This ship is listing 90 degrees, but in port. How did things go so wrong for it to end up like this?
(In case the photo disappears, it’s a B&W photo of a ship from sometime… I dunno… 1930-40s? on it’s side in what looks to be a dock, with a building that says “CUNARD” on it nearby.
The source site for the photo, www.yatahonga.com, seems to be a French humour site dedicated to this stuff. Searches along the lines of “cunard” and “cunard boat accident” aren’t turning up a whole lot.
I’ll keep looking…
It’s the SS Normandie. Story on linked page.
That appears to be the SS Normandie, once the largest ship in the world. During hurried refitting as the USS Lafayette, a welder set fire to a pile of kapok life jackets, and water poured on by the NY firefighters caused the ship to list, then capsize.
The Normandie caught fire and capsized due to water used for firefighting. Uncontrolled water in a vessel tends to do this. It can happen very suddenly, due to free surface effect (the tendency of a slight list to cause all free water in a ship to rush to the side of the list, causing a greater list, causing more water to rush to that side, and so on).
I know an Australian marine surveyor who was assisting with firefighting on a ship in, I think, Bangladesh with a fire in the hold. He kept telling the firefighters that if they kept pumping water in, the ship would capsize but they carried on. Eventually he stated his concern in writing and went straight to the airport and left the country. Within hours the vessel was capsized. He didn’t want to be around to be someone to blame.
I’m pretty sure it’s a picture of the SS Normandie.
Is it the SS Brittanie?
This was no boating accident.
No, that one just got drunk in public and repeatedly humiliated itself.
Really, this photo needs the appropriate caption.
Apparently, the designer of the Normandie was on site and offered to go aboard and open the seacocks so that the ship could just settle into the mud instead of capsizing[sup]1[/sup]. The fire department never followed up on the offer. The Normandie was eventually righted at great expense, only to be sold for scrap at a fraction of what it cost to refloat her. Truely a damn shame.
Yeah, it needs a caption but if I had to guess, I’d say this vessel was beached for ship breaking. An ignominious demise.
From the same site, this picture of an airshow is fasciniating. Anyone know what happened, when and where? The plane is obviously just crashing.
Looks like it’s from this accident at an airshow in Ukraine.
It’s just resting.
Safe Boating Is No Accident
You’re gonna need a less perpendicular boat.
I made the mistake of watching the video + aftermath of that once…
Boy, I don’t want to see that, it’s looks like the people running for their lives in the photo are about to be wiped out. Thanks for the link.
Which vessel? If you mean the one in the photo, no, that’d be the “Cougar Ace” which developed a severe list during a ballast transfer off Alaska in 2006. She was righted and didn’t suffer too much damage. Unfortunately a marine surveyor was killed when inspecting the vessel prior to salvage.
