Hey! It's our friend, Mike Brady from Oceanliner Designs! In 2010 I was lucky enough to see the FLIP while I was in the Navy. She was in her vertical position as we sailed passed. Pretty awesome.
Not to mention most skipper captains were already somewhat lunatic on their own right. To be called a lunatic as skipper captain meant he was waaaayyyy more into that.
Great Eastern may be what he is remembered for, but Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a brilliant engineer who was instrumental in creating what we now know as ocean liners. He also gets the award for Coolest Name in Shipping History.🏆 Thank you, Mr. Brady, for covering this subject! You are the greatest. I❤️wierd ships.
The preceding ship was SS Great Britain which is on display at Bristol. She is in the dock in which she was built after being recovered from the Falkland Islands.
@@Alloyman6419 I'd argue that he was born at the perfect time, because without him the Industrial Revolution would have been half as big and half as industrious as it eventually was - his pioneering efforts in bridge design, tunnelling, shipping (basically anything except the railway engines he designed which were rubbish) moved the craft forwards bodily and it would have taken much longer for progress to be made without his presence, which arguably could have cost Britain the lead in the revolution.
@@lloydcollins6337 On the other hand, Brunel's brilliance in making rapid industrial progress was at the cost of environmental safety. We're paying the price today for past improvements made without counting all the costs.
Great eastern was a shear marvel of engineering even by todays standards. A ship that was the largest British ship ever built until the launch of HMS hood 62 years later. Great eastern also was an innovation for having both paddle wheel and propeller installed for propulsion with mast and sails to accompany that. An iron and wood hull that made her almost unsinkable and coal capacity large enough to go from London to Sydney Australia without stopping. Great eastern also outperformed Titanic after suffering a similar cut across her hull when she ran aground against some rocks. Great eastern made it to her destination without the crew even knowing they had a hole in their ship as the performance was not even affected despite the hole in the hull being much larger then that on titanic. Also during one voyage one of the boilers in the ship exploded blowing off one of the smoke stacks. The crew ignored it and got to their destination with one boiler destroyed not wanting to return home for repairs as it would damage their schedule. This ship never gets the credit it deserves.
A couple of weeks ago I drove into Liverpool and saw the top mast of Great Eastern, still standing tall outside of the Liverpool FC Anfield stadium. It's painted white and to anyone looking at it would be just a regular flag pole, but it's great seeing the 170 year old mast still standing proud out there
I’m glad you mentioned the Campbeltown. There’s a fantastic documentary called The Greatest Raid Of All, hosted by Jeremy Clarkson. I know it’s not really your sort of thing for this channel but I would 100% watch a video on it from you guys
My ears perked up when Campbeltown was mentioned, That was such a good documentary Jeremy Clarkson hosted (one of my favourite war stories) I would love to see this channel cover that whole story
I was a student at Scripps in the 1980s when FLIP was there. It's advantage was that because its stern was below the wave base (the maximum depth that waves effect the ocean water below them), it was an absolutely stable instrument platform. An odd design that did its job perfectly. I'm sorry to hear that it was scrapped.
Another interesting/unusual type of ship would be the whaleback freighters that were constructed towards the end of the 19th century, largely for use on the Great Lakes. Rather than cutting through the waves or riding over the waves, the whalebacks were designed to be mostly submerged when underway so that waves just rolled over the decks. They could be worth looking into
The whalebacks were kind of death traps, my memory vaguely asserts. And for more than the typical laker reason of inadequate bulkheads to limit water ingress.
Flip was a really good scientific platform. It answered a lot of questions but more importantly it helped formulate a lot of questions that are still being answered
My day is ruined after learning of the demise of FLIP. I had watched many documentaries on her, and absolutely loved how novel everything was. Truly a shame she's gone.
I'm a bit of a lurker and don't comment much, and I'm sure it must have been brought up in past comment threads, but this channel is one of the best options we have to save the SS United States. Its been evicted from its berth in Philadelphia and is at serious risk of being scrapped or turned into a reef. The SS US Conservancy is looking to raise 500k to help find a new home for the ship, they only have until September 12 of this year. I've donated what I can, but maybe Oceanliner Designs can help spread the word and maybe increase visibly on the issue and help save the ship. That said, love the content and keep up the great work!
