Quicksand Fans

Someone has finally posted the shots of the Algoport breaking up and sinking last November on Boatnerd.com

As suspected, it was daylight, and there was more than one camera in action. Pretty chilling stuff

Cool pics!
Thanks.

Crazy. Any theories on why it just snapped in half and sank?

Ken can explain it better than I can, but for starters, 'lakers' are built quite differently from 'salties'.

And having sailed on several Great Lakes, I can assure you, the Algoport never saw swells like that in her life (unless I'm wrong and she ventured out of the seaway and into truly deep water). But, in any case, ocean swells are vastly longer and higher that Great Lakes waves, and could much more easily break the back of a ship. It really is a shame.


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Thats more or less correct, although her scantlings (which is naval construction-ese for interior framing) were designed for use in the Gulf of St Lawrence and Newfoundland, Halifax region. She did sail there, and regularly too, although carrying a lot of salt cargo in salt water as well probably didnt help matters. Throw in some utter stupidity over the years by individuals to be named in my memoirs, as well as the generally worse weather in that region, and well, there we are.

If you study the photos , you can see the break point is around #10 hatch, almost exactly amidships. The only 2 watertight bulkheads would be the collision bulkhead forward, and the engine room bulkhead aft. This explains the dynamics of how the two halves go down, as you can see them upend. The flooding appears to have been exceedingly rapid, as evidenced by the increasing air pressure (probably 5-10atm conservatively) blowing off one of the forward hatches, likely #1; you can see the same thing happening aft, although the hatches there probably rupture instead of blown clean away , held down by the boom. Interestingly, the behavior of the stern section is remarkably like that of the Titanic, upending and rolling fairly heavily before assuming a vertical position then going down. I wonder if there a couple other shots out there, since the last shot only shows her up to the stack absolutely vertical.

**for reference, one hatch weighs roughly 7-10 tonnes, so thats some indication of the forces involved; the tiny specks seen in the shot there are the clamps, scattered by the blast.

Wow, you don't see that every day. The pictures are impressive. It did indeed remind me of the "Titanic" movie.

It made me sad to look at that. But I was relieved to read that nobody died in this nor were there environmental issues.

Nessie

Damn. Impressive and sad at the same time. Thanks for sharing!

kham wrote:...for use in the Gulf of St Lawrence and Newfoundland, Halifax region. She did sail there, and regularly too...

Yea, there was a little voice in my head that I should have listened to.

Having seen so many freighters while growing up, it's still heard for me to imagine them venturing out that far.

I still remember the iron boats in the Union Ship Canal in Buffalo (Lackawanna) when Bethlehem Steel was still going strong. And watching a laker pass through the Welland Canal, or off in the distance from the top of the Peace Bridge. I think at 8 or 10 years old, I still wanted to run away to sea.

nachtjaeger wrote:I still remember the iron boats in the Union Ship Canal in Buffalo (Lackawanna) when Bethlehem Steel was still going strong. And watching a laker pass through the Welland Canal, or off in the distance from the top of the Peace Bridge. I think at 8 or 10 years old, I still wanted to run away to sea.

My grandparents took my brother and I to Niagara Falls when I was 7 or 8 years old. Along the way, my grandpa held on to my belt as I leaned over and touched a freighter moving into one of the Welland Canal locks (I think he was a boat nerd too).

I want to run away to sea to this day. I didn't want to say it earlier in this thread, but to me, Ken is like a rock star in our midst.