Seeing the Shell Tankers thread jogged my memory of my first trip as 2R/O on the Mitra.
On passage from Singapore to Muscat in 1971 (June?) we had a complete engine failure in the Indian Ocean. I think it was something to do with contamination of water in the boilers and tube collapse or something like that - the engineers amongst you will know!
We were drifting for days towards some of the outer islands within the Maldives and had the German deep sea salvage tug 'Albatros' circling like a vulture for a couple of days.... with Shell in London telling us not to use him unless the situation got really desperate.
There was no powers at all - emergencvy generators failed. Also, to make matters worse, we had total failure of our emergency radio requipment (batteries went flat!!).
The engineers eventually (four days or so) managed to get an aux boiler going and got up a head of steam and off we limped to Muscat for repairs..... closely followed by the Albatros for a day or so until they decided that we were no longer fair game.
All this was about the time when there was a heightened awareness of safety on the new brand of 'supertankers' following the explosions on Mactra and the loss of ships like the Kong Haakon.
A good introduction to life at sea for me!
Anyone remeber the incident?
On passage from Singapore to Muscat in 1971 (June?) we had a complete engine failure in the Indian Ocean. I think it was something to do with contamination of water in the boilers and tube collapse or something like that - the engineers amongst you will know!
We were drifting for days towards some of the outer islands within the Maldives and had the German deep sea salvage tug 'Albatros' circling like a vulture for a couple of days.... with Shell in London telling us not to use him unless the situation got really desperate.
There was no powers at all - emergencvy generators failed. Also, to make matters worse, we had total failure of our emergency radio requipment (batteries went flat!!).
The engineers eventually (four days or so) managed to get an aux boiler going and got up a head of steam and off we limped to Muscat for repairs..... closely followed by the Albatros for a day or so until they decided that we were no longer fair game.
All this was about the time when there was a heightened awareness of safety on the new brand of 'supertankers' following the explosions on Mactra and the loss of ships like the Kong Haakon.
A good introduction to life at sea for me!
Anyone remeber the incident?