Can a large ship (think a modern freighter) simply plow right through an oil slick, or would it still foul up the propellers and ruin them?
An oil slick is only inches thick. The propellers on a large ship are many feet below that.
I can’t imagine any way that the oil would harm them.
I’m not even sure that the oil would foul the props even if they were spinning in it.
If ships can’t go through oil slicks, then why are all large oil slicks fought with boats?
Google images boat oil slick.
A large ship wouldn’t even notice it sailed through an oil slick.
A guy in a canoe would barely be impacted, doubt a large ship would even notice.
Damaged ships have sailed hundreds of miles through oil slicks that they, themselves were creating.
If they’re not careful, the ship may capsize because oil is slippery.
Yes but it’s a bad idea. The oil coated hull will release oil and the ship may well itself get into legal trouble as a secondary polluter.
This would be the only real problem.
If the oil was several feet deep like 3 to 7 feet it would not be a problem for the prop.
But it might be sucked into sea chests and foul some heat exchangers.
That’s why it’s also illegal to throw a banana peel in the ocean.
I wonder if some smoker could compound the problem by tossing a lit cigarette overboard as the ship sailed through it?
I was on a ship that spent days in a thick slick. The biggest consequence was a lack of fresh water because the evaporators were shut down for fear of contamination. Smokers weren’t allowed to smoke topside but IIRC they were allowed in designated areas inside the skin of the ship.
How thick do slicks get, anyways?
The one I mentioned appeared to be two to four inches over a large area for long time.
Seems unlikely. Outside of the movies, it’s actually quite difficult to ignite even gasoline with the ember on the end of a cigarette. Crude oil is just going to extinguish it.
I would think the biggest danger to any size of boat/ship would be sucking in some of the oil with the water used to cool the engine, it might create some blockages, especially if the oil is really thick.
Even if the slick caught on fire, wouldn’t the ship’s thick metal hulls be able to resist the heat? The slick (which is thin) should burn away quickly, no?
The way it was explained to me is that typically the oil (I am assuming crude oil here) sort of self-distills; that is, the lighter, more volatile parts evaporate off first, then the less volatile parts go, and over time the heavier parts remain until you have a heavy sort of tarry sludge that congeals into little glops that adheres to stuff and sinks.
It would seem to me that this is correct, since the world’s oceans are not permanently coated with slicks left from the earliest days of tankers sinking and even before that, oil naturally seeping from the earth itself. Oil that is spilled into the ocean does go somewhere (break down as a result of natural processes), eventually.
On the other hand, it would also stand to reason that undistilled crude --crude that still has its volatile components— could be ignited if it were set alight immediately or shortly after being spilled. The oil from tankers that were torpedoed in WW2 commonly caught fire.
I’ve driven a 24’ boat through a couple of oil spills on the Ohio River. Other than having to scrub the hull afterwards we were fine. The smell isn’t pleasant though.
Yoyodyne mentioned a slick several inches thick that took days to traverse. Even if the hull above the waterline isn’t experiencing large mechanical stresses (such that thermally altered properties don’t result in immediate mechanical failure), the smoke and fumes would be problematic for the occupants of the vessel, and the heat from the fire could be transferred through the hull to flammable materials within. If the deck is low enough, and the flames high enough, ignition of on-deck materials/cargo could be a problem.