When I lived on Hayling island (near Portsmouth) in 1964, all the greatest ocean liners of the day used to pass between us and the isle of White to enter Southampton. I had a basic cine camera and when she or other ships passed by I would take short video of them. Of all the ships, the United States was my favorite, with it's squat funnels with their 'wings' and all in glorious red white and blue. Mind you she did have some pretty stiff competition, the France was so elegant and the queen Mary was so imposing, I never learnt a thing at school except knowing all the profiles and colours of the ocean liners. This is when I found out the Earth was round, I could see the liners approaching the island because of their funnels appearing above the horizon first! I never realised at the time, but this was the heyday of ocean cruising, or should I say -- who could win the ongoing 'blue ribbon' battle between the US, France, and the UK, and yes the United States got it!.
@@TerryHickey-xt4mfInteresting comment dude. However, with a decent still camera with good magnification, you'll see when a ship comes into view on the horizon the entire ship comes into view at once. None of this funnels or masts first. It doesn't happen, never has... Plenty of vids on UA-cam. You'll see the world differently. I did, which just reaffirmed my belief about the true shape of our beloved world...
The Floating Instrument Platform is so endlessly interesting to me that I am amazed there isn't some kind of global holiday celebrating how awesome it was. We need a Flipmas.
Would love to see an episode about wooden speedboats of the 20s & 30s - they're such a hallmark of that era 👌🏻 Just like the daring art-moderne concepts like the Whale ocean liner concept and so on. Great episode as always! ✌🏻
I remember getting a flimsy newsprint handout in elementary school, "The Weekly Scholastic" or "Junior Scholastic" (possibly both, plus a much-anticipated summer version) and I remember the issue covering *_FLIP._* I, too, was thrilled as a kid of 10 or 11 (1963+/-) to see it in Pearl Harbor and recognize it for what it was. A similar "Scholastic" article (and similar thrilling sightings in Hawaii of the subject) came with another "weird ship" that you might consider for a future episode: the *_LONG LINES,_* a transcontinental telephone cable layer with a unique prow. It was great fun as a kid to know more than the Grups (grownups) about these things, and later in life I was thrilled again with repeated sightings of the icebreaker *_POLAR STAR_* in Seattle. (The kid in me ... 71 year old me.) Your channel takes me back. Thanks!
Hey Mike, how about the "Hughes Glomar Explorer" that the CIA had built (for around $800 million in early 70s dollars) trying to covertly raise the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the bottom of the Pacific. Project Azorian was the mission name. It almost sorta kinda worked.
They lifted part of the sub and even did a funeral to the sailors they found with all military honors and respecting Russian religious traditions. After the fall of the wall a video of the cerimony was sent.
I still recall a National Geographic edition about the ship which had no clue as to its real purpose and just went on about the research it was going to accomplish! Ha! Little did they know!
Fun fact, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were named for HMS Erebus and HMS Terror that were used for Franklin's Lost Expedition. And funnily enough, they shared the same basic role of shore bombardment.
@@francoiscomeau9104The Erebus and Terror explored the Antarctic before going north. Thats why two mountains in Antarctica are Mt Erebus and Mt Terror.
The Great Eastern as "just" a cable layer? Back then a transatlantic telegraph was cutting edge and paved the way for the rapid communication that we take for granted. Possibly one of Brunel's (indirect) greatest contributions to the modern world.
If you're looking for a wierd ship try the Glomar Explorer/GSF Explorer. When built it was the most expensive vessel conceived. The crane built specifically to construct this ship was just used to dismantle the Key Bridge after the Dali accident. The technology pioneered on the Explorer made modern offshore oil drilling possible.
Another quite weird type of ship you could add if you do another video like this are the roller boats. Covered those on my channel awhile back and they are easily some of the strangest ideas for vessels with one of them actually being built and tested in Canada. Would fit right in the FLIP as one of those oddball designs although the roller ships didn't really work properly in the end.
Im surprised Hms Furious wasn't mentioned. At one point during her life, the ship had both a flight deck and a single 18-inch gun, firing the heaviest shell ever mounted on a warship. As a matter of fact, she was designed to have two. However, when she was fully converted in a sci-fi looking full on aircraft carrier, her two 18-inch guns were placed on two tiny monitors, those being General Wolfe and Lord Clive.
