You forgot a very dangerous aspect: Water intrusion. When grain gets wet, it swells. This swelling can create a huge amount of pressure, enough to damage the hull or bulkheads. This happened when the German ship PAMIR sank. I would like to see a video on that ship regardless, it has a intersecting tale as the last large sail powered cargo ship.
I mean...you called it your Little Captain? And it's about 5 inches? I mean...really? Maybe this is a US thing, but this seems like a pretty clear reference to something. I'm not sure this is the marketing angle you were after. Or...actually, maybe people will buy it because they find that hilarious, who knows? Just want you to be aware of the potential double entendre here.
That's a perfect gift for my dad :D He likes to go on cruises or river boat rides with his wife. And now they're going to have a little captain watching out for them 🥰
Definitely not in the reports but some years ago, the ship I was working on was loading maize and the loading apparatus operator didn't listen when the officers told him to shift is loading position. The result was a sudden 40 degrees list towards the dock, with our mooring cable holding tight. We evacuated the ship and only the chief engineer and second engineer went back to pump water in the ballast to bring the ship back somewhat upright. In the following sea passage, we faced heavy gale and large waves. We arrived at destination with a good 20 degrees list on the same starboard side.
Scary stuff. My father was a captain, and he always said that the last people you should trust, or rather never trust at all are the dock workers, they're only interested in loading/unloading your ship as fast as possible and they didn't give two shits about the ships safety. Always double and triple check whatever they were doing and never take their word for anything.
@@AgentRafa Was just about to say that. More about the industry as a whole, but there is always someone who knows nothing about working on ships that think they know more than anyone.
Both my grandfather and uncle were Merchant Mariners prior to the mid-fifties, and neither would crew on a grain ship. This mostly due to a very bad trip my grandfather had on one in the late 1930s, where they nearly lost the ship due to a cargo shift. Thanks for the very good explanation of the problems!
This is what I thought as well. Specifically, how much moisturizer the grain has absorbed prior to loading and having that mess up the ballast calculation. I suppose they must weigh the grain before loading though.
My first thought was the expansion of rice when it gets wet, like in that Horatio Hornblower story where a damaged but floating ship's hull eventually burst from the rice expanding.
And when the grain becomes wet, it begins to germinate, releasing heat. There were many cases when a strong fire started in the holds with temperatures up to 2000 degrees celsius due to wetting of the cargo.
@@kkameha7354 Applies to any organic product, many a fire brigade has been called to a dung heap self combusting on a farm or a fire in a grain silo/shed or a silage/hay barn caused by self combustion.
This is very unintuitive to me. Enzymes denature and stop functioning above certain temperatures (generally far below combustion). I'll read up later what's actually involved, but for now it's fun to speculate about the underlying mechanisms as a mental exercise.
@@tonys1636 it is one thing when a fire occurs in a barn, and it is completely different when, due to wetting of cargo, for example, in a storm, water floods the lids of the holds. There's no fire brigade to call, and deck crew can't do much, especially in a storm. Plus, the CO2 fire extinguishing system will not help much, because this is not a fire in itself, but a very strong chemical reaction. I've been in this situation myself and the only option other than to leave the ship was to dock at the nearest port and start unloading immediately.
This is the easiest way to transfer cargo from 1 vessel to another and most efficient use of space imagine how long it would take to load a ship carrying a bag at a time and there would also be a waste of a bunch of space woulf also need compartments in between cuz if you stack too many backs on top of each others ones at the bottom might tear
@@foresthill8462 Do the maths. How much does a sack weigh? How many sacks in 200,000-400,000 tons. How long to load sacks onto pallets and then off-load and stack. How many stevedores? A nightmare of a time consuming and expensive job. Bulk is the way to go.
When we load rice in Thailand, the holds carrying rice in bulk (not in sack) are only filled half full then the top layer was trimmed flat and loaded with two layers of tonner bags filled with rice. Other holds that are filled with 25 and 50kg bags are onky filled up to 90-95%.
the biggest difference between fluid and a pile of grain is that fluid changes with the ship but grain will move suddenly and alot at once so its not just shifting gravity its also carrying a great deal of momentum
@@ryans756 nah, the video talks more about static momentum, that the grain will shift to the side, then stay off-center even if you rock the other way a bit. The comment talks about momentum is about the dynamic force of the rice shifting from center to off-center adding a shock of rotational force. I'm not sold on granules and grains being significantly more forceful personally, but it's it's a distinct argument from the video.
@@LibertyMonk it seems intuitive to me that the grain shift would probably have a smaller total impulse since the grain/particulate is lighter and less dense but that you’d possibly have an equal or greater torque since it’s happening suddenly. Which does seem more dangerous since you could say be listing significantly but safely from wind or wave loads only to have a sudden torque push you into negative GZ. Relatively a liquid load which shifts continuously would allow your righting moment more time to gracefully take up the shifting center of gravity.
@@coloradostrong8285 Never understood the need to differentiate alot from allot. That's the only reason I can imagine that we should not simply accept alot as a new word
So this is one of those rare cases where trucking and marine problems converge. I run an end dump and ive run into this same issue. Even if i load my truck to the rim (which is not only illegal but imposible as the weight will break the truck) this stuff will shift quite easily and can roll a truck. So you gotta be careful both how you load the grain and drive. You see this quite a bit with overturned grain haulers. While we dont have the same listing issues as a ship. A lot of roads are slanted and many offramps have an extreme lean to them. Go too fast where the trailer leans too and the whole load can shift and you go over. Same with unloading. Unload on uneven ground and the grain can shift to one side suddenly and pull the trailer over. Or if the grain was loaded unevenly to one side or shifted to one side or another i can have the exact same effect and over goes the trailer. Never thought how that would effect barges or ships till now though.
I'm on the other end of this. I've worked with ships my entire professional life, and never considered how a grain shift can occur on a truck going around a bend. Neat to learn about these applications.
Those subdivisions are called baffles, if you didn't know. These are commonly used in liquid tanking trucks such as fuel transporters or even firetrucks. They use them for a fairly similar reason, to stop or limit the extreme shift of contents that can become very problematic when you have to brake quickly on a highway, for example.
The 1957 incident of course being the "Pamir", basically one of the last cargo sailing ships. A lot of additional factors in that, too. A captain that was a last-minute replacement for the regular captain, a crew consisting mainly of cadets in training, and a dock worker strike that led to some shortcuts by those cadets taking over their jobs during loading.
@@guppy719 The Pamir was a floating academy for aspiring merchant marine officers. Much like many navies across the globe operate tall ships as officer schools.
@@guppy719 Cargo ships going on oceanic voyages were almost entirely steam propulsion by then. As seen by the military supply convoys used in WW2. You'd still have sail for some coastal trade at that time, but ships were no longer being built for that. It was just the remaining ships from decades prior which hadn't gone out of service yet.
@@guppy719 Sailing ships lasted well into the early 20th century for a few reasons. They were often faster than steamers for the same displacement as more powerful engines were not economical until more modern steam and especially diesel engines appeared. They also had a greater cargo volume because they didn't have an engine and massive coal bunkers and water tanks. High end, all-steel four-mast sailing vessels were a true marvel of design, some had a steam engine, to help pull the rigging and could tack more efficiently than a fully manned classic sailing vessel, further extending their usefulness. The magnificent five masted Preussen could reach up to 20 knots and carried 7800 tons of cargo. These sailing ships survived until the interwar period and the death knell came in WWII where despite a potentially very high top speed, unreliable winds meant that one day they could outrun any submarine, only to find themselves in the doldrums the next and wide open to attack. Another issue was that modern cargo vessels started to appear like bulk carriers and didn't have to worry about sails when loading and unloading, as palettisation and containerization happened, sailing ships were at a huge disadvantage as it made the use of increasingly more powerful dock cranes, which considerably cut dead time in port, with a faster turnover and greater cargo capacity they become more profitable than sailing vessels. What was left after WWII was used up until replaced by more modern ships.
