maritime

  In contrast to my earlier article on food at sea in the 1950's here is a summary of information gleaned from a recent article in  the Economist (December 20, p32). The largest current cruise ship is the Star of the Seas at 250000 tons she is the largest playground at sea for 7600 guests and 2350 crew. With a dining room of 500 tables and 25 other restaurants 6000 people will eat in a 2.5 hour period The chef with his 344 other chefs and 1700 catering staff will have served and cleared up 100000 meals in one day. This is not take away food but fresh food prepared on board ship daily, a lot of it. A sample of the magnitude of the food on board is 25000 items of which include 15000 lobster  tails and 400 tons of bottled water.  In one day they will serve 6800kg of protein.  This requires large storage facilities. 210 square metres alone for frozen fish. The dry store holds 4 tons rice and 2 tons sugar and there are chilled rooms for milk, cream, butter etc. A thr...

  Seafarers today live like kings. They have all the food requirements that you would get in a hotel or a cruise ship. Deep freezes fresh vegetables etc. It was very different in the 1950s and 60s on board a 1920s reciprocating steam engine ship. The primary task of the ship, of course, is to go from A to B, but production of fresh water for the boiler to run the engine's and also for consumption by the crew was very important. But if there was a lack of fresh water it was the crew that suffered. There were no refrigerators. So the production of ice was quite important to maintain not only the beer cool, but the fresh vegetables cool. To combat this we often carried fresh meat in the form of live chickens, goats, sheep, etc. They used to live in boxes aft. So maintaining a healthy diet was quite a task for the purser. We had to order food at every port we arrived at. So leaving the UK, winter or summer, the first port was Port Said at the northern entrance to the Suez Cana...

 Background The Navigator possesses 2 personal traits that greatly enhance his ability to navigate. His eyes and his ears. Both require he or she have the highest medical standards for sight and hearing. Colour blindness is not an option if you are to be a deck officer as you must be able to distinguish between the major navigational colours of red, green and white. The navigator is trained to identify conditions in his maritime environment. The sky, the horizon, sea surface and objects around him, all need to be analysed and translated into navigational decisions. He must be able to differentiate them by day or by night. By day During the day he normally has a focus on weather. [1] To start interpreting weather for navigation purposes, the navigator first turns to the barometer. The marine barometer [2] is quite special, not at all like the circular aneroid barometers seen on land. Instead it is a glass column filled with mercury. The scale on the side facilitates the r...

  [1] Background The compass, sextant, chronometer, and radar are tools that fix the ships position on a chart, meaning the position is a known place “on the ground”. The speed of a ship is another parameter important to navigation and historically has been achieved by measuring the passage of an object alongside the ship. The principle is that an object thrown overboard stays stationery as the ship moves past it. If we can measure the time it takes for the ship to pass the object, we can measure the speed of the ship. There is an important provision here. It measures distance travelled through the water not “over the ground”. Therefore the effects of water mass movement, tide and wind on the ship are not taken account of. The structure of the log is simple. A quadrant-shaped piece of wood is weighted with lead to hold the quadrant vertical in the water. A bridle is attached to each corner of the quadrant and then to a log line that is wound on a spool. A release line is ...