Fun fact: FLIP (or an analogy of it) appears in Frictional Games' rather mindbending 2015 sci-fi horror game "SOMA". It's one of the sunken wrecks the player has to explore and if you're ignorant of the history of FLIP, it makes for a truly bizarre exploration experience. The game is well worth checking out, even today, for its philosophical narrative implications if nothing else.
"Here's a neat sunken ship that's built upside down! If I just take my time to carefully explore, I'll never get lost!" (There is now a glowing naked man chasing you) "Uh Oh!"
Shocked and furious I imagine. There's a quote from one of the captured Commandos in Jeremy Clarkson's great documentary "The Greatest Raid of All" where the Commando essentially said "A German petty officer burst into the room shouting that we were all going to be shot as spies and sabouters. By that point we were all so tired that we just told him "All right, get on with it, just don't shout!""
@@allangibson8494 No, the Allies THOUGHT she was a massive threat when she wasn’t. It was their misplaced fear that kept so many Allied vessels tied down.
Two weird vessels that come to mind are USS Sable and USS Wolverine. They were Great Lakes sidewheel steamers converted to flattops so pilots could practice carrier landings, making them the world's only paddle wheel aircraft carriers.
The Ramform Titan has got to be one of the strangest ships ever built. A seismic survey ship has a length to beam of 1.5, it looks like somebody sliced the bow off a huge ferry.
Another really odd looking type of ship is the "ramform" ships used to draw streamers for undersea seismic probing. The streamers are extremely long cables with hydrophones attached to them that float behind the ship and detect the soundwaves caused by a detonation after they bounce up from the seafloor. Since you need a large amount of hydrophones in slightly different positions to determine the way soundwaves reflect from hitting different materials the streamers need to not only be long, with multiple hydrophones along their length, but there should also be many parallel lines of them, necessitating the ship to be wide as well. So the ramform ships end up having a bizarre shape that looks like if you took a much bigger ship and sliced off the bow from it, with the ship having a triangular shape with a very wide stern.
I have a soft spot for the Douglas Reeman novel “HMS Saracen”. It is about a Monitor during the 1st and 2nd World Wars. A young Midshipman is aboard the newly built ship for the Gallipoli campaign, and returns to her in the Mediterranean during the 2nd World War as Reservist Captain commanding the ship that was now considered obsolete.
I actually saw the FLIP offshore in Elliott Bay near Seattle about 10 years ago. No idea what it was doing there, but NOAA has significant operations in Seattle so they were probably using it for something at the time.
No joke-when I’m highly anxious I come to your channel and watch a video I’ve already seen, you are very calming. When I’m not in the throes of a panic attack, I find one I haven’t heard yet :)
I know you usually do ocean-going ships, but I have a “weird” ship from the Great Lakes that fits the bill: the John D Leitch. She’s still currently sailing. It’s a strange design, some call it the “floating apartment building”, and her hull mods make her a “guppy ship”. 😄
Not going to lie - Every time I fire up a video and hear "...Its your friend Mike Brady..." I know its going to be a good video and interesting dive into history.
and pirate radio stations! like I used to listen to when I was kid in the UK, and would you believe later on in Auckland NZ. The governments in those days were so pathetic.
8:00 I know that Monitor, It's SMS Bodrog or KB Sava, she started WW1 by firing the first shells on Belgrade. She is in fact still afloat today close to the confluence of Sava and Danube and is in fact a Museum ship.
Thanks to our friend Mike Brady & the team for another great episode. Weirdest 'ship' I spent any time 'aboard' was the mighty HMAS Rushcutter. That pair deserve an episode! Cheers.⚓
For weird historic ships, how about the Japanese atakebune which were basically floating castles, Caligula's pleasure barges, or the Korean geobukseon turtle ships Admiral Yi used that were some of the earliest ironclads?
I know your general focus is large ‘ships’ But being an automotive enthusiast along side my interest in maritime vessels, i would love to see you do an episode dedicated to amphibious vehicles. Including of coarse the DUKW’s and their original role, and eventual tourist industry usage. But also vehicles like the Amphicar and Watercar built for personal recreation. I feel like there are many more amphibious vehicles that have been built for various purposes, beyond my knowledge. Thanks for the great content!
7:11 I thought you'd have shown HMS Lord Clive which had an 18 inch gun from HMS Furious (which was technically the most heavily armres aircraft carrier ever) it was so big and heavy that it could not be traversed around the ship and it had to have a little railway ontop to carry the shells.
