Why do Frigates need tugs?

[capnsensible]

Not really, ship handling is ship handling.

We just had a day's worth of vittles for the island state of Tasmania - nothing at all important.

In Australia at least navy ships can - and do - come and go with no legal requirement to take a pilot.

Sadly I don't think many of them - the bridge teams - get much sea time these days.

Merchant vessels carry insurance don't they?

Warships don't. But they use tugs. I guess that also assists with the limited opportunities to practice. Also I have no idea if the Navies of the world have bridge simulators. Perhaps they do. But we all no that's no substitute for the real thing.

For me, using tugs for warships is sensible and seamanlike. I'm not sure why some folk see something wrong with that?

 

[ProMariner]

Navy and commercial are two different things. Commercial ships are staffed by professional seafarers to carry out productive work at a competitive cost. Navy focuses on pretending to fight other friendly navy ships, and are staffed by posh boys. They are very good at this. But they need competent professional commercial grown up seafarers in tugs about to help them get their pretend fight ships through difficult situations like ports filled with tricky shallow bits and other humans in boats who have no interest in pretend fighting, and alongside really hard immovable quays. It has been proven time and time again that ports are too difficult for posh boys to transit alone, as pranging pretend fight ships is embarrassing, and in extreme cases it can even result in the posh boys having to give their golden hats back.

This poor posh boy attempted to drive his own pretend fight ship ship near other ships, and look what happened:

learning-the-lessons-the-loss-the-norwegian-frigate-helge-ingstad

These American pretend fight ships were let out at night without adult supervision, and look what happened to them:

USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_MC_collision

USS_Fitzgerald_and_MV_ACX_Crystal_collision

And this posh boy decided to take his pretend fight ship near land, again without suitable supervision:

navy-submarine-aground-errors-inquiry

Really, the price of a half dozen tugs around them anytime they are near any real world dangers is a small price to pay to let them keep their golden hats.

 

[mainsail1]

Deleted

 

[Hermit]

Navy and commercial are two different things. Commercial ships are staffed by professional seafarers to carry out productive work at a competitive cost. Navy focuses on pretending to fight other friendly navy ships, and are staffed by posh boys. They are very good at this. But they need competent professional commercial grown up seafarers in tugs about to help them get their pretend fight ships through difficult situations like ports filled with tricky shallow bits and other humans in boats who have no interest in pretend fighting, and alongside really hard immovable quays. It has been proven time and time again that ports are too difficult for posh boys to transit alone, as pranging pretend fight ships is embarrassing, and in extreme cases it can even result in the posh boys having to give their golden hats back.

This poor posh boy attempted to drive his own pretend fight ship ship near other ships, and look what happened:

learning-the-lessons-the-loss-the-norwegian-frigate-helge-ingstad

These American pretend fight ships were let out at night without adult supervision, and look what happened to them:

USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_MC_collision

USS_Fitzgerald_and_MV_ACX_Crystal_collision

And this posh boy decided to take his pretend fight ship near land, again without suitable supervision:

navy-submarine-aground-errors-inquiry

Really, the price of a half dozen tugs around them anytime they are near any real world dangers is a small price to pay to let them keep their golden hats.

is there an emoji for ‘chip on shoulder’?

 

[Kukri]

is there an emoji for ‘chip on shoulder’?

ProMariner expresses, pretty accurately, the feelings of all professional users of the sea towards naval personnel, anywhere in the world.

On the other hand, professional seafarers get to have their own cabin, which is nice, they get to see the sea, and before Covid-19 they sometimes got a run ashore in places more interesting than Portsmouth and Plymouth.

 

[capnsensible]

List of shipwrecks in 2022 - Wikipedia

 

[Kukri]

Since this thread is now in the good humoured banter stage, a perusal of Wikipedia suggests to me that there are 3,351 warships of over 250 tons displacement in the world, and as we are all aware they spend most of their time in port, alongside.

As of January 2021 there were around 62,100 merchant ships in operation.

In my own little sector of the merchant shipping industry, long haul boxboats, we currently have an average time in port or waiting to berth (this week’s figures) of 35%*, ie 65% at sea and under way, out of 5,334 ships on long haul services.

* This is too high, and is attributable to serious port congestion, particularly in the United States and in China.

 

[capnsensible]

Sailors like to laugh.

 

[R.Ems]

Since this thread is now in the good humoured banter stage, a perusal of Wikipedia suggests to me that there are 3,351 warships of over 250 tons displacement in the world, and as we are all aware they spend most of their time in port, alongside.

As of January 2021 there were around 62,100 merchant ships in operation.

In my own little sector of the merchant shipping industry, long haul boxboats, we currently have an average time in port or waiting to berth (this week’s figures) of 35%*, ie 65% at sea and under way, out of 5,334 ships on long haul services.

* This is too high, and is attributable to serious port congestion, particularly in the United States and in China.

62,000 merchant ships 'over 250 tons displacement' in operation? A lot more than that surely.

Tugs etc, we watched a warship tie up in Dartmouth, on the ship buoys near the HM's office.