I believe that we've been hauling grain on ships for a very long time - like thousands of years - so there has been plenty of time for ship builders to work these things out. I once met a draft surveyor, and after he explained what a draft surveyor was, he mentioned that he was a member in the 'oldest guild' in continuous operation.
The Steamer Arlington was carrying 100,000 bushels of wheat when the cargo shifted north of Manitou Island on Lake Superior. The vessel was only afloat for a half hour after the initial shift and she capsized taking 18 of her 24 crew with her. This was in 1942
I thought grains would've been transported in sacks and loaded in crates, but after your explanation, I'm surprised they don't use a design similar to oil tankers. The hull is divided into 3 longitudinal columns, and further partitioned to create smaller compartments where listing won't have that large an effect as compared to a single room where the grain would be piled in
I wonder if the space you lose by building that extra stuff makes shipping rice not worth the cost because you're shipping less rice. Definitely interesting to think about
Not 100% sure if it's also possible with rice, but dusts explosions in grain elevators actually aren't unheard of, even more so sugar, flour or instant coffee. Just a fun little fact
dust explosions are possible everywhere where you have any substance that produces dust that can be oxidised with the oxygen in air. that includes basically any dry organic substance and even some inorganic things you might not think of as flammable, like rock dust. so yes, it's very possible with rice aswell.
I grew up in the Midwest and happened to be nearby when a grain silo exploded. Pieces of heavily reinforced concrete feet thick were busted out like glass and hurled hundreds of feet. It was totally appalling here is a short video on it. The Debruce Grain Disaster 1998 | A Plainly Difficult Documentary
Well researched and well done. Speaking as a master mariner with grain experience. High value rice would be put in supersacks, 1m x 1m x 1m cube bags, thus changing the angle of repose.
Another advantage of vertical separation is that it can add longitudinal stiffness and resistance to the ship, rather than only having a huge hollow space.
Vertical dividers did seem to be the most obvious solution for this this. Halving the potential mass movement is going to make a huge difference to the stability change, quartering this would probably make the stability change almost trivial in comparison. However I'd definitely carefully check to see if full height division compared to partial height division is necessary as grains act in many ways like a fluid, just one that's more resistant to movement (it's called grain-fluid modelling). The overall principle is similar to container ships - it doesn't really matter what happens within an individual container as long as what happens is limited to the container - the overall stability of the ship doesn't change much.
I’ve have never once thought of anything like this before and I came up with this solution half way through the video. I find it hard to believe an engineer couldn’t easily come up with this.
@@MikesDIY I had the same idea about halfway through the video. Why not simply divide the entire cargohold into different sections so the rice can only shift inside it's own section but not the entire width of the ship. That way, each section keeps it's own volume and weight and you won't have any issues.
@PowerPC603 I thought a ship tilts as a unit, so individual compartments wouldn't help. You'd have the same issue, just in several places. A center divider seems like the most reasonable option, but like everyone else, I'm no engineer.
@@HexLabz if there were individual compartments, it would keep the grain from shifting to the other side of the ship. If you had boxes of cereal stacked evenly across a teeter totter and you moved the top row to the other side, it would weigh down that side significantly, but if you just tilted the cereal inside of each box, it wouldn’t unbalance the teeter totter much (if at all).
Great video, Im studing to become at master mariner(captain) and we are learning about this int. bulk code and so on, great to be able so visualise the rule and how the grain cargo shifts. Would be nice if you touched on how they secure the grain cargo, like filling the hold to eliminate shifting or trimming the cargo and even securing the grain cargo with a larg bag/tarp. Great video as always, keep up The great work!
I'm honestly surprised that more modern ships don't have a levelling arm (a boom arm built into the hold that can be swept across the cargo with a large brush type attachment) that can be used to adjust the cargo back to level if it should shift. Or a set of surface level removable baffles that can be placed ontop of the cargo to limit how far it can shift. Admittedly its all money and extra work, so I can see why they don't exist.
It suddenly reminded me of when I was a kid in the early 80s and I played a small role in a tv series. I was this kid who was kidnapped And I had to escape the warehouse or silo (can’t remember it was a set) by climbing up the grain hill. Nobody in the crew figured that a little kid would actually sink into the grain. Just 3 meters up and I was already to my knees in the grain and couldn’t move any further 😂 two guys literally had to pull me out.
Videos on so many specific cargoes leads to reflection on how steep/tragic the historic learning curve for shipping has been. Since every item ever shipped has (potentially) dealt with both its "first" & "lessons learned" voyage.
@jankrynicky I only now re-read my comment, and you put it in much simpler terms. Thank you! But yes, I've watched his channel from near the outset (I think?), and only during this video did it hit all at once. Whether a tragedy occurred or was merely "close", it appears safety on the sea today can only be defined after innumerable instances of terror. I don't mean that to sound flip, and of course I can only say this "feels" like the case. After all my entire knowledge of shipping comes almost exclusively from watching his few videos! Take it easy.
when i was younger and worked the docks, we had 2 ways of loading rice, one was in giant bags and the other was rice being "pumped" into the hold. I know they preferred the giant bags!
They need to build multiple vertical baffles lengthwise in the ship so not all the weight of the shifting grain goes past the center line. Instead, it is relegated to various vertical domains, left-to-right.
Excellent explanations, graphics and delivery. For me this is one of the best educational channels on you tube.. I've never been on a boat/ship with the exception of a couple of crappy car ferries and have zero interest in sailing, but these clips simply grab my attention every time...
Im brand new here. Lol But i wanna go ahead and already thank you immensely, the trove of treasure TH-cam offers because people want to share their knowledge is truly like a blessing. I just try to show my gratitude because it is deserved and your quality shows. I probably say this alot but it is sincere for whatever its worth. (I hope i said that right after sincere lol)
I love learning how simple fixes can solve major problems. Until we understood the physics of forces, these things had to be worked out by trial and error. Probably took hundreds of years that way. Now we can calculate things in minutes. I love this channel.
Problems of this kind didn't exist before we had the huge ships. The old wooden sailing ships didn't have a whole section where they just dumped rice or fluids, the stuff was packaged. This greatly reduced the possible shifting of the mass. After all, a few bales or barrels having the content settle and then shift doesn't account for a lot relatively. It is the horizontal partition solution inherent in the packaging of goods, with a lot more partitions.
For much of historic engineering we solved the problem of not fully understanding the forces involved by massively over engineering the solution. For example with bridges, they would build these massive, thick and very strong structures. Scientific advancement and computer modelling has let us understand what is actually required, stopping us from wasting materials that provide no benefit.
@@beardedchimpThe overengineering may or may not have helped allow some of those last longer than many current day structures. Hitting bare minimum when your clearance value slowly decreases over the years until you end up no longer end up clearing it and the structure fails usually means more work is needed for maintaining the structure, or needing a replacement sooner
@@gaerekxenos you make a good point. An over-engineered building can increase the total mass so much that over the decades subsidence can become a serious issue, the ground underneath simply can't handle the weight. My parents house in Ireland is interesting. It is relatively new, ~200 years old. It is entirely dry stone wall, no mortar at all. Some of the external walls are near 2m thick! It wasn't until I left home about 18 years ago that my Dad explained it was all dry stone walls. Kind of terrified me, you are telling me there is nothing holding it together? It still standing after 200 years is reassuring and it did explain why the walls were so thick and every room in the house is totally wonky. Fortunately Ireland has very little seismic activity or other risks of natural disaster. I imagine an relatively minor earthquake by Japanese/American standards would flatten the whole house.
Thanks for you videos! I've carried grain and put the tween deck pontoons on top of the cargo. On ships whiteout tweendecks, we've put the last bits of cargo in big bags and then put those on top of the cargo.
Honestly, I expected that to be the most common answer, but looking ship designs up, the sloped top and bottom seem to be the industry standards, since it keeps the weight from being too far offsides, without forcing specialized loading setups like vertical divisions do. Grain loading conveyers tend to be massive stationary structures, making it very hard to fill one side and then the other.