Eh, _Furious_ didn't ever have a full flight deck _and_ an 18" gun at the same time. And the _Lexingtons_ were simultaneously equipped with a full flight deck and eight 8" guns; a lower instant throw weight (2 670 lbs vs 3 320 for _Furious)_ but a faster rate of fire. It is, at the least, an arguable point.
11:44 If you're talking about the steam explosion off Hastings, that wasn't a boiler explosion. It was a feed water jacket around one of the funnels that exploded after it was accidentally closed at both ends.
Here are some interesting ships to cover: HMS Incomparable. A massively overgunned battlecruiser project. German H-class battleships. Basically Bismarck on steroids. Indian light cruiser Mysore, who just couldn't stop crashing into things. Japanese cruiser Yahagi. It went into battle with wooden boards on deck. Why? So the crew had something to keep them afloat when she'd inevitably sink in a hopeless battle.
I’ve always been smitten by HMS Agincourt. It was a very unique warship, on account of its unusual origin. A few fun facts: 1. She was built for Brazil and stolen from the Turks. 2. Her turrets were named after the days of the week. 3. Her nickname was “A Gin Palace”.
@@alistercrowe8531 a 14 gun broadside is pretty nuts. And supposedly, there were some that believed that the recoil from firing a full broadside would cause the ship to break apart.
16:55 IMO The best fiction written about British Monitors is HMS Saracen by Douglas Reeman. Covers both World Wars. The changes to the British Navy in those 25-30 years is fascinating.
The Campbelltown incident sounds like those frag grenade bouquets that blow you up in Fallout 😂 Mike is just showing us his future upload schedule....no pressure 😮
I believe there was at least one British commando on board the Campbeltown when she blew up. To knowingly refuse to talk knowing you’re gonna be turned to paste requires an amount of gall and integrity that amazes me
Jeremy Clarkson covers this in his great documentary "The Greatest Raid of All" where he said that a group of Commandos were marched past the Campbeltown after all the fighting had stopped, and it called for some amazing acting - they couldn't look scared at the prospect that the ship would explode whilst they were standing there, they couldn't look puzzled that it hadn't gone off already (it took way too long to explode, something clearly went wrong with the time pencil fuses), and they couldn't look smug that it was crawling with Germans who were going to be vapourised, and they couldn't look nervous that the bomb would be discovered and disarmed.
Yes I read a book on the raid, she got a fair was up the estuary but eventually the jig was up coming in and she took fire . The we’re still 2 courageous commandos on the ship when she blew. Utterly valorous act, keep your mouth shut to ensure the dock blows to keep the battleships bottled up north. Rip.
2:45 that’s the mothball fleet in Pearl Harbor! A few years ago I used to live in hawai’i and those ships could be seen directly from the backyard of my family’s house
I had no idea that FLIP had been scrapped!
That breaks my heart. I loved that goofy thing!
Imagine a full broadside!
Same here... I remember seeing a show on it as a kid and was always fascinated by it!
RIP FLIP
It wasn't scraped! It was purchased by DEEP Engineering in October 2024.
Maybe something new and crazy can be built.
Hey! It's our friend, Mike Brady from Oceanliner Designs! In 2010 I was lucky enough to see the FLIP while I was in the Navy. She was in her vertical position as we sailed passed. Pretty awesome.
Nice. Very interesting
I can't believe they scrapped her! 😢
I only ever seen it docked at La Jolla pier 😊
Living on the beach in Oxnard CA, I was fortunate to see both the FLIP and the Glomar Explorer.
Sure you did
"Eccentric Lunatic Skipper." Holy cow what a rank to hold.
I wonder what the rank insignia would look like.
@@j3dwin probably the usual but with added cracked skull and googly eyes popping out.
Mike Brady could you do a video on the Eccentric Lunatic Captain? Please!
Don’t forget charismatic!
Not to mention most skipper captains were already somewhat lunatic on their own right. To be called a lunatic as skipper captain meant he was waaaayyyy more into that.
Great Eastern may be what he is remembered for, but Isambard Kingdom Brunel was a brilliant engineer who was instrumental in creating what we now know as ocean liners.
