Could be either or both. The Edmund Fitzgerald case is actually an example of that, since the exact cause among structural failure, grounding (in part due to wave action) or waves staving in hatch covers, isn’t known. This analysis found it was a combination of downflooding due to waves washing over the deck (in particular a floating log or other flotsam tearing away some ballast tank vents) which then caused a main hull girder structural failure from the combination of ‘normal’ stress due to the large waves exacerbated by hull stress caused by the flooding. http://assets1.csc.com/innovation/downloads/Edmund_Fitzgerald.pdf
Likewise the exact cause of loss of a number of large seagoing bulk carriers in recent decades isn’t certainly known. However those are two fairly different animals. Big ships designed only for Great Lakes trading have much weaker main hull girders than oceangoing ships: the waves on the lakes though they can be high are not as long as ocean waves.
Today I saw a photo of the new Harmony of the Seas cruise ship. The thing is incredibly tall, and looks like a capsize accident waiting for a big wave. How can it possibly have enough ballast below the water line to stay upright, without being so deep that it would scrape the bottom of ports?
Well I don’t know about steel in warships, but certainly in commercial vessels 10mm plate is pretty standard. They rely on shape and beams and so on, not thickness of plate to achieve strength.
Two months on, and it occurs to me that I have a coworker who served on the Enterprise (aircraft carrier, damnit). I asked him, and he gave it as his opinion that it would be possible to capsize the ship under the right circumstances, those being:
[ul][li]A major storm (we’re talking a good-sized hurricane)[/li][li]A more than 15-degree list (see major storm, above)[/li][li]Light on aviation fuel (reducing the ballast considerably and contributing to the list)[/li][li]Hangar doors that were partially or fully open (either because someone didn’t secure them or the waves were strong enough to batter their way in)[/ul][/li]A contributing factor would be if the ship weren’t being steered in the most advantageous way with respect to wave size and wave and wind direction.
So, possible, but very, very unlikely, from the sound of it.
NOTE: Shagnasty said it was hard to roll one past 7 degrees, but my coworker said he was on the Enterprise when it was listing to 15 degrees. No one allowed on deck for that storm!
Correction: He was on the John F. Kennedy, not the Enterprise. The day it listed 15 or so degrees, they were:
“low on fuel oil, low on JP5 avgas, no weapons, no aircraft, double i.e., bailing out of harbor because of a hurricane heading our way. We just got underway to avoid being battered into the quay or run aground if we broke our lines.”
Every ship has a calculated stability role. That is how many degrees the ship can roll and it will return. Beyond that point the it can be questionable. I was on a ship that’s stability roll was 30 degrees and we were rolling on some many waves over 48degrees. Just to reach the stability roll of a carrier would take extream weather conditions that I have a hard time imagining, to exceed I don’t think will happen
The fact that so many scientists disputed freak waves, which apparently aren’t all that rare, because their limited math models didn’t support them is terribly sad.
Why don’t the other ships just coast in the aircraft carrier’s wake? I remember drafting behind larger ships to avoid the wake from cruise ships and freighters.
I can’t say for certain. Maybe some of them do sometimes but the support ships don’t usually stay very close to the carrier at all. The whole convoy is usually spread out over a huge area.
If you want to see what happens to a smaller (but still huge) warship in very rough seas, check out this short video. It is nothing like the aircraft carrier video and certainly not something I would want any part of. It still doesn’t capsize though.
In a previous post “Morgyn” mentioned jet fuel and ballast. Definitely an issue considering a Nimitz Class carrier carries just short of 4M gallons. And w/regard to its importance, don’t have to look any further back to 1944 when Bull Halsey attempted to refuel his fleet in a typhoon. Cost the Navy three ships and several hundred sailors.
I come up with ~1000 kg (1 tonne). How’d you get 7.5 tonnes?