You can always do what Concrete pourers do. Use something to vibrate all the air out and ensure the grain sits tight, allowing you to fill it all the way up
I'm assuming it's the same reason why grain is poured in rather than dumped in gunny sacks. The holds probably have pretty small entrances & anything large enough to do the job would be pretty difficult to bring in or you'll have to have more than one of those things.
@@bobkin611 someone who said they're a mariner with grain ship experience said in one of the other comments that they do have bags sometimes but that's for the expensive kinds of rice. So I'm assuming it's just too expensive & most companies don't have the margins for that. Rice is a staple good & a lot of countries have either subsidies or price caps on the foodstuff. It all boils down to money apparently.
Really interesting! I knew they must have had to account for shift, but I wasn't sure exactly what they did. Great video as always, and the Little Captain is super cute. I ordered one for my daughter since her room has a nautical theme. World Hydrography Day is coming up, it would be neat if you did a video about charts or surveying :D
Not sure if this would be economically viable, but you could have an inflatable bladder positioned over the grain connected to a source of pressurized air. If the grain settles, the bladder would expand under the pressure and fill the space, preventing the grain from shifting.
I read The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby, about a circumnavigation on a steel sailing ship (only a small donkey engine to help manage the sails and such, motive power provided by wind on sails) bringing Australian grain (wheat I think) to Europe. The grain was in sacks, with a few sacks intentionally slit so they’d leak a little grain and fit together better. How much the sacks and slitting some helped avoid problems I don’t know.
Sacks would completely solve the problem. The problem is caused by bulk quantities of grain moving, and the sacks mean you have no bulk quantities. But sacks are incredibly slow to load and unload.
I think the horizontal split (containers partitioned above and below) would actually work pretty well if you had a means for draining the top partition into the bottom partition as the rice settles.
I once went through a fairly large Jewelry store and I only found one thing in there that might be worth having. It was an Anchor with diamonds and some blue gemstone on the largest part of it. I like your plushie. I think that anchor necklace would match him well.
EVERSTUCK. 😂 Edit: I am astonished by how many grown-ups have plushy toys. I am proud host of a little Plush-Penguin colony on my desk. I felt a bit goofy about it but not anymore. Also I think a Penguin would go well with the Little Captain. 😊
Other comments have mentioned the Horatio Hornblower story where wet rice expands and sinks a ship. There is a story of this actually happening. The the freighter Cali in Grand Caymen was sunk by the expansion of her cargo of rice. The ship came into port to ride out a hurricane and the crew went ashore. However hatches weren't closed properly and water from the storm started to ingress. It reached the massive amount of rice onboard which expanded so substantially the pressure cracked the hull and resulted in her sinking. At least that's the legend they tell tourists
As much as it is a nice story I can't actually find anything that supports this theory. All accounts only speak of the bad weather leading to the ship sinking.
This is one of those vids that you say “oh, c’mon how can rice sink a ship? That’s ridiculous!” Then when explained you go “oh, okay, that makes sense” 😂
Bauxite is more about liquefaction. Both grain cargoes and liquefaction cargoes are concerned about the cargo compressing during the voyage. This video covers the grain cargo reason very well (provides space for the grain to shift within the hold). But for cargoes prone to liquefaction such as bauxite, the reason you are worried about the cargo compressing is that this will squeeze out any moisture retained by the cargo, causing the cargo to act more like a fluid. If you ensure the bauxite (or similar ore cargoes) do not have a moisture content exceeding the TML then the cargo will not liquefy, and stability will not be compromised. Grain cargo shifting cannot be mitigated by controlling the moisture of the cargo. It strictly comes down to angle of repose, and available volume for cargo to shift. The two phenomena (grain shift and liquefaction) do result in a change in transverse stability, so they are often lumped together. Especially after the BULK JUPITER accident brought attention to the liquefaction issue. But a cargo which undergoes liquefaction truly acts like a liquid and will slosh back and forth, while a grain shift is a sudden shift of the solid cargo within the hold which will likely not shift back. The physical phenomena behind liquefaction and grain shift are different.
@@phantomsplit3491 I was wondering if baffles are used, they are a relatively simple mitigation for fluid sloshing. I figured if not, it was due to the baffles slowing the unloading.
@@beardedchimp They are almost never used. It used to be required that things like baffles or bagging cargoes were required in the 1940s and 50s. But as naval architecture developed, these regs were seen as too over-the-top. The baffles get in the way when discharging cargo and cleaning the holds to a white glove standard (required for food grade cargoes). Ships designed to carry grain will have enough reserve stability and/or self-trimming cargo holds. If a ship which does not usually carry grain but for some reason or another decides to carry grain for a voyage or two, they may install baffles or tween decks to prevent the grain cargo from shifting. This is exceedingly rare at least in my part of the world
I’m Spain there’s a common expression “estás más perdido que el barco arroz”, translates to your more lost the the rise ship. This expresión came about because in my town Torrox a ship in the 1930s got lost, struck some rocks and capsized and sunk only 20 or 30 meters for the shaw. I’ve been snorkelling many times there it’s great.
As long as you build compartments into the bag. Like bubble wrap, but with the several sections coming back to a central filling point. You also need to be able to withstand a decent bit of pressure as the force from shifting grain can drastically increase the pressure in the bag from it's initial setpoint. I think the main issue there is what happens when you lose a bag in transit and the grain can now shift while you are loaded beyond free grain stability? You can't realistically enter the hold to replace the bag as thats a massive operation that would require a crane and likely a confined spaces entry team as operations will likely have to occur inside the grain bin to restore normal level before the new bag is installed. So while I agree it's a good potential safety device to ensure a normally loaded ship transits safely. It's an added cost and shipping companies are just as cheap as Mc Scrooge is with money. They would never spend an extra penny to ensure the safety of the crew over cargo.
Why do they need to do this? The video says that there seem to have been no ship losses due to grain cargo shifting in the last 65 years. Why are you proposing to spend money solving a problem that doesn't exist?
I thought rice was shipped in containers, not free as in the illustrations. Rigid containers would solve the issue but bags maybe not? 🤔 I’m asking you who are experienced. I’m way out of my league but found the video very interesting.
@@ilovecatvideos1851 Bags fix the problem because, although the bag is flexible, rice can't move from one bag to another, so the bags stay basically where you put them. But carrying rice in bags in a pain, because you have to put it in the bags, and it's much easier to dump a thousand tons of rice in a cargo hold than to put 10,000 10kg sacks into a hold.
On wooden ships, there was a risk of the rice splitting the sides of the ship and sinking it if it got wet and expanding. The Little Captain is cute, personally would like a Little Chief Engineer or Little Stoker.
I would think that this might be solved with either a plate lowered down on the grain after loading, or having an extra container at top to "refill" the hold as the grain compacts.
Not so much, because those have much steeper angles of repose. The angle of repose of dry sand is about 34 degrees, so your ship would have to heel to 34 degrees before the cargo would move. If your ship is heeling that far, it probably has really significant problems even before the cargo shifts.
@@Yarf.McBarfhey tend to be caused by dust in an enclosed space. Cargo holds are as a rule when loading and unloading, open to the air. The dust ideally doesn't get a chance to build up to the levels were it becomes explosive. There is also the fact that this is occurring dockside, the air is generally always fairly moist there. There are however still safety measures in place for this. There are after all a long history of cargo fires and explosions aboard ships with granular cargoes. Nearly all grain elevator fire/explosion stories these days are linked to companies ignoring safety procedures and the lack of inspections, port facilities tend to be inspected more often (ideally).
@@Yarf.McBarf In the UK and Europe grain and flour silos and road tankers have to be earthed before loading or unloading to eliminate any static build up which may cause a spark.
Could some sort of expanding air bladder hold the grain in place? It could have a system constantly adding pressure and therefore depth as the grain settles?
I was thinking a plate sitting on top that drops as it settles but the bladder idea would be more practical. There would be trouble if it burst or had a leak though.