He also gets the award for Coolest Name in Shipping History.🏆
Thank you, Mr. Brady, for covering this subject! You are the greatest. I❤️wierd ships.
Agreed! Brunel was a genius far ahead of his time... IMH0, he was born in the wrong century
The preceding ship was SS Great Britain which is on display at Bristol. She is in the dock in which she was built after being recovered from the Falkland Islands.
@@Alloyman6419 I'd argue that he was born at the perfect time, because without him the Industrial Revolution would have been half as big and half as industrious as it eventually was - his pioneering efforts in bridge design, tunnelling, shipping (basically anything except the railway engines he designed which were rubbish) moved the craft forwards bodily and it would have taken much longer for progress to be made without his presence, which arguably could have cost Britain the lead in the revolution.
@@lloydcollins6337 On the other hand, Brunel's brilliance in making rapid industrial progress was at the cost of environmental safety. We're paying the price today for past improvements made without counting all the costs.
Great eastern was a shear marvel of engineering even by todays standards. A ship that was the largest British ship ever built until the launch of HMS hood 62 years later.
Great eastern also was an innovation for having both paddle wheel and propeller installed for propulsion with mast and sails to accompany that. An iron and wood hull that made her almost unsinkable and coal capacity large enough to go from London to Sydney Australia without stopping.
Great eastern also outperformed Titanic after suffering a similar cut across her hull when she ran aground against some rocks. Great eastern made it to her destination without the crew even knowing they had a hole in their ship as the performance was not even affected despite the hole in the hull being much larger then that on titanic.
Also during one voyage one of the boilers in the ship exploded blowing off one of the smoke stacks. The crew ignored it and got to their destination with one boiler destroyed not wanting to return home for repairs as it would damage their schedule.
This ship never gets the credit it deserves.
A couple of weeks ago I drove into Liverpool and saw the top mast of Great Eastern, still standing tall outside of the Liverpool FC Anfield stadium. It's painted white and to anyone looking at it would be just a regular flag pole, but it's great seeing the 170 year old mast still standing proud out there
I’m glad you mentioned the Campbeltown. There’s a fantastic documentary called The Greatest Raid Of All, hosted by Jeremy Clarkson. I know it’s not really your sort of thing for this channel but I would 100% watch a video on it from you guys
I saw Clarkson's video, this would make an excellent doc for Oceanliner Designs
thanks for this comment, just watched the Clarkson documentary on it - fantastic!
The fact Mr. Clarkson married the daughter of one of the surviving Commandos was the icing on the cake.
@@lfla0179 Spoiler!
My ears perked up when Campbeltown was mentioned, That was such a good documentary Jeremy Clarkson hosted (one of my favourite war stories) I would love to see this channel cover that whole story
I was a student at Scripps in the 1980s when FLIP was there. It's advantage was that because its stern was below the wave base (the maximum depth that waves effect the ocean water below them), it was an absolutely stable instrument platform. An odd design that did its job perfectly. I'm sorry to hear that it was scrapped.
Another interesting/unusual type of ship would be the whaleback freighters that were constructed towards the end of the 19th century, largely for use on the Great Lakes. Rather than cutting through the waves or riding over the waves, the whalebacks were designed to be mostly submerged when underway so that waves just rolled over the decks. They could be worth looking into
The whalebacks were kind of death traps, my memory vaguely asserts. And for more than the typical laker reason of inadequate bulkheads to limit water ingress.
Good suggestion.
Got me wondering whether the aforementioned French battleships had a somewhat similar idea behind their design too
My grandfather described a whaleback as 'a submarine that can't dive'.
Flip was a really good scientific platform. It answered a lot of questions but more importantly it helped formulate a lot of questions that are still being answered
FLIP should have been preserved, it was so interesting. Sad she was scrapped.
FLIP got saved at the last minute and will be retrofitted and returned to service.
My day is ruined after learning of the demise of FLIP. I had watched many documentaries on her, and absolutely loved how novel everything was. Truly a shame she's gone.
She was decommissioned, but not scrapped - heard someone bought her recently
I'm a bit of a lurker and don't comment much, and I'm sure it must have been brought up in past comment threads, but this channel is one of the best options we have to save the SS United States. Its been evicted from its berth in Philadelphia and is at serious risk of being scrapped or turned into a reef. The SS US Conservancy is looking to raise 500k to help find a new home for the ship, they only have until September 12 of this year. I've donated what I can, but maybe Oceanliner Designs can help spread the word and maybe increase visibly on the issue and help save the ship.
