If a container ship underway in open ocean would collide with an unloaded enclosed grain barge, what would happen?
This is like one of those word problems in high school math where you have to answer “not enough information” as we don’t know if it was just a glancing bump that scrapes up the paint, or if the barge is split in two and sinks immediately, or any other possible variant of what happens when two ships meet in the night.
Assuming it is at night, that is.
The Mayan Apocalypse
I don’t know, either, but if a ship carrying red paint collides with one carrying blue paint, all of the mariners will be marooned…
Thanks-it’s my first post so I’ll try to follow this tone.
Among other things, folks would wonder what a barge was doing in the open ocean.
If the container ship was carrying a lot of little yellow duckies, there just might be a book written about them: Moby-Duck - Wikipedia
Broadside collision at speed:
Whichever ship did the striking would suffer serious damage to the bow, but would probably survive. Whichever ship was struck would most likely sink. (There is a remote possibility that an empty barge would survive if each of its holds and ballast tanks were sealed against any other and if the collision occurred in the middle of a hold so that the other holds were not compromised. The weight of a single hold filled with water would not cause it to sink. Given that the barge was specified as unloaded, I would presumt that the container ship was loaded and the load is going to work to sink it if struck broadside.)
Broadside collision at reduced speed or glancing blow:
Too many variables to know wheither either or both ships would sink. One would have to see how deep the striking ship made it into the struck ship’s hull and how much damage was done. A glancing blow might simply cause a few plates to buckle and be survivable, or it might tear a huge gash in the side across multiple watertight bulkheads in the manner of the Titanic and the Costa Concordia, dooming the ship.
Barges tend to have bluffer bows than other ships, so a striking barge would spread its energy across a wider area, lessening the damage of a strike. An empty barge would also have less momentum that a full ship.
Ships tend to have narrower bows that would be fairly effective at cutting into the side of the barge. (I doubt that the bulbous bow that extends below the waterline is heavily reinforced, so I doubt that it would be effective as a ram–although it would still be able to punch into the side of most ships that were not heavily armored.)
Of course, once the collision occurred, even heavily damaged ships might be able to stay afloat for awhile in calm seas, perhaps even long enough to have some jury-rigged repairs done to let them limp to port–provided the officers on the striking ship do not react in the normal way and back out of the hole they have made.
Is there a particular scenario, (or particular ships), that prompted the OP? More information will evoke better responses.
There are a number of barges that are seagoing. (Or, it could be a New York City garbage barge. 
)
The Andrea Doria collision is instructive of much of what has been said, here: the Andrea Doria was gashed along its side, and was unable to be saved. The Stockholm, hitting the other ship straight on, was heavily damaged in its prow, but did not sink.
The collision of the Camperdown and the Victoria is very similar; the Victoria, T-boned in the side, capsized and sank quickly, whereas the Camperdown’s bow was heavily damaged, but the crew managed to block off the flooding, and the ship reached port.
It would be remiss to avoid mention of the seminal work on this topic, How to Avoid Huge Ships by Captain J. Trimmer.
The analysis can be simplified because of respective speeds. Container vessels are the racehorses of the merchant vessel fleet. Oceangoing barges are the tortoises. The only realistically likely meeting point is the bow of the container vessel against some part of the barge.
One of the reasons the Andrea Doria sank was because she was not in ballast. She was designed to have ballast water in empty fuel tonks, double bottom tanks. As she was coming into port the Chief Engineer had pumped the water out of the tanks before crosssing the bar. That left a large air bubble on one side of the ship below the water line.
Okay, 'fess up. Is this a joke? The customer reviews read like jokes, and the price of the book – $199.00 – is certainly…um…comedic. What’s really going on here? (I am easily whooshed…but, come on, really!)
As long as the container ship is not hove to or anchored for one reason or another, (mechanical failure, no available dock at the port, man overboard, etc.)
Joke.
Fair enough… Heck, it’s not only a clean joke, it’s a pretty good one!
Ah but then the vessels would not be “underway in open ocean” per the OP.
Is a grain barge specifically dedicated to carrying grain? Because if it’s not, I’m not sure why an “unloaded grain barge” would differ from an unloaded barge. However, it’s possible that an empty grain barge would have grain dust in it, which could theoretically lead to a dust explosion.
Somewhat off-topic, but entertaining: I once read about a convoy crossing the Atlantic during wartime, in which a ship carrying a dual load of tapioca and lumber was torpedoed. The lumber burned, and as the ship filled with water, the tapioca heated and swelled, creating a giant tapioca pudding in the middle of the Atlantic.
Yes, though as Xema notes, it would be rather odd to find on on the open ocean. Grain barges are typically only used in places where really big inland waterways intersect with really big wheat producing areas, like the upper end of the Mississippi. Otherwise, you just put the stuff on a train.