Oil filled Stern Tubes

I aggree with you Captain Confusion, but that's Yankee engineering. The people designing these ships used to build Lakers for carrying iron ore and it seemed they were cheap and cheerful but never went deep sea.
They were the same ships with the CJC tank and pump which you can see in the port aft corner of the image. Bottom plates were all open grid and any deck above was checker plate, no teledips on fuel tanks or LO tanks, just sounding pipes. It was a right performance when they came to check the fuel consumption on trials. The Mechanical Design boss came up with this roughly meter cube tank on top of the control room which was connected to the fuel system, it had a sounding pipe , not sure if it had a weighted cock, but the hot HFO was foaming and shooting up the sounding pipe.
They already had two certified fuel meters in the system, one on the supply and one on the return, but he didn't trust them.
It wasn't a success. If Sulzer says the engine burns X kg/bhp/ hr calculated on a test bed and by mathematics then that should be good enough. How was his mickey mouse system going to prove otherwise. It looked good paper I suppose. On subsequent ships they didn't bother. Looked too dangerous to me.

Did you have any trouble with these new puri's, failed sensors etc. Still had the plates I assume and auto cleaning like the A boats.
The RBS thing sounds a bit like the Greek/ Monrovian high jinks with their fleets. Mind you old Vestey was at it from way back, every ship a stand alone company, he had various companies round the world like Lion Shipping, Calmeda (sounds more of a social disease), Austasia, some South American outfit. Then the registered office in a back street in Paris.
There were no flies on him.
I have seen Harry since the Mandama, at our Duty Mess Lunch in the Sunderland area, it was just getting going when Covid put the blocks on it. Met up with Keith Gladman a couple of times and saw Keith Eade at a Liverpool reunion.

Have you ever come across a stern tube that has been piped up to a LOP?
Dudley was ok until he had a few drinks, then he would become a bit punchy from all accounts. I sailed with him after he had been promoted to Master for a few years on the America Star.
I believe you live in Oxfordshire, I am down in Newbury.

Wonder if those two engadets ever made anything of themselves, or became actors. They seem to like dressing up.
When we were in Freemantle they cut a road sign down in the docks and brought it to the ship, they couldn't even cut it straight perhaps far too much to drink. That didn't go down very well with all concerned. Not sure what happened afterwards, that was between Harry and the OM.
I am in touch with Dave Richards who took over the 2nds job after me. Both he and Keith Gladman got their redundancies after they got off. I resigned to get married and go ashore.

Yes know Dave Taylor (ex Blue Star), he used to run a pre-sea class for apprentices thinking of going to sea, it was based on 2nds EKs in Motor, Steam & General, then I met up with him when doing part B 2nds & Chiefs. Dave was Deputy head of the department and looked after the Admin for ticketed courses.
Ted Barnet was head honcho of the Marine department which also covered Cadets. Ted took a class of Motor EK's in Chiefs to keep his hand in.
I think Ron Pyewell looked after admin for some of the cadets, he was ex deck I believe and took Naval Arch.
There was a Naval Arch from Dunstans, (local shipyard) that took ship construction in 2nds.
Then there was Stan the Man for Electro, definately one of the lads, sense of humour. He must have been scream in the bar at sea.
2nds pt A jan 75, B Jan 78 1st class A Sept 78, B Jan 82.
I as up as soon as I had enough sea time.
Looks like I was stiil serving my time when you was up at Hull and could have been another head of Dept before Ted. I heard his name mentioned but don't know if he moved to Queens Gardens.
It is no longer a Tech College but has dubious University status unlike the red brick university on Cottingham road.
My dabble at Extras was a bridge to far too late, my previous life hadn't prepared me for the eye watering Maths of that course. Failed all subjects and got a job with the Insurance Inspection industry, inspecting pressure vessels, perhaps more than your Lloyds surveyor would, plus I was home each night not in some far flung place in the world.

Dave Taylor once told me that you always got a tribe of Patels & Khans coming down from Shields to Hull for the exam as they thought we got easier exams in Hull because the pass rate was higher. Same exams, same caliber of lecturers, which meant there was only one other variable, but they couldn't work that out.
I have a sheet of schematics in the loft of the oil system, I will scan it and put it up on the post to prevent confusion.

Having dug out the schematics it would seem that should the ship be going into drydock then the oil in the sterntube could be pumped out using one of the purifiers into LO storage tank preventing oil spillage in the dry dock bottom, then gravitated back once boxed up. For normal running there was a drain tank with electric heating coils,a small pump and discharge filter. There were two thermo couples at the after end of stern tube, a working and a spare.
The tankers were built as Ice Class 4, so perhaps the oil would be heated below a certain temperature, the pump kept running even when stopped. The engine was a 5 RTA 76 Sulzer, 15,300 MCR @ 95 rpm with a PTO 750KW with three 3516 Caterpillars.
Initially there was a lot of problems with the clutch/ coupling of the PTO.
A English supt said he wanted the cats shut off and to run on the PTO on trials. Then he told them to go from Full ahead to Slow Astern. The cats were self starters.
Of course the shipyard said you cannot do that. He said the ship might have to even from FSS.
He warned me and said keep well away from the turbos as they could bang a bit.
Well she did it. Stop blackout, cat start up and go on the board, all the pumps start up then fire up Astern. Bit of noise, puff of smoke but nothing fell off.

captainconfusion said:

dear oh dear, i am a liverpudlian from a seagoing family, raised schooldays leeds, so I could not as a lancky play for yorkshire cricket, again so hull was nearest to my leeds base. Why offshore and shields for the extras. I was sponsered by AUNTIE BOT? and worked in the shipping department of DOT/MSA, newcastle and London then HSE Offshore based in LONDON, then Norwich But travelled the UK OFFSHORE Industry, as a marine surveyor.
NICKName i spout confusion, hence my fellow engineers called me captain confusion. Are you confused??? I trust not.

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Got you. Did you ever have to mark exam papers or conduct orals at any point?
Old Barr was BOT in Hull, not sure if he was related to my old Maths teacher at school, same name and build, never thought ask at the time, you are all keyed up.

My writing was so bad on a couple of papers for Chiefs he failed me and passed the message to Dave Taylor to suggest I used a fountain pen which would slow my writing down and make it legible. If I had been sitting medical exams I may have been ok as Drs writing was known to be attrocious and they probly went to the same schools as the dispensing chemist so they all wrote the same.
I did apply for a job with BOT to do with the fishing industry but they wanted Extras. Lloyds was the same, but they had to relax because Graduates of Marine or Mechanical hadn't the experience and there was a bit of a wastage rate. Don't think they liked the idea of crawling about in a crankcase or boiler, yet ex Merch it didn't worry them.
Did you ever have to use any of the fancy Maths from Extras.
Seemed to remember something called Matrices, I always thought that was some how connected with the master, mistress and mattress.
Then there was sampling for QA and a bunch of funny formulas, never needed that when sampling different beers. Didn't see where that came into ships and one offs. The Maths chap at Shields had been a production engineer, which I can see the relevance. Dry old stick he was. The rest of the lecturers were ex Merch.
Old Calvert, took us for Hydrodynamics & Fluids, would say to us if he was looking at our work, ' Let the dog see the rabbit' or 'If you don't know what your looking for, you will never find it' . He was a bit of a north countryman, probably had a ferret or two at home.
It was all interesting stuff that came in handy when boiler surveying. But I reached retirement without entering the 'work house' (where the snow was raining fast). If you don't try you will never know.