@@nicholasvinenI feel like the plate would be more practical. I have no idea how you'd work getting an expanding bladder as a stopgap to work practically. Additional sensors...? Additional wiring for all of the mechanisms? A plate, or configuration of several, would probably be more cost effective
The 3 solutions I immediately thought of were: 1. Narrowing the hold at the top 2. Using vertical dividers 3. Applying large, flat weights, covering the top of the grain, to artificially reduce the size of the hold as the grain settles. I suppose it says my instincts are good that 2 of the 3 were already in use.
Back in the 80s I was hired to haul grain from a silo in the train yard to a nearby dairy. First load filled the truck and left the yard. At the first stop sign I came to a stop and about a ton of grain came over the top of the cab. No one told me that you only load the truck 2/3 full to allow for shifting.
Older regulations developed shortly after the Titanic sank required additional precautions such as baffles or bagging grain-like cargoes. But these regulations were seen as overly burdensome and resulted in a lot of lost profits, so the international community drafted some less strict regulations. As countries began voluntarily applying these proposed regulations, there was an increase in grain ships gone missing. So the regulations swung back into the current middle ground of: - If you are carrying grain, your ship needs a larger GM (i.e. more reserve stability) - If any of your cargo holds are not completely filled, you need a much larger GM. - If you correctly install things like baffles, tween decks, or bag the cargo then these safety factors can be reduced. Or self trimming cargo holds. Most ships that are dedicated grain carriers go with the self-trimming holds option. Loading and unloading around the baffles is too much of a pain. You get left with so much residue in these cargo holds during discharge that small bulldozers are loaded into the holds to push it all together so the last bits can be discharged. Baffles get in the way. You also need to clean cargo holds to a white glove standard prior to loading a food grade cargo, and baffles get in the way
Funny to come across this video. I recollect while studying a completely none related subject in secondary school, the subject of transportation of commodities was being looked at. This was in the1970’s. Tankers sinking loaded with Rice was a thing. For some reason the question of large transportation vessels moving Rice was touched on, and there was quite a bit of interest in this. We had an excellent teacher, and it was a very interesting lesson with active discussion, and we got completely off base. Food and resource, production and transportation are a large segment of what makes the world tick. Good video and I hope many people view it, and perhaps generate more discussion about how food gets moved around the world. I guess I’m a geek cause it very interesting and always learn new stuff.
With iron you should smelt it then use 9 ingots to craft an iron block and place the blocks on the ship. This should work as long as you don’t accidentally place any pumpkins.
@@Clyde0000 Yeah, iron is much more stable compared to grain. Plus, ingots and block of metal is much more larger and durable compared to grain, so if you fill it up to the top, it will be impossible for it to move around nor find space to fill up.
Hornblower ran into trouble with a cargo of rice because a ship he was sent onto as Prize commander (I think this is in Midshipman Hornblower - not certain - possibly Lieutenant Hornblower) - had been holed below the waterline during the engagement in which it was captured. Little water was showing in the bilges, so they decided the holing cannot have been too bad. Later, as the deck-boards explode upwards and the ship tears itself apart, they realise that the rice has been absorbing the inrushing water and expanding.
Mmm, it's 2AM and I have work tomorrow, and I've just been recommended a video about the dangers of rice on ships from a channel I've never seen before. So of course I watched it.
my husband works on a research boat. He travels with a very worn, very dirty kittycat. Jeremy keeps him safe. I ordered one of these to live full time on the boat where his work bags live
Thought it was shifting at first and wondered why not just fill it full so it doesn't shift. I completely forgot about settling I think I have a solution though, just make a giant airbag which pushes against the grain so it doesn't shift, similar to the airbags used for shipping boxes As the grain settles just fill up more air into the bag
Ambrose Bierce wrote about a ship with a cargo of dead cats. Unfortunately the owners did not take into consideration that dead cats actually swell to a remarkable degree, causing the ship to explode and sink in the middle of the Atlantic.
The Little Captain is out now! Get yours from store.casualnavigation.com
You forgot a very dangerous aspect: Water intrusion. When grain gets wet, it swells. This swelling can create a huge amount of pressure, enough to damage the hull or bulkheads. This happened when the German ship PAMIR sank. I would like to see a video on that ship regardless, it has a intersecting tale as the last large sail powered cargo ship.
I mean...you called it your Little Captain? And it's about 5 inches? I mean...really? Maybe this is a US thing, but this seems like a pretty clear reference to something. I'm not sure this is the marketing angle you were after. Or...actually, maybe people will buy it because they find that hilarious, who knows? Just want you to be aware of the potential double entendre here.
That's a perfect gift for my dad :D He likes to go on cruises or river boat rides with his wife. And now they're going to have a little captain watching out for them 🥰
@@brianmulholland2467 "Don't let my wife hear you call it that."
You could have an inflatable bladder or balloon under a few PSI of pressure in top of the cargo under the lid. That should stop anything moving.
Definitely not in the reports but some years ago, the ship I was working on was loading maize and the loading apparatus operator didn't listen when the officers told him to shift is loading position. The result was a sudden 40 degrees list towards the dock, with our mooring cable holding tight. We evacuated the ship and only the chief engineer and second engineer went back to pump water in the ballast to bring the ship back somewhat upright. In the following sea passage, we faced heavy gale and large waves. We arrived at destination with a good 20 degrees list on the same starboard side.
Wow 40 degrees. That's insane.
Scary stuff. My father was a captain, and he always said that the last people you should trust, or rather never trust at all are the dock workers, they're only interested in loading/unloading your ship as fast as possible and they didn't give two shits about the ships safety. Always double and triple check whatever they were doing and never take their word for anything.
@@associatedblacksheepandmisfits You wrote nonsense and two people liked it. What's going on here?
@@AgentRafa Was just about to say that. More about the industry as a whole, but there is always someone who knows nothing about working on ships that think they know more than anyone.
@@AgentRafa I have bad experience with stevedores, very unprofessional people
Both my grandfather and uncle were Merchant Mariners prior to the mid-fifties, and neither would crew on a grain ship. This mostly due to a very bad trip my grandfather had on one in the late 1930s, where they nearly lost the ship due to a cargo shift. Thanks for the very good explanation of the problems!
Why dont they use outrigging like the pacific islanders.
@@scoutstripedwolf950Drag is the reason for no outriggers, the real question is why not baffles.
I thought initially that it was to do with the rice expanding if wet, but it's more to do with it moving
Same here. In one of the Hornblower stories they lose a ship because of it.
Probably not a very good business if your rice becomes wet
This is what I thought as well. Specifically, how much moisturizer the grain has absorbed prior to loading and having that mess up the ballast calculation. I suppose they must weigh the grain before loading though.
I thought that as well at first
Thats probably the clickbait
When I woke up this morning I wouldn't have imagine I would have considered the design dynamics necessary to safely ship Rice of all things.
My first thought was the expansion of rice when it gets wet, like in that Horatio Hornblower story where a damaged but floating ship's hull eventually burst from the rice expanding.
remember everyone, if your rice gets too wet, stick your phones into it to draw out the moisture.
And when the grain becomes wet, it begins to germinate, releasing heat. There were many cases when a strong fire started in the holds with temperatures up to 2000 degrees celsius due to wetting of the cargo.
@@kkameha7354 Applies to any organic product, many a fire brigade has been called to a dung heap self combusting on a farm or a fire in a grain silo/shed or a silage/hay barn caused by self combustion.
This is very unintuitive to me. Enzymes denature and stop functioning above certain temperatures (generally far below combustion).
I'll read up later what's actually involved, but for now it's fun to speculate about the underlying mechanisms as a mental exercise.
@@tonys1636 it is one thing when a fire occurs in a barn, and it is completely different when, due to wetting of cargo, for example, in a storm, water floods the lids of the holds. There's no fire brigade to call, and deck crew can't do much, especially in a storm. Plus, the CO2 fire extinguishing system will not help much, because this is not a fire in itself, but a very strong chemical reaction. I've been in this situation myself and the only option other than to leave the ship was to dock at the nearest port and start unloading immediately.
the most shocking thing i learned here is that grain is stored loosely during shipping. i would've expected it to be in crates or something
Most grains are sold in sacks, so I expected they were loaded that way, which wouldn't cause this issue.
