Since I am scheduled to travel to Antarctica on a ship similar to the Explorer, I was very interested in the accident that caused the loss of this ship. After reading everything I could find about the Explorer, I thought that the ship may have been lost because the crew did not know of a technique that could have saved her.
I wonder why the Explorer was not saved by the old trick of passing a sail under the ship and pulling it up against the outside of the hole in the hull. The procedure would be to tie a long rope to each corner of a large square tarp or sail, then , starting from the bow, let the sail sink below the hull and then pull it back using two ropes on each side of the ship until the sail was centered outside of the hole. Then pull the sail tightly against the hull with the ropes. This should prevent any more water from entering the ship because the water pressure would cause a tight seal against the hole.
This procedure was described in one of Patrick Obrien’s books in the Aubury / Maturin series about the British navy in the early 19th century. The Explorer must have had enough rope and tarps to do the job but apparently nobody tried - or at least I could not find it in any published accounts of the accident that I found.
2 comments:
Bill, have you made your trip to Antarctica yet? I traveled there on a ship about the size of the MS Explorer, maybe smaller, and that trip remains one of my all-time favorites. The beauty of the area cannot be topped—the giant icebergs, the mountains reflecting in the water, the mystical skies, the penguins. It is spectacular. I will never forget the turbulent waters of the Drake Passage. I lay on my bunk for two days seasick, each direction (it was worth it); the boat would sway one way and I'd slide one direction, hitting my head on the wall of the boat, with only inches between me and the frigid water, noisy with chunks of ice hitting the metal. Then it would sway the other direction and I'd slide until my feet hit the other end of my bunk cubicle. What an amazing experience and glorious adventure.
I had forgotten to read up on this incident. When you hear everyone was rescued without injury, you tend to downplay the ordeal. But wow, 5 long hours in the life boats, some of them in the rubber dingies? If the wind had been up, it would have been pretty horrific, no matter how well you were dressed, it would seem to me. What a story those folk have to tell, and what pictures they must have! I wonder if they were able to lug most of the belongings into the lifeboats. Very scary.
There seems to be some significant mystery and question about the real cause of the demise. And it does seem odd that the boat would drift into a big iceberg during the ordeal. Just being close to an iceberg is dangerous, not simply from the possibility of of hitting ice, but because at some point icebergs roll over; with most of the iceberg's size under water, it could mean disaster to anything nearby when it capsizes. (They roll because the bottom melts faster, in the salt water, than the top.)
Keep us posted—re your trip and any new info about this incident.
Well said.
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