[Burntisland Ship Yard]

Hope this does not break any copywright !

Found this video of the Hamburg [could be on her trials], certainly the first video I have seen of any of the Texaco Fleet.......

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/tankers/query/Texaco

[MervynHutton]

I remember my time on the Hamburg for a number of reasons and one of them included a helicopter. Maybe your Pathe video was taken during this memory as it looks like it was in the Dover Strait.

We had unloaded half the cargo in Rotterdam and the second half in Germany at Brunsbuttel. In Rotterdam a TV crew had joined to do some filming to highlight the traffic congestion of ships in the Dover Straits, this was quite soon after the Texaco Caribbean and a cargo ship had collided off Dover resulting in some serious loss of life, and a day or two later another ship came along and hit the wreck of the cargo ship which had previously sunk. The TV mob had done all the on board filming that they needed and had hired a helicopter to do some aerial shots of the ship as she was actually passing Dover on her way outbound from Brunsbuttel. They couldn’t get their regular helicopter for some reason and had hired another one whose pilot had only recently qualified. The shot required was a close up of the reporter standing on the deck of the ship looking up at the camera in the chopper hovering about 50 feet above the deck. The helo would then climb away taking in the whole ship and the Dover Strait. Unfortunately, the pilot was not able to maintain the hover because of the wind eddies over the ship and came down very heavily on the deck. I was about 50 feet away at the time and was sure my time had come. He hit the deck very hard and then started to spin around sliding towards the ships side railings. Luckily, his skids caught up in some fittings on the tank openings and stopped him dead, otherwise he would have crashed over the side of the ship. The pilot stopped the engines of the helicopter and he and two camera men got out quite visibly shaken and started to reach for their cigarettes to calm screaming nerves. I dived forward and stopped them in order to calm MY screaming nerves and led them away aft while it was decided what to do. The camera guys refused to get back in the chopper and got off in the Dover pilot boat together with the reporter and on board camera crew. Meanwhile we managed to pull the helicopter back away from the rails and into a safe position for take off. With all the ships fire fighting capability running, the pilot started up the aircraft and took off, backing out to the side with his skids missing the ships side railings by about a foot! We were never so glad to see the back of anyone as that pilot, I’m sure he remembers that day to this day.

[MervynHutton]

Another memory from the Hamburg concerned her Flume tank system. She was a good ship, well thought out and built in Kiel in Germany. She had a novel Flume system to reduce her rolling, this consisted of some large openings in the fore and aft bulkheads between 4 centre and 4 wings and allowed a delayed free flow of a large amount of liquid from one side of the ship to the other. A guy from the Flume Company who was known as Harvey ‘Flume’ joined in Europe one time to travel on the ship round the Cape to the Gulf to measure the effectiveness of the system. The weather was flat calm all the way and the ship just didn’t roll except for one night as we rounded the Cape, Harvey had partaken of a few drinks in the bar that evening having nothing else to do and when called to come and check out the rolling was unable to get up! I don’t know if he was fired when he got back to the USA. The system didn’t appear to do much to calm the rolling anyway. In heavy rolling when fully loaded the rush of atmosphere from one side of the ship to the other was too much for the vent openings in the top of the bulkheads to cope and the PV valves would open under excess pressure and vacuum, spilling gas onto the decks, and if the decks were awash, sucking water in as the PVs were located at deck level!! I don't think this system was used anywhere else in the tanker form and she was the only one of the Class to have it installed.

[Burntisland Ship Yard]

Great info Merv, re the video, there is a saying "every picture tells a story", sounds like "every vidoe perhaps tells a story", heard a lot about the German class, but never managed to get a trip on them..........

Did you see, John Campbell is doing some thing on "flume tank system" regarding the Westminster [Mark 1] in the forums its more of your specialality than mines .....

Cheers Merv

[John Campbell]

Originally Posted by MervynHutton

I remember my time on the Hamburg for a number of reasons and one of them included a helicopter. Maybe your Pathe video was taken during this memory as it looks like it was in the Dover Strait.

We had unloaded half the cargo in Rotterdam and the second half in Germany at Brunsbuttel. In Rotterdam a TV crew had joined to do some filming to highlight the traffic congestion of ships in the Dover Straits, this was quite soon after the Texaco Caribbean and a cargo ship had collided off Dover resulting in some serious loss of life, and a day or two later another ship came along and hit the wreck of the cargo ship which had previously sunk. The TV mob had done all the on board filming that they needed and had hired a helicopter to do some aerial shots of the ship as she was actually passing Dover on her way outbound from Brunsbuttel. They couldn’t get their regular helicopter for some reason and had hired another one whose pilot had only recently qualified. The shot required was a close up of the reporter standing on the deck of the ship looking up at the camera in the chopper hovering about 50 feet above the deck. The helo would then climb away taking in the whole ship and the Dover Strait. Unfortunately, the pilot was not able to maintain the hover because of the wind eddies over the ship and came down very heavily on the deck. I was about 50 feet away at the time and was sure my time had come. He hit the deck very hard and then started to spin around sliding towards the ships side railings. Luckily, his skids caught up in some fittings on the tank openings and stopped him dead, otherwise he would have crashed over the side of the ship. The pilot stopped the engines of the helicopter and he and two camera men got out quite visibly shaken and started to reach for their cigarettes to calm screaming nerves. I dived forward and stopped them in order to calm MY screaming nerves and led them away aft while it was decided what to do. The camera guys refused to get back in the chopper and got off in the Dover pilot boat together with the reporter and on board camera crew. Meanwhile we managed to pull the helicopter back away from the rails and into a safe position for take off. With all the ships fire fighting capability running, the pilot started up the aircraft and took off, backing out to the side with his skids missing the ships side railings by about a foot! We were never so glad to see the back of anyone as that pilot, I’m sure he remembers that day to this day.

What narrow shaves we Tanker men have had when you read that story Merv

Was Robbie Armstrong Master on that voyage ?- About that time I remember a series of articles in the Sunday Express (or maybe the Mail) re the perils of transiting the Dover Straits prior routing. We were sheduled to have a load of camera men and reporters to board us in Las Palmas but it never came off and we were sent to Milford Haven instead.
Texaco were hoping for some good publicity but were not best pleased when Robbie was quoted as saying that " the best view he likes to see is the view of the ship from the rear window of the taxi taking him home on leave." He had no particular love of VLCCs if I remember and alwys longed for his home in Findhorn where sadly he died a few months after retirement..

Re Flume tanks - the were useless for the reasons you stated and as these ships were allowed to carry more cargo than they were originally designed for that with the ship down to her marks there was no way you could get the right ullage in 4X. and they never worked properly except maybe in ballast . Getting an ullage , at sea,of course was another thing as they soon wrecked the whessoes.

Best regards Merv - trust you are well - JC

[MervynHutton]

John Ward and later Laurie Simpson were the Masters on the Hamburg during my tenure there. She was my first VLCC assignment and quite an eye opener. I did enjoy my time on her though, extended as it was to almost 8 months. I think Robbie Armstrong was mostly on the Norway although I sailed with him several times in Regent, a great shipmaster, and a role model for those aspiring to be Master (me!).