Pillowcases
I would have thought the weight of the grain above would crush the grain on the bottom but maybe that's just not an issue for whatever reason
This is the easiest way to transfer cargo from 1 vessel to another and most efficient use of space imagine how long it would take to load a ship carrying a bag at a time and there would also be a waste of a bunch of space woulf also need compartments in between cuz if you stack too many backs on top of each others ones at the bottom might tear
@@foresthill8462 Do the maths. How much does a sack weigh? How many sacks in 200,000-400,000 tons. How long to load sacks onto pallets and then off-load and stack. How many stevedores? A nightmare of a time consuming and expensive job. Bulk is the way to go.
When we load rice in Thailand, the holds carrying rice in bulk (not in sack) are only filled half full then the top layer was trimmed flat and loaded with two layers of tonner bags filled with rice. Other holds that are filled with 25 and 50kg bags are onky filled up to 90-95%.
I was thinking that the obvious solution was to divide up the cargo like that to limit how much it could shift.
Yeah, I was thinking they would be loaded in bags instead to avoid that issue. Also changes the method of unloading the cargo a bit
yeah this is a brain dead shit , 😂 i was like why is it not in a bag tho ?
Tom Scott recommended your channel and now I see why. Thank you for a breakdown of hazards that even a non-seaman can follow!
the biggest difference between fluid and a pile of grain is that fluid changes with the ship but grain will move suddenly and alot at once so its not just shifting gravity its also carrying a great deal of momentum
_Alot_ is a town in India. Are you speaking about _Indian_ grain?
Yeah, that's what he said in the video we all just watched ffs.
@@ryans756 nah, the video talks more about static momentum, that the grain will shift to the side, then stay off-center even if you rock the other way a bit. The comment talks about momentum is about the dynamic force of the rice shifting from center to off-center adding a shock of rotational force.
I'm not sold on granules and grains being significantly more forceful personally, but it's it's a distinct argument from the video.
@@LibertyMonk it seems intuitive to me that the grain shift would probably have a smaller total impulse since the grain/particulate is lighter and less dense but that you’d possibly have an equal or greater torque since it’s happening suddenly. Which does seem more dangerous since you could say be listing significantly but safely from wind or wave loads only to have a sudden torque push you into negative GZ. Relatively a liquid load which shifts continuously would allow your righting moment more time to gracefully take up the shifting center of gravity.
@@coloradostrong8285 Never understood the need to differentiate alot from allot. That's the only reason I can imagine that we should not simply accept alot as a new word
beautifully explained. short and sweet
no fluff to boost the length of the video
no loud music
thank you
So this is one of those rare cases where trucking and marine problems converge. I run an end dump and ive run into this same issue. Even if i load my truck to the rim (which is not only illegal but imposible as the weight will break the truck) this stuff will shift quite easily and can roll a truck. So you gotta be careful both how you load the grain and drive. You see this quite a bit with overturned grain haulers. While we dont have the same listing issues as a ship. A lot of roads are slanted and many offramps have an extreme lean to them. Go too fast where the trailer leans too and the whole load can shift and you go over. Same with unloading. Unload on uneven ground and the grain can shift to one side suddenly and pull the trailer over. Or if the grain was loaded unevenly to one side or shifted to one side or another i can have the exact same effect and over goes the trailer.
Never thought how that would effect barges or ships till now though.
I'm on the other end of this. I've worked with ships my entire professional life, and never considered how a grain shift can occur on a truck going around a bend. Neat to learn about these applications.
@@phantomsplit3491 What a cool little meeting of minds.
What a cool insight into a job I could never do
I was drunk once and turned the corner in my hallway a little too fast.
It's nice to be counted among such professionals
I think the best way to reduce cargo shift is to subdivide the hold longitudinally to minimize the transverse motion of the cargo
Those subdivisions are called baffles, if you didn't know. These are commonly used in liquid tanking trucks such as fuel transporters or even firetrucks. They use them for a fairly similar reason, to stop or limit the extreme shift of contents that can become very problematic when you have to brake quickly on a highway, for example.
@@fizzmoe9846 yes, first time to know that they are used in those trucks......thank you for this piece of information.
The 1957 incident of course being the "Pamir", basically one of the last cargo sailing ships. A lot of additional factors in that, too. A captain that was a last-minute replacement for the regular captain, a crew consisting mainly of cadets in training, and a dock worker strike that led to some shortcuts by those cadets taking over their jobs during loading.
I would not of guessed they were still sailing cargo in the 50s
the risks of using scab labor
@@guppy719 The Pamir was a floating academy for aspiring merchant marine officers. Much like many navies across the globe operate tall ships as officer schools.
@@guppy719 Cargo ships going on oceanic voyages were almost entirely steam propulsion by then. As seen by the military supply convoys used in WW2. You'd still have sail for some coastal trade at that time, but ships were no longer being built for that. It was just the remaining ships from decades prior which hadn't gone out of service yet.
@@guppy719 Sailing ships lasted well into the early 20th century for a few reasons. They were often faster than steamers for the same displacement as more powerful engines were not economical until more modern steam and especially diesel engines appeared. They also had a greater cargo volume because they didn't have an engine and massive coal bunkers and water tanks. High end, all-steel four-mast sailing vessels were a true marvel of design, some had a steam engine, to help pull the rigging and could tack more efficiently than a fully manned classic sailing vessel, further extending their usefulness. The magnificent five masted Preussen could reach up to 20 knots and carried 7800 tons of cargo.
These sailing ships survived until the interwar period and the death knell came in WWII where despite a potentially very high top speed, unreliable winds meant that one day they could outrun any submarine, only to find themselves in the doldrums the next and wide open to attack.
Another issue was that modern cargo vessels started to appear like bulk carriers and didn't have to worry about sails when loading and unloading, as palettisation and containerization happened, sailing ships were at a huge disadvantage as it made the use of increasingly more powerful dock cranes, which considerably cut dead time in port, with a faster turnover and greater cargo capacity they become more profitable than sailing vessels.
What was left after WWII was used up until replaced by more modern ships.
I believe that we've been hauling grain on ships for a very long time - like thousands of years - so there has been plenty of time for ship builders to work these things out. I once met a draft surveyor, and after he explained what a draft surveyor was, he mentioned that he was a member in the 'oldest guild' in continuous operation.
🤣
The Steamer Arlington was carrying 100,000 bushels of wheat when the cargo shifted north of Manitou Island on Lake Superior. The vessel was only afloat for a half hour after the initial shift and she capsized taking 18 of her 24 crew with her. This was in 1942
I thought grains would've been transported in sacks and loaded in crates, but after your explanation, I'm surprised they don't use a design similar to oil tankers. The hull is divided into 3 longitudinal columns, and further partitioned to create smaller compartments where listing won't have that large an effect as compared to a single room where the grain would be piled in
I wonder if the space you lose by building that extra stuff makes shipping rice not worth the cost because you're shipping less rice. Definitely interesting to think about
I think it is due to what he refers as the ship construction date, most recent surely have it fixed.
@@Kevinofrepublicthere are no ships only design to carry Rice. It's bulk carrier which one voyage can carry rice and other voyage coal.
because making one big hold is cheaper then making it partitioned
Not 100% sure if it's also possible with rice, but dusts explosions in grain elevators actually aren't unheard of, even more so sugar, flour or instant coffee. Just a fun little fact
dust explosions are possible everywhere where you have any substance that produces dust that can be oxidised with the oxygen in air. that includes basically any dry organic substance and even some inorganic things you might not think of as flammable, like rock dust. so yes, it's very possible with rice aswell.
I grew up in the Midwest and happened to be nearby when a grain silo exploded. Pieces of heavily reinforced concrete feet thick were busted out like glass and hurled hundreds of feet. It was totally appalling here is a short video on it. The Debruce Grain Disaster 1998 | A Plainly Difficult Documentary
Plainly Difficult did a video on a grain silo explosion... Interesting watch. (The Debruce Grain Disaster 1998)
Non-dairy creamer powder is quite good at burning when aerosolized.