She had 100's of people on board, and a tug in attendance (Dog Class IIRC) and it took half an hour of yelling, assorted jolly boats (each with its own captain giving orders to its crew , heaving lines (we counted three in the air at once) , various hooter and whistle signals, commands and counter-commands being shouted to whom it may concern, plus meaningless screechings over the ship's tannoy, before she was 'fast'. Quite the spectacle.
The reason it sticks in my memory is that we tied a 400 ton tug on the same buoy a few weeks later, delivery crew of two. I signalled by hand to the wheelhouse to stop, jumped on the buoy, made fast, and came back on deck up the rope.
No shouting, total time a minute, no reason the warship couldn't have done it the same way; to them they may have being professional, to others (I could not possibly comment) they looked liked a bunch of plonkers...@ProMariner

 

[Fr J Hackett]

ProMariner expresses, pretty accurately, the feelings of all professional users of the sea towards naval personnel, anywhere in the world.

On the other hand, professional seafarers get to have their own cabin, which is nice, they get to see the sea, and before Covid-19 they sometimes got a run ashore in places more interesting than Portsmouth and Plymouth.

In Plymouth you would have the chance of running into Viago, what could be more interesting than that?

 

[Bouba]

Since this thread is now in the good humoured banter stage, a perusal of Wikipedia suggests to me that there are 3,351 warships of over 250 tons displacement in the world, and as we are all aware they spend most of their time in port, alongside.

As of January 2021 there were around 62,100 merchant ships in operation.

In my own little sector of the merchant shipping industry, long haul boxboats, we currently have an average time in port or waiting to berth (this week’s figures) of 35%*, ie 65% at sea and under way, out of 5,334 ships on long haul services.

* This is too high, and is attributable to serious port congestion, particularly in the United States and in China.

It’s economics....when a cargo ship is at sea, it’s making money....when a warship is tied up, it’s saving money

 

[capnsensible]

62,000 merchant ships 'over 250 tons displacement' in operation? A lot more than that surely.

Tugs etc, we watched a warship tie up in Dartmouth, on the ship buoys near the HM's office.

She had 100's of people on board, and a tug in attendance (Dog Class IIRC) and it took half an hour of yelling, assorted jolly boats (each with its own captain giving orders to its crew , heaving lines (we counted three in the air at once) , various hooter and whistle signals, commands and counter-commands being shouted to whom it may concern, plus meaningless screechings over the ship's tannoy, before she was 'fast'. Quite the spectacle.
The reason it sticks in my memory is that we tied a 400 ton tug on the same buoy a few weeks later, delivery crew of two. I signalled by hand to the wheelhouse to stop, jumped on the buoy, made fast, and came back on deck up the rope.
No shouting, total time a minute, no reason the warship couldn't have done it the same way; to them they may have being professional, to others (I could not possibly comment) they looked liked a bunch of plonkers...@ProMariner

A good friend of mine spent a couple of years on the jetty staff in Gib. Frequent visitors were the bunker barges, small tankers. He watched a lot of dings onto the dock, shouting, yelling, counter ordering and suspected over the limit drinking.

One New Year a bunker barge crew got very drunk and dragged anchor in a bit of a breeze. The company despatched another bunker barge to tow it back. It ran aground. Now it dragged from the anchorage in British waters into La Linea harbour. You can imagine the fuss....

Now personally, having witnessed shipping going about its business in many places from the English Channel, Straits of Gibraltar and Panama, I have a lot of respect for most of them. But they are not the paragons that some believe and out of those tens of thousands a good percentage are badly driven....

It is quite amusing hearing them shout and swear at each other on vhf though. One I recall on ch16 pointed out to his fellow master mariner that he was ' driving an effing ship, not an effing taxi'.....

I think in a similar vein, not all pilots are Chuck Yeager.....

 

[capnsensible]

Navy and commercial are two different things. Commercial ships are staffed by professional seafarers to carry out productive work at a competitive cost. Navy focuses on pretending to fight other friendly navy ships, and are staffed by posh boys. They are very good at this. But they need competent professional commercial grown up seafarers in tugs about to help them get their pretend fight ships through difficult situations like ports filled with tricky shallow bits and other humans in boats who have no interest in pretend fighting, and alongside really hard immovable quays. It has been proven time and time again that ports are too difficult for posh boys to transit alone, as pranging pretend fight ships is embarrassing, and in extreme cases it can even result in the posh boys having to give their golden hats back.

This poor posh boy attempted to drive his own pretend fight ship ship near other ships, and look what happened:

learning-the-lessons-the-loss-the-norwegian-frigate-helge-ingstad

These American pretend fight ships were let out at night without adult supervision, and look what happened to them:

USS_John_S._McCain_and_Alnic_MC_collision

USS_Fitzgerald_and_MV_ACX_Crystal_collision

And this posh boy decided to take his pretend fight ship near land, again without suitable supervision:

navy-submarine-aground-errors-inquiry

Really, the price of a half dozen tugs around them anytime they are near any real world dangers is a small price to pay to let them keep their golden hats.

Why do all the container ships using Algecieras use tugs?

 

[Kukri]

@R. Ems I think the merchant ship figure is for “Convention Ships” ie over 500 tons GT on international voyages.

 

[Kukri]

Why do all the container ships using Algecieras use tugs?

I assume you don’t want a book?

Algeciras is a Maersk hub port. Maersk had a phase in which they fitted their ships with bow and stern thrusters (see below) and encouraged their Masters not to use more tugs than absolutely necessary

In recent times Big Blue seem to have had second thoughts about this (for one thing, the ships have got bigger, and for another the proportion of cargo carried in reefer boxes has not grown proportionately. To berth using bow and stern thrusters one switches the generator output from the reefer boxes (half an hour won’t matter) to the thrusters. I suspect that there is no longer enough generator capacity installed to run big enough thrusters on the modern ships).

Here is a picture of the first boxboat not to use tugs at all ever, thanks to bow and stern thrusters and bridge wing control of the main engine.

The team that did the outline design, contracted her and nine sisters and stood by the building was headed by the undersigned so I can bore for Britain about this.

Incidentally she has just passed her sixth Special Survey ie she is now 31 and will trade until she is 35.

 

[Biggles Wader]

ProMariner expresses, pretty accurately, the feelings of all professional users of the sea towards naval personnel, anywhere in the world.

On the other hand, professional seafarers get to have their own cabin, which is nice, they get to see the sea, and before Covid-19 they sometimes got a run ashore in places more interesting than Portsmouth and Plymouth.

Luxury! My first trip I had shared cabin, no aircon, weevils in the corn flakes and mules to pull us through Panama.
All true BTW but there were compensations------Christmas berthed in New Orleans five minutes walk from Bourbon St. A week in Sydney berthed in now trendy Piermont/Darling Harbour. Another week in Melbourne and another in Fremantle. Lots of exotic Pacific islands, some without tugs or pilots! How we coped I don't know

 

[Kukri]

Luxury! My first trip I had shared cabin, no aircon, weevils in the corn flakes and mules to pull us through Panama.
All true BTW but there were compensations------Christmas berthed in New Orleans five minutes walk from Bourbon St. A week in Sydney berthed in now trendy Piermont/Darling Harbour. Another week in Melbourne and another in Fremantle. Lots of exotic Pacific islands, some without tugs or pilots! How we coped I don't know

You were with Bank Line and I claim my free pot of Stockholm Tar!?

In the words of my old company’s unofficial toast
(always drunk in Gordon’s gin and Schweppes’ tonic)
“Life’s Hell in the East!”?

 

[capnsensible]

I assume you don’t want a book?

Algeciras is a Maersk hub port. Maersk had a phase in which they fitted their ships with bow and stern thrusters (see below) and encouraged their Masters not to use more tugs than absolutely necessary

In recent times Big Blue seem to have had second thoughts about this (for one thing, the ships have got bigger, and for another the proportion of cargo carried in reefer boxes has not grown proportionately. To berth using bow and stern thrusters one switches the generator output from the reefer boxes (half an hour won’t matter) to the thrusters. I suspect that there is no longer generator capacity installed on the modern ships).

That's interesting. Well for me anyway. I like to understand how floating things work.

I would imagine then that all big container ships are built in a similar way? Evergreen were frequent visitors and also used tugs.....as in I've not sailed round there for a few years.

When the big new port was built a breakwater over two miles long was also constructed to protect it. Irresistible for me to sail between that and the jetties. In the main port it was not permitted but in that channel we were tolerated. On occasion a tug or the Pilot boat would do some friendly waving to warn us to go away but otherwise fascinating to watchthe speed of unloading unloading.

Also to the north of the bay are the tanker jetties and the crude discharge platform for the refinery. When a tanker is secured to the platform often for 24 hours, they have a tug attached and pulling from th stern. This is great for students learning lights during night sailing excercises.

Question. A lot of the big tugs, when released from duty would return across the bay going astern all the way. Is that simply for boat handling practice? Again jolly good for trainee yacht skippers to work out what's going on.

 

[Kukri]

All modern berthing tugs are “water tractors” with either azimuthing thrusters or Voith Schneider propulsion. In such a vessel forwards backwards and sideways makes no difference but sideways is less fuel efficient.

I suspect the crews have worked out that less fuel is used running astern when light.

In steam tankers you could go dead slow astern to keep the ship from nuzzling up to the SBM but a motor ship cannot run that slow so she gets a tug.

 

[capnsensible]

All modern berthing tugs are “water tractors” with either azimuthing thrusters or Voith Schneider propulsion. In such a vessel forwards backwards and sideways makes no difference but sideways is less fuel efficient.

In steam tankers you could go dead slow astern to keep the ship from nuzzling up to the SBM but a motor ship cannot run that slow so she gets a tug.

Ta. I kinda guessed the reason for the tug tanker scenario, nice to confirm.

I can recall a very brief aquaint with V S propulsion a zillionyears ago when HMS Challenger was being built for its short lived naval service. However my career took me in a different direction.....or dimension!

It would be on my bucket list to have an hour operating one of those. My tug skipper experience is limited to a single diesel engine rather elderly vessel on the Clyde. Used as recreation for various units in the Clyde Submarine Base. And a perfect excuse for me to evade my day...boring....job. much to the annoyance of my Commanding Officer.