World's ugliest ship parks in Southampton

This came into Harwich last year, a far better looking design

IMG_1137_zps1127abc6.jpg

IMG_1138_zpsf6da9a6b.jpg
 
I suspect you'd have a hard time finding any structure on the planet that was better earthed.

I guess that's true. I'd imagined all 50,000 tonnes (more in some cases) getting substantially warmer. :rolleyes: Presumably one wouldn't want to touch the bare metal during a strike?

I've been aboard one of those ships - can't recall the name - and they are quite astonishing...as I was driven around, the same phrase occurred to several of us - "a cathedral in steel".

Granted they're ugly, but the slab-sides and blunt bows just reflect their purely functional design - their capacity equals their profitability.

An amazing thing to reflect upon is that the "main deck" on which vehicles arrive via a colossal rear ramp, is typically Deck 5...so the storage decks go down almost as far as up!

Exiting from the "tank-top", the lowest deck, I felt the full length and ascent as the minibus climbed over thirty feet in the course of a straight two hundred yards distance, through layer after layer of cavernous empty low-headroom decks...and we had only reached the main deck, just above the waterline! Six or seven more decks above that.

The "main deck" was most spectacular, because it isn't low-headroom, it's perhaps thirty feet high...

...fifty-foot motor yachts on wheeled loaders, gargantuan road-building machines, huge mobile cranes and those mammoth quarry-tipper trucks just disappear into the vastness.

Remember the towering arches, disappearing into the distance at the "mines of Moria" in The Fellowship of the Ring? Well from the bow or stern of the main deck in that enormous ship, the same feeling of almost unlimited, unbroken enormity came to mind.

I found it so amazing, I no longer look at these vessels with aesthetically critical eyes. They're marvels. And the economic significance of their continuous, efficient dispatch of our motor-industry's output, can hardly be overlooked.
 
I guess that's true. I'd imagined all 50,000 tonnes (more in some cases) getting substantially warmer. :rolleyes: Presumably one wouldn't want to touch the bare metal during a strike?

A typical lightning strike is 5GJ, which distributed over 50,000,000 kg is 100 J/kg, which is enough for a 0.2oC rise in temperature (heat capacity for steel is around 466 J kg-1 K-1).

In fact it will be (a) less that this because most of the electrical energy will be dissipated in the sea and (b) more than this because only the skin will carry current and be heated.
 
That's very informative, thank you JumbleDuck...but does it mean crew members would be perfectly safe touching the internal metal surfaces of the ship during a lightning strike?
 
That's very informative, thank you JumbleDuck...but does it mean crew members would be perfectly safe touching the internal metal surfaces of the ship during a lightning strike?

If you mean, "things other than the outer skin" then yes, the lighting strike will have negligible effects inside. Touching the outer very near the point of touchdown might be a little burn-y.
 
Returning to the ship in question, isn't she a sister to the one which parked herself on the Bramble last year?

Depends what you call a sister ship, I guess. The Hoegh Osaka was grounded on the Bramble bank, so same shipping line. Whether there was much or any similarity in design and construction, I don't know.
 
A typical lightning strike is 5GJ, which distributed over 50,000,000 kg is 100 J/kg, which is enough for a 0.2oC rise in temperature (heat capacity for steel is around 466 J kg-1 K-1).

In fact it will be (a) less that this because most of the electrical energy will be dissipated in the sea and (b) more than this because only the skin will carry current and be heated.

No, that's incorrect. Interesting idea however. That would only apply if all the energy in the strike was transferred to the vessel, but since its resistance is all but nothing, very little energy would be lost to the ship as heat due to resistance. The boat would be a massive Faraday cage. If anything damage would only be caused to sensitive electronic kit and antennas etc due to the intense electromagnetic fields. The ship would be entirely unaffected what so ever.
 
No, that's incorrect. Interesting idea however. That would only apply if all the energy in the strike was transferred to the vessel, but since its resistance is all but nothing, very little energy would be lost to the ship as heat due to resistance.

"... most of the electrical energy will be dissipated in the sea ..."

The boat would be a massive Faraday cage.

"... only the skin will carry current ..."
 
Top