Dust explosions can happen with wood products like wood chips and paper. That's why there's explosions at mills
Well researched and well done.
Speaking as a master mariner with grain experience.
High value rice would be put in supersacks, 1m x 1m x 1m cube bags, thus changing the angle of repose.
Another advantage of vertical separation is that it can add longitudinal stiffness and resistance to the ship, rather than only having a huge hollow space.
I like your subtle visual commentary at 0:07.
Would have missed it if you hadn't commented! 😂 thanks!! Hahaha
I am gona be honest, i absolutely adore the little Captain.
Thanks for the quality content, have a great day yall!
I never would’ve thought rice sinking a ship was even a possibility but it makes perfect sense. Crazy how these things work.
A vertical divider only needs to be full height for liquids, with grains only the top portion flows so the divider can be half hieght(top half)
Vertical dividers did seem to be the most obvious solution for this this. Halving the potential mass movement is going to make a huge difference to the stability change, quartering this would probably make the stability change almost trivial in comparison. However I'd definitely carefully check to see if full height division compared to partial height division is necessary as grains act in many ways like a fluid, just one that's more resistant to movement (it's called grain-fluid modelling).
The overall principle is similar to container ships - it doesn't really matter what happens within an individual container as long as what happens is limited to the container - the overall stability of the ship doesn't change much.
I’ve have never once thought of anything like this before and I came up with this solution half way through the video. I find it hard to believe an engineer couldn’t easily come up with this.
@@MikesDIY I had the same idea about halfway through the video. Why not simply divide the entire cargohold into different sections so the rice can only shift inside it's own section but not the entire width of the ship. That way, each section keeps it's own volume and weight and you won't have any issues.
@PowerPC603 I thought a ship tilts as a unit, so individual compartments wouldn't help. You'd have the same issue, just in several places. A center divider seems like the most reasonable option, but like everyone else, I'm no engineer.
@@HexLabz if there were individual compartments, it would keep the grain from shifting to the other side of the ship. If you had boxes of cereal stacked evenly across a teeter totter and you moved the top row to the other side, it would weigh down that side significantly, but if you just tilted the cereal inside of each box, it wouldn’t unbalance the teeter totter much (if at all).
Love how simple and complicated the problem and the solutions can be
Great video, Im studing to become at master mariner(captain) and we are learning about this int. bulk code and so on, great to be able so visualise the rule and how the grain cargo shifts.
Would be nice if you touched on how they secure the grain cargo, like filling the hold to eliminate shifting or trimming the cargo and even securing the grain cargo with a larg bag/tarp.
Great video as always, keep up
The great work!
I'm honestly surprised that more modern ships don't have a levelling arm (a boom arm built into the hold that can be swept across the cargo with a large brush type attachment) that can be used to adjust the cargo back to level if it should shift.
Or a set of surface level removable baffles that can be placed ontop of the cargo to limit how far it can shift.
Admittedly its all money and extra work, so I can see why they don't exist.
It suddenly reminded me of when I was a kid in the early 80s and I played a small role in a tv series. I was this kid who was kidnapped
And I had to escape the warehouse or silo (can’t remember it was a set) by climbing up the grain hill.
Nobody in the crew figured that a little kid would actually sink into the grain. Just 3 meters up and I was already to my knees in the grain and couldn’t move any further 😂 two guys literally had to pull me out.
Videos on so many specific cargoes leads to reflection on how steep/tragic the historic learning curve for shipping has been. Since every item ever shipped has (potentially) dealt with both its "first" & "lessons learned" voyage.
@jankrynicky I only now re-read my comment, and you put it in much simpler terms. Thank you! But yes, I've watched his channel from near the outset (I think?), and only during this video did it hit all at once. Whether a tragedy occurred or was merely "close", it appears safety on the sea today can only be defined after innumerable instances of terror.
I don't mean that to sound flip, and of course I can only say this "feels" like the case. After all my entire knowledge of shipping comes almost exclusively from watching his few videos! Take it easy.
"Everstuck." I love those little nuggets you include in your videos.
when i was younger and worked the docks, we had 2 ways of loading rice, one was in giant bags and the other was rice being "pumped" into the hold. I know they preferred the giant bags!
They need to build multiple vertical baffles lengthwise in the ship so not all the weight of the shifting grain goes past the center line. Instead, it is relegated to various vertical domains, left-to-right.
AKA baffles.
Excellent explanations, graphics and delivery. For me this is one of the best educational channels on you tube.. I've never been on a boat/ship with the exception of a couple of crappy car ferries and have zero interest in sailing, but these clips simply grab my attention every time...
Im brand new here. Lol But i wanna go ahead and already thank you immensely, the trove of treasure TH-cam offers because people want to share their knowledge is truly like a blessing. I just try to show my gratitude because it is deserved and your quality shows. I probably say this alot but it is sincere for whatever its worth. (I hope i said that right after sincere lol)
I love learning how simple fixes can solve major problems. Until we understood the physics of forces, these things had to be worked out by trial and error. Probably took hundreds of years that way. Now we can calculate things in minutes. I love this channel.
Problems of this kind didn't exist before we had the huge ships. The old wooden sailing ships didn't have a whole section where they just dumped rice or fluids, the stuff was packaged. This greatly reduced the possible shifting of the mass. After all, a few bales or barrels having the content settle and then shift doesn't account for a lot relatively. It is the horizontal partition solution inherent in the packaging of goods, with a lot more partitions.
For much of historic engineering we solved the problem of not fully understanding the forces involved by massively over engineering the solution.
For example with bridges, they would build these massive, thick and very strong structures. Scientific advancement and computer modelling has let us understand what is actually required, stopping us from wasting materials that provide no benefit.
@@beardedchimpThe overengineering may or may not have helped allow some of those last longer than many current day structures. Hitting bare minimum when your clearance value slowly decreases over the years until you end up no longer end up clearing it and the structure fails usually means more work is needed for maintaining the structure, or needing a replacement sooner
@@gaerekxenos you make a good point. An over-engineered building can increase the total mass so much that over the decades subsidence can become a serious issue, the ground underneath simply can't handle the weight.
My parents house in Ireland is interesting. It is relatively new, ~200 years old. It is entirely dry stone wall, no mortar at all. Some of the external walls are near 2m thick!
It wasn't until I left home about 18 years ago that my Dad explained it was all dry stone walls. Kind of terrified me, you are telling me there is nothing holding it together?
It still standing after 200 years is reassuring and it did explain why the walls were so thick and every room in the house is totally wonky.
Fortunately Ireland has very little seismic activity or other risks of natural disaster. I imagine an relatively minor earthquake by Japanese/American standards would flatten the whole house.
Even the ancient egyptians and greeks knew how to calculate physics. People were not any stupider back then.
8 seconds in and that EVERSTUCK on the ships side make me bust out laughing.
I never thought about grain like rice sinking a ship, then again, I didn’t think about potatoes either.
The Little Captain is so cute/adorable
This was in my feed today and I learned something new today. Very interesting subject. Thank you!
Thanks for you videos!
I've carried grain and put the tween deck pontoons on top of the cargo. On ships whiteout tweendecks, we've put the last bits of cargo in big bags and then put those on top of the cargo.
So the design and implementation has been very successful...no disasters for nearly 70 years....well done.
Right off the bat i was like "surely a series of vertical partitions would solve this" and i was glad to see it is so.
Honestly, I expected that to be the most common answer, but looking ship designs up, the sloped top and bottom seem to be the industry standards, since it keeps the weight from being too far offsides, without forcing specialized loading setups like vertical divisions do. Grain loading conveyers tend to be massive stationary structures, making it very hard to fill one side and then the other.
You can always do what Concrete pourers do. Use something to vibrate all the air out and ensure the grain sits tight, allowing you to fill it all the way up
I don‘t think that it is possible to do that on a cargo ship.
@@Reaperfalll I don't see why not, Long piece of steel rod connected to something with a big head and that vibrates
I'm assuming it's the same reason why grain is poured in rather than dumped in gunny sacks. The holds probably have pretty small entrances & anything large enough to do the job would be pretty difficult to bring in or you'll have to have more than one of those things.