That said, love the content and keep up the great work!
When I lived on Hayling island (near Portsmouth) in 1964, all the greatest ocean liners of the day used to pass between us and the isle of White to enter Southampton. I had a basic cine camera and when she or other ships passed by I would take short video of them. Of all the ships, the United States was my favorite, with it's squat funnels with their 'wings' and all in glorious red white and blue. Mind you she did have some pretty stiff competition, the France was so elegant and the queen Mary was so imposing, I never learnt a thing at school except knowing all the profiles and colours of the ocean liners. This is when I found out the Earth was round, I could see the liners approaching the island because of their funnels appearing above the horizon first! I never realised at the time, but this was the heyday of ocean cruising, or should I say -- who could win the ongoing 'blue ribbon' battle between the US, France, and the UK, and yes the United States got it!.
@@TerryHickey-xt4mfInteresting comment dude. However, with a decent still camera with good magnification, you'll see when a ship comes into view on the horizon the entire ship comes into view at once. None of this funnels or masts first. It doesn't happen, never has...
Plenty of vids on UA-cam. You'll see the world differently. I did, which just reaffirmed my belief about the true shape of our beloved world...
Looks like it’s turning into a reef now
Im so glad to have a friend like Mike Brady from Oceanliner designs
I have to say the FLIP sounds the most interesting! To watch, you wouldn’t catch me on the thing 😂 Great video!
It's a novel concept for a specific pupose.
RIP the FLIP!
It was very stable, almost like being on land
The Floating Instrument Platform is so endlessly interesting to me that I am amazed there isn't some kind of global holiday celebrating how awesome it was. We need a Flipmas.
Ahhhhh! I’ve been waiting for you to talk about the FLIP! I’m so excited!
Thanks!
Mike Brady is so classy wearing his tie that when he enters a room, even the chandeliers stand up a little straighter
Oh Mike, thank you for being our friend and for the great videos. You always make the day better. Thank you.
Oh I really like this. Would love to see a whole series on weird ships
Would love to see an episode about wooden speedboats of the 20s & 30s - they're such a hallmark of that era 👌🏻
Just like the daring art-moderne concepts like the Whale ocean liner concept and so on.
Great episode as always! ✌🏻
The Italian ones ? Rivas ? Rimas? Real beautiful boats.
@@shanerobertson6267 exactly 👌🏻 + I believe they used a lot of car and aero engines back in the day, I'd really like to see their origin and culture
News of the scrapping of FLIP hit me like the death of a celebrity. 😢
I love that one ship with the pneumatic cannons on the front that couldn't be aimed lol. The whole "weird ships" listing you have is awesome 😂
USS Vesuvius?
I love how the ships horn in the intro perfectly fits the music
I would love to know which ship actually made this wonderful sound?
Being from San Diego, I've always had a special place for FLIP
I remember getting a flimsy newsprint handout in elementary school, "The Weekly Scholastic" or "Junior Scholastic" (possibly both, plus a much-anticipated summer version) and I remember the issue covering *_FLIP._* I, too, was thrilled as a kid of 10 or 11 (1963+/-) to see it in Pearl Harbor and recognize it for what it was.
A similar "Scholastic" article (and similar thrilling sightings in Hawaii of the subject) came with another "weird ship" that you might consider for a future episode: the *_LONG LINES,_* a transcontinental telephone cable layer with a unique prow. It was great fun as a kid to know more than the Grups (grownups) about these things, and later in life I was thrilled again with repeated sightings of the icebreaker *_POLAR STAR_* in Seattle. (The kid in me ... 71 year old me.)
Your channel takes me back. Thanks!
Hey Mike, how about the "Hughes Glomar Explorer" that the CIA had built (for around $800 million in early 70s dollars) trying to covertly raise the sunken Soviet submarine K-129 from the bottom of the Pacific. Project Azorian was the mission name. It almost sorta kinda worked.
They lifted part of the sub and even did a funeral to the sailors they found with all military honors and respecting Russian religious traditions. After the fall of the wall a video of the cerimony was sent.
I've been fortunate enough to see the Glomar Explorer, the submersible barge that was used in conjunction with it, and FLIