I was reading about some amazing monitoring equipment that is designed to keep a track of all the stresses experienced by laden containerships on passage as the hull works in a seaway. The structure of the ship is wired up with tiny strain gauges positioned at strategic locations and the various stresses are transmitted in real time to the watchful monitors ashore, who can then tell the master that he needs to slow down, or alter course to avoid damage, or to prevent the containers hurling themselves into the sea.
It was way back in the 1960s that our mighty Commonwealth cargo liner was selected to undertake tests of the various forces that act upon a hull girder with the ship at sea. A team of earnest naval architects from the Tyne arrived to fit us out for this project, which involved affixing a box about a fathom long on the forward well deck, running fore and aft. A cable wound its way from this strain gauge to the wheelhouse, where a small black box was screwed onto a spare space on the bulkhead. This had a little window in it, through which you could see several numerical registers, not unlike a gas meter.
It was, explained the scientists to the master, who passed on the information to the mate, who duly filtered it down to we watchkeepers, an important piece of research that would enable shipbuilders to design better and more seaworthy ships. When the findings were digested by the great brains in the Wallsend Research Station, the flexibility of the hull girder would be better understood, which would be a tremendous advance to naval architecture.
We all knew about the hull bending in a seaway and had read lurid tales of all-welded Liberty ships breaking in half, because of cold weather or injudicious loading. I still recall watching the business ends of the number three derricks moving back and forth in their crutches aboard one of our oldest ships as she bashed into heavy weather. Occasionally in really bad weather with the ship slamming, the end of the port derrick would hit the bulkhead of my cabin about six inches from where my head was as I lay in my bunk.
So we knew roughly what the boffins were trying to determine, although there was some suspicion that the real aim of the project might have been to build ships with thinner steel than was employed in our over-engineered vessels, with more profit for the shipyards. That was probably unworthy, although over the years we have learned of enormously long ships that would flex in an alarming fashion, and occasional disasters where they have bent, or even broken.
But whereas with modern equipment the data would be silently gathered and transmitted without any human intervention, we were many years from such amazing advances and it would be we three watchkeepers who would become the human recorders of this valuable information. So once every watch, it was our new additional duty to read the numbers recorded on the little dials and record them in a special logbook that the scientists left with us before they went ashore. I seem to recall we also had to record the weather being experienced at the time. It was just one more thing to remember on long, boring oceanic crossings, what with navigation, compass errors, weather reports, and trying to stay awake on the graveyard watches, and for no extra pay.
We began in an atmosphere of scientific curiosity, enthusiastic researchers ourselves in a modest way, but rapidly lost interest in the so-called science. We had been led to believe that the movement of the ship, as she pitched and rolled in the seaway, would have the numbers whirring around like those on a fruit machine, but whatever the ship did, it seemed to have little or no effect on the data recorder, the dials sullenly refusing to budge. We didn't tolerate slamming in our ships and would slow down if this happened, but even the most violent motion or even boarding green seas would barely provoke any movement of the dials.
As we began the voyage to the southern seas, we found ourselves frequently peering through the little window in the magic box, the master scrutinising the logbook when he came on the bridge. But with so little drama, we became bored and sometimes forgot about it, guiltily completing the columns when we were reminded, several watches in abeyance. Indeed, the only dramatic alterations took place when one of the ABs had been using a pneumatic hammer to chip rust rather too close alongside the gauge, making the little dials whir into action. We thought of entering this change as the result of an enormous storm, but the proper log would have given the lie away.
Months later, and some 24,000 sea miles of tedious record keeping, we docked in London and some chap with a set of tools took the strain gauge and the little box away. He was clearly no scientist, so we never heard what startling conclusions the researchers had reached. My own view was that our ship, built to the highest possible specifications, was just too strong and inflexible to register much stress. It was an example for life, perhaps.
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