@@salemsaberhagan You gave me a good ideal. Why not vacuum seal the grain in rigid bags so you can stack them. Maybe that could work
@@bobkin611 someone who said they're a mariner with grain ship experience said in one of the other comments that they do have bags sometimes but that's for the expensive kinds of rice. So I'm assuming it's just too expensive & most companies don't have the margins for that. Rice is a staple good & a lot of countries have either subsidies or price caps on the foodstuff. It all boils down to money apparently.
Really interesting! I knew they must have had to account for shift, but I wasn't sure exactly what they did. Great video as always, and the Little Captain is super cute. I ordered one for my daughter since her room has a nautical theme. World Hydrography Day is coming up, it would be neat if you did a video about charts or surveying :D
Not sure if this would be economically viable, but you could have an inflatable bladder positioned over the grain connected to a source of pressurized air. If the grain settles, the bladder would expand under the pressure and fill the space, preventing the grain from shifting.
It is not needed. Enough is that vessel is loaded correctly.
I read The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby, about a circumnavigation on a steel sailing ship (only a small donkey engine to help manage the sails and such, motive power provided by wind on sails) bringing Australian grain (wheat I think) to Europe. The grain was in sacks, with a few sacks intentionally slit so they’d leak a little grain and fit together better. How much the sacks and slitting some helped avoid problems I don’t know.
Sacks would completely solve the problem. The problem is caused by bulk quantities of grain moving, and the sacks mean you have no bulk quantities. But sacks are incredibly slow to load and unload.
That was when one of the ships started in peacetime and finished in a war zone? Am I right?
Love the little Everstuck joke at the start.
My brother is a captain for American Cruise lines, I think I know what I'm getting for him the next time he's home 😂❤
I have my Little Captain and I love him. He sits on my night stand overseeing my video watching!
"Rice is great if you're really hungry and want to eat two thousand of something." ~ Mitch Hedburg
😂i can't imagine living without rice
I think the horizontal split (containers partitioned above and below) would actually work pretty well if you had a means for draining the top partition into the bottom partition as the rice settles.
I once went through a fairly large Jewelry store and I only found one thing in there that might be worth having.
It was an Anchor with diamonds and some blue gemstone on the largest part of it. I like your plushie. I think that anchor necklace would match him well.
sounds like a waste to bling out something that's going to sit on the ocean floor, but hey, whatever makes people happy i guess
Holy fuck why can’t more TH-cam channels be like this. Easy to understand illustrations, straight to the point, and information-packed. Nice!
EVERSTUCK. 😂
Edit: I am astonished by how many grown-ups have plushy toys. I am proud host of a little Plush-Penguin colony on my desk. I felt a bit goofy about it but not anymore.
Also I think a Penguin would go well with the Little Captain. 😊
😂😂😂i have a dozen collected since young
I think the captain will go well with penguins, just don't go to Madagascar
Really, not THAT many adults…..;>)
Other comments have mentioned the Horatio Hornblower story where wet rice expands and sinks a ship. There is a story of this actually happening.
The the freighter Cali in Grand Caymen was sunk by the expansion of her cargo of rice. The ship came into port to ride out a hurricane and the crew went ashore. However hatches weren't closed properly and water from the storm started to ingress. It reached the massive amount of rice onboard which expanded so substantially the pressure cracked the hull and resulted in her sinking.
At least that's the legend they tell tourists
As much as it is a nice story I can't actually find anything that supports this theory. All accounts only speak of the bad weather leading to the ship sinking.
@@Sadreath :) thanks
Don't really believe it rice doesn't expand like that
lol at the boat being called, "EVERSTUCK"
The next time I cook some Minute Rice, I'll remember just how dangerous it can be.
This is one of those vids that you say “oh, c’mon how can rice sink a ship? That’s ridiculous!” Then when explained you go “oh, okay, that makes sense” 😂
Me who knows the reason why but still watch it. :)
"Everstuck" well played. 👏 👏 👏
This also happens with bauxite. It is easily fluidized.
Bauxite is more about liquefaction. Both grain cargoes and liquefaction cargoes are concerned about the cargo compressing during the voyage. This video covers the grain cargo reason very well (provides space for the grain to shift within the hold). But for cargoes prone to liquefaction such as bauxite, the reason you are worried about the cargo compressing is that this will squeeze out any moisture retained by the cargo, causing the cargo to act more like a fluid. If you ensure the bauxite (or similar ore cargoes) do not have a moisture content exceeding the TML then the cargo will not liquefy, and stability will not be compromised. Grain cargo shifting cannot be mitigated by controlling the moisture of the cargo. It strictly comes down to angle of repose, and available volume for cargo to shift.
The two phenomena (grain shift and liquefaction) do result in a change in transverse stability, so they are often lumped together. Especially after the BULK JUPITER accident brought attention to the liquefaction issue. But a cargo which undergoes liquefaction truly acts like a liquid and will slosh back and forth, while a grain shift is a sudden shift of the solid cargo within the hold which will likely not shift back. The physical phenomena behind liquefaction and grain shift are different.
@@phantomsplit3491 I was wondering if baffles are used, they are a relatively simple mitigation for fluid sloshing. I figured if not, it was due to the baffles slowing the unloading.
@@beardedchimp They are almost never used. It used to be required that things like baffles or bagging cargoes were required in the 1940s and 50s. But as naval architecture developed, these regs were seen as too over-the-top. The baffles get in the way when discharging cargo and cleaning the holds to a white glove standard (required for food grade cargoes).
Ships designed to carry grain will have enough reserve stability and/or self-trimming cargo holds. If a ship which does not usually carry grain but for some reason or another decides to carry grain for a voyage or two, they may install baffles or tween decks to prevent the grain cargo from shifting. This is exceedingly rare at least in my part of the world
LOL the name of that container cargo is “Everstuck”! 🤣🤣🤣
I’m Spain there’s a common expression “estás más perdido que el barco arroz”, translates to your more lost the the rise ship. This expresión came about because in my town Torrox a ship in the 1930s got lost, struck some rocks and capsized and sunk only 20 or 30 meters for the shaw. I’ve been snorkelling many times there it’s great.
"You are more lost than a rice ship." Very interesting.
*shore* I’m pretty _sure_ that’s what you meant when you wrote Shaw.
@@JulieWallis1963 cierto
i love learning about random things that have absolutely no affect on my immediate life
Moral of the story: if you have a ship, never take rice as it could be the downfall of your journey
Nice guys finish last😂
Asians: *confused screaming*
@@death13a
Don't you mean...
Rice guys finish last?
😎
So no Honda civics?
@@XyminEdits Asian explorers: *chuckles* "I'm in danger."
Don't think I will ever use this knowledge but always nice to learn new things.
I was very sad today, it's been a bad day. Then I saw the little captain and I was cheered up a lot 🙂
I will buy myself a little captain for my desk 🙂
"Everstuck"! Nice shade throwing there!
Couldn't they put a big pressurized bag on top of the rice or grain and use it to fill the area above the rice? Something like a bouncy castle! :D
That's exactly what I was thinking - except mine was a big metal platform that lowers from the top and presses the grains down
As long as you build compartments into the bag. Like bubble wrap, but with the several sections coming back to a central filling point. You also need to be able to withstand a decent bit of pressure as the force from shifting grain can drastically increase the pressure in the bag from it's initial setpoint.
I think the main issue there is what happens when you lose a bag in transit and the grain can now shift while you are loaded beyond free grain stability? You can't realistically enter the hold to replace the bag as thats a massive operation that would require a crane and likely a confined spaces entry team as operations will likely have to occur inside the grain bin to restore normal level before the new bag is installed.
So while I agree it's a good potential safety device to ensure a normally loaded ship transits safely. It's an added cost and shipping companies are just as cheap as Mc Scrooge is with money. They would never spend an extra penny to ensure the safety of the crew over cargo.
Why do they need to do this? The video says that there seem to have been no ship losses due to grain cargo shifting in the last 65 years. Why are you proposing to spend money solving a problem that doesn't exist?
I thought rice was shipped in containers, not free as in the illustrations. Rigid containers would solve the issue but bags maybe not? 🤔 I’m asking you who are experienced. I’m way out of my league but found the video very interesting.
@@ilovecatvideos1851 Bags fix the problem because, although the bag is flexible, rice can't move from one bag to another, so the bags stay basically where you put them. But carrying rice in bags in a pain, because you have to put it in the bags, and it's much easier to dump a thousand tons of rice in a cargo hold than to put 10,000 10kg sacks into a hold.
Reminds me of a video I saw a year ago of Bauxite Liquifaction. Cargo shifting to one side. Definitely took lives.
On wooden ships, there was a risk of the rice splitting the sides of the ship and sinking it if it got wet and expanding.
The Little Captain is cute, personally would like a Little Chief Engineer or Little Stoker.
I would think that this might be solved with either a plate lowered down on the grain after loading, or having an extra container at top to "refill" the hold as the grain compacts.
NEAT thank you. I guess this would also apply to sand or pelletized iron ore, stuff like that.
Not so much, because those have much steeper angles of repose. The angle of repose of dry sand is about 34 degrees, so your ship would have to heel to 34 degrees before the cargo would move. If your ship is heeling that far, it probably has really significant problems even before the cargo shifts.
this video was awesome but the plush was the best part.. so cute and thoughtful
There must be an explosion risk during loading due to dust also.
I was wondering this too. There are something like 8 grain elevator explosions per year in the US due to dust igniting.
@@Yarf.McBarfhey tend to be caused by dust in an enclosed space. Cargo holds are as a rule when loading and unloading, open to the air. The dust ideally doesn't get a chance to build up to the levels were it becomes explosive. There is also the fact that this is occurring dockside, the air is generally always fairly moist there.
There are however still safety measures in place for this. There are after all a long history of cargo fires and explosions aboard ships with granular cargoes.
Nearly all grain elevator fire/explosion stories these days are linked to companies ignoring safety procedures and the lack of inspections, port facilities tend to be inspected more often (ideally).
@@Yarf.McBarf In the UK and Europe grain and flour silos and road tankers have to be earthed before loading or unloading to eliminate any static build up which may cause a spark.
I was wondering if during loading they would continuously pump nitrogen into the hold.
@@beardedchimp that would make a lot of sense!
Cheap
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I used to live near a port that shipped exclusively rice so I find this extremely fascinating.
If it does capsize, at least the crew can throw their phones in the rice to prevent them from getting wet.
I laughed louder than I should have…😂
They could just walk to shore after the rice absorbs the entire ocean
Interesting video, well made and well narrated. A+ for video quality/production of the infotainment.
Could some sort of expanding air bladder hold the grain in place? It could have a system constantly adding pressure and therefore depth as the grain settles?
I was thinking a plate sitting on top that drops as it settles but the bladder idea would be more practical. There would be trouble if it burst or had a leak though.
Nice idea.
@@nicholasvinenI feel like the plate would be more practical. I have no idea how you'd work getting an expanding bladder as a stopgap to work practically. Additional sensors...? Additional wiring for all of the mechanisms? A plate, or configuration of several, would probably be more cost effective
When I saw the title I expected this to be about water and grain interacting, but the movements of dry grain look far more dangerous.
The 3 solutions I immediately thought of were:
1. Narrowing the hold at the top
2. Using vertical dividers
3. Applying large, flat weights, covering the top of the grain, to artificially reduce the size of the hold as the grain settles.
I suppose it says my instincts are good that 2 of the 3 were already in use.
Back in the 80s I was hired to haul grain from a silo in the train yard to a nearby dairy. First load filled the truck and left the yard. At the first stop sign I came to a stop and about a ton of grain came over the top of the cab. No one told me that you only load the truck 2/3 full to allow for shifting.
I wonder if baffles like they use in fire trucks could be used to solve this problem.
Older regulations developed shortly after the Titanic sank required additional precautions such as baffles or bagging grain-like cargoes. But these regulations were seen as overly burdensome and resulted in a lot of lost profits, so the international community drafted some less strict regulations. As countries began voluntarily applying these proposed regulations, there was an increase in grain ships gone missing. So the regulations swung back into the current middle ground of:
- If you are carrying grain, your ship needs a larger GM (i.e. more reserve stability)
- If any of your cargo holds are not completely filled, you need a much larger GM.
- If you correctly install things like baffles, tween decks, or bag the cargo then these safety factors can be reduced. Or self trimming cargo holds.
Most ships that are dedicated grain carriers go with the self-trimming holds option. Loading and unloading around the baffles is too much of a pain. You get left with so much residue in these cargo holds during discharge that small bulldozers are loaded into the holds to push it all together so the last bits can be discharged. Baffles get in the way. You also need to clean cargo holds to a white glove standard prior to loading a food grade cargo, and baffles get in the way
Funny to come across this video. I recollect while studying a completely none related subject in secondary school, the subject of transportation of commodities was being looked at. This was in the1970’s. Tankers sinking loaded with Rice was a thing.
For some reason the question of large transportation vessels moving Rice was touched on, and there was quite a bit of interest in this.
We had an excellent teacher, and it was a very interesting lesson with active discussion, and we got completely off base.
Food and resource, production and transportation are a large segment of what makes the world tick.
Good video and I hope many people view it, and perhaps generate more discussion about how food gets moved around the world. I guess I’m a geek cause it very interesting and always learn new stuff.
Does this apply to something like iron ore too?
With iron you should smelt it then use 9 ingots to craft an iron block and place the blocks on the ship. This should work as long as you don’t accidentally place any pumpkins.
@@Clyde0000
Yeah, iron is much more stable compared to grain. Plus, ingots and block of metal is much more larger and durable compared to grain, so if you fill it up to the top, it will be impossible for it to move around nor find space to fill up.
Hornblower ran into trouble with a cargo of rice because a ship he was sent onto as Prize commander (I think this is in Midshipman Hornblower - not certain - possibly Lieutenant Hornblower) - had been holed below the waterline during the engagement in which it was captured. Little water was showing in the bilges, so they decided the holing cannot have been too bad. Later, as the deck-boards explode upwards and the ship tears itself apart, they realise that the rice has been absorbing the inrushing water and expanding.
I am surprised to find a cargo like that is carried loose. I sort of assumed that it was all in bags...
This is uncleaned rice and grain that gets transported in ships, so it wont really matter if dirt gets in there if it gets claned afterwards anyway
Love the everstuck detail
Why cant they just transport rice in barrels? Problem solved....
emptying barrels individually cost like 50cents a barrel. lives cost less than that over time XD
That title is a waking nightmare. I had to read it four times to get it right.
Rice seems to be just as dangerous as transporting Taconite.
Mmm, it's 2AM and I have work tomorrow, and I've just been recommended a video about the dangers of rice on ships from a channel I've never seen before.
So of course I watched it.
Rice really can be deadly
my husband works on a research boat. He travels with a very worn, very dirty kittycat. Jeremy keeps him safe. I ordered one of these to live full time on the boat where his work bags live
Everstuck hehe
Fantastic representation of Righting Lever 👏
Mate, how are your animations so good? Please share your secrets, much like you do with your nautical expertise. I'm a new subscriber, by the way!
So, rice *does not* sink ships, it hasn't for two centuries...
It’s about the precautionary measures taken so that it doesn’t that, if ignored, could quite easily sink a ship.
I was in the Navy for a long time. I loved being on a ship at sea!
Thought it was shifting at first and wondered why not just fill it full so it doesn't shift. I completely forgot about settling
I think I have a solution though, just make a giant airbag which pushes against the grain so it doesn't shift, similar to the airbags used for shipping boxes
As the grain settles just fill up more air into the bag
Ambrose Bierce wrote about a ship with a cargo of dead cats. Unfortunately the owners did not take into consideration that dead cats actually swell to a remarkable degree, causing the ship to explode and sink in the middle of the Atlantic.
I never knew something as simple as grains could be so dangerous. 👀