on board;

What now for Waverley? - CRSC : Clyde River Steamer Club

 

[Elessar]

Here’s a report from someone who was on board;

What now for Waverley? - CRSC : Clyde River Steamer Club

Assuming this apparently knowledgable 1st hand report is reliable then a bowthruster would have made no difference.
Save for the fact I suppose that the approach could in theory have been slower.
But I doubt any skipper would go slower and use a thruster to steer instead of the rudder.
It would just help in those situations that need a boat to push her round

 

[JumbleDuck]

Here’s a report from someone who was on board;

What now for Waverley? - CRSC : Clyde River Steamer Club

I do hope he is right about better management. She desperately needs/needed it.

 

[TernVI]

Here’s a report from someone who was on board;

What now for Waverley? - CRSC : Clyde River Steamer Club

An apparent loss of astern power?
Have they not got the hang of these new-fangled steam engines just yet?