RRS Boaty McBoatface
As the man said, it's an absolutely brilliant name. But the forces of repression are seeking to steal this minor crumb of circus fun from the good people of Britain.
Jo Johnson was not getting it on multiple levels. Firstly, and more boringly, he was seeming to claim it as a Departmental responsibility, on the grounds that the Department for ( Read more... )
Jo Johnson was not getting it on multiple levels. Firstly, and more boringly, he was seeming to claim it as a Departmental responsibility, on the grounds that the Department for ( Read more... )
I think you're right that there isn't a formal rule about boats vs ships. Even that well-cited carrying rule of thumb is no clear line: you could carry a short kayak in an ordinary two-person sailing dinghy, for instance, or a toy boat in a coracle, but that doesn't make them ships. From the other direction, the RNLI operates some moderately-sized ocean-worthy vessels that can easily carry a distressed inflatable motorboat or two (and I think sometimes do, although they're much more likely to tow them), but they are lifeboats, never lifeships.
But that debate doesn't really have traction on the real question. Regardless of what the official rules should be, in actual fact this vessel will, when it exists, be indubitably a ship in formal nomenclature terms: that's what the S in RRS stands for. It will definitely be a Royal Research Ship.
Whether or not it is Ok to also call it a boat, as an amusing/affectionate/self-deprecatory diminutive - that is the big question. Perhaps the most important of our age.
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Yes, the longest ships (can't readily find a list of largest) used to be oil carriers and are now cargo ships. The huge passenger cruisers are almost as large though. The passenger cruisers are undeniably impressive when you see them in a port.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world%27s_longest_ships
Unfortunately, nothing nearly so long is diveable. The longest I've dived are Konig Class WWI battleships at 175m and the longest diveable I know of is the President Coolidge at 199m.
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Unladen weight measures aren't very helpful - the biggest cargo ships will look to minimise that while maximising their carrying capacity. And having laden weight measures as the world's-biggest indicator might be problematic, since it'd incentivise you to overload your ship and/or fib about it.
Whereas length is simple, clear, and easily measured. Well, relatively easily.
No matter how you measure ... those are biiig ships. Woah.
The Pioneering Spirit is up there in the staggeringly vast category ... and it's a catamaran!
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Maximum safe displacement would seem to be a useful measure but is rarely given (weight + deadweight tonnage).
But look at a laden oil tanker and it is a long wide shape low in the water. Look at a laden passenger cruiser and it is a tall wide shape which towers above all the other ships in the harbour. It is likely shorter but it looks the more impressive. It seems "larger" (subjectively obviously) than longer ships:
pictures for comparison
The most usually cited ship-shipping-ship is the
MV Blue Marlin which is surprisingly low on the DWT front -- that is it can't carry that much weight (oddly).
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Looking at those pictures, you can clearly see that most of the space enclosed by cruise ships is air, much less air is enclosed by container ships, and much less than that by oil tankers. And, relatedly, that cruise ships probably have a much higher centre of mass, which always worries me a bit. (Not that I'm short of reasons to avoid a cruise.)
The MV Blue Marlin's relatively low DWT isn't that odd, I don't think - it's a very strange shape, so it can do its job, whereas vessels optimised for carrying containers (rectangular cuboids tesselate 3-space) or bulk/oil (spreads to fill container tightly) can be more space-efficient.
The thing that really leaps out at me from looking at that is just how bloody huge those really-huge ships are. That famous photo of the USS Cole on the MV Blue Marlin: the USS Cole is actually pretty bloody huge in itself. Ok, it's "only" a destroyer, but it displaces about 9,000 tonnes fully loaded and carries a complement of 300 people, armament, a couple of helicopters and a boatload of electronics, radar, sonar, etc. It's big. If you were sat in a dinghy watching that go by, you would think, "cripes, that's huge". But it's a tiny fraction of the load the MV Blue Marlin can carry. And the other mega-vessels we're looking at here are bigger than *that* on most measures. That's ... quite large.
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I love the photo of Mighty Servant 2 here.
Just gone down a "ship shpping ship" rabbithole -- it seems 2 out of the three "Mighty Servants" sank while shipping ships. (Though one was later salvaged and put back into service).
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It's such a rabbithole, isn't it. Must. Resist.
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But briefly it lifted a ship carrying ship.
And now I'm looking at marinetraffic.com and finding where it is and what it's up to. (MUST STOP LOOKING.)
Also this is awesome
If you look in the lower left soon after you get this post you should see a slightly anomalous vessel -- the Mistress Quickly -- you might recognise the name of the vessel (other than that it's from Henry IV). If you click on it you will see why it is out of position. It worried me at first.
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