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In this photo, why are there little stenciled silhouettes of ships on the air ducts? They sort of remind me of ones from the manual full of ship silhouettes my dad had to memorize and recognize as a Navy pilot, but they all appear to be the same silhouette, so the idea that they are some sort of visual/mnemonic aid seems unlikely.
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Looking at this photo … how in the world is the angled lifeboat supposed to get into the water, and how do the crew members get into it? It looks like it’s designed to make a death-defying nosedive into the drink. I imagine that riding down in it yourself would be fatal. How do you board it?
It does exactly what it looks like it’d do. The door/hatch is at the top and the floor has steps. The crew walks in, climbs down, straps themselves (tightly) into a contoured seat with the back facing the front of the boat. When it’s full, a guy up front releases a latch, and - into the briny deep.
They have them on oil rigs, as well - some are OK’d for 40 meter drops.
I was thinking they’d be an image of the ship itself, but looking up images of the HCMS Fredricton, it doesn’t really match the silloutte.
My only half-baked thought is that it’s like pilots stenciling the silhouettes of planes they’ve shot down (or ships sunk, etc.) onto their engine cowlings. But since it’s inside where almost no one can see it, I’m not sure. IOW, the people in that command group were responsible for catching/scaring off this many pirates?
It looks like all the same silhouette, though distorted in some cases.
My guess is someone got a hold of the Better Homes and Gardens with the “Spice up your workspace with the Leaning Cowboy Silhouette!” article and decided to try out a more naval version.
I kinda thought they looked like magnets. Like the sort that you’d put up on a map board for tracking, only they never see as many ships as they have magnets, so they put the extras up as decoration. Just a WAG.
Yipes! There’s a ride for you.
It does look kind of Naval to me.
In my time, I made plenty of silhouettes using manila folders and a utility knife that I then painted on piping and ductwork.
Usually we cut out arrow shapes and spray-painted them on steam piping to show fluid flow direction. There was a shop somewhere on the ship where some dude had a fancy stencil punch machine that would punch out inch-tall stencil letters.
Never painted little ships though, but the technique looks very similar.
Looking further down the ductwork you can see stenciled lettering and a black star shape. That style looks pretty darned Navular to me.
They are not fatal because they don’t hit the water and stop: they penetrate well below the surface before porpoising back up, rather like a diver in a swimming race. They are notorious for causing injury. However, they are rather like democracy: a terrible system that is nonetheless better than the alternatives.
Conventional liferafts also cause heaps of injuries. They are notorious for killing and seriously injuring people during drills. They have that classic problem of requiring complex equipment to lower them which is exposed to and deteriorates as a consequence of sea air and which due to lack of necessity gets overlooked for maintenance. Also, they are slow to lower, and get increasingly difficult to lower as a vessel lists prior to sinking. Large bulk carriers can sink very quickly, and tankers carrying flammable products can catch fire so fiercely that being outside the accommodation will fry you.
With a freefall liferaft, the launch mechanism is very simple, very fast and will work in all seas and at very great list angles. As long as you can pull the pin, gravity will do the rest. Also, you can often get into the liferaft with little or no exposure to the outside, especially on tankers and oilrigs, so that even if there is a large fire you can go straight from the accommodation into the liferaft and away.
So unlike the old gravity davits no one has to stay on deck to release the brake. And there would be no stepping from the deck into the life boat hanging over the side of the ship. And no cables to jam in the blocks. Interesting. But I would not want to be launched in for boat drills.
Whatever we’re escaping from, can we wait 'til it sinks most of the way so we don’t have to drop as far?
Please?
But I wouldn’t want to be involved in any boat drill. I handled a case quite a number of years ago where two guys were killed and several guys were very severely (ie permanently) disabled in a conventional lifeboat drill gone wrong. Google the subject and you will find warnings and reports all over the internet about conventional lifeboat drill accidents.
You can, but not me. I want to be gone early. Ships very often don’t sink sedately and primly like down elevators. They turn over, often quite suddenly. I don’t think freefall lifeboats work very well sideways or upside down.
Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
Shades of science fiction “escape pods”! (“Don’t waste your firepower; sensors indicate there are no life-forms aboard.”)
What goes wrong? I’ve seen how tough it is to lauch a small boat from a slightly larger one, but I always figured the really big outfits had something to make it a little more routine.
A sound strategy, I’m sure. But something really bad would have to be happening on board before I’d want to strap myself into something and freefall 120 feet.
I ain’t waitin’ for you, Pal. 
Wires etc that haven’t been maintained because they aren’t used for every day operations break. Things aren’t hooked on properly because people aren’t familar. Things stick halfway up or down or stick at one end and not the other. It’s not any one thing it is just a variety of things that tend to go wrong when operating complex usually old and often poorly maintained mission critical equipment in stressful circumstances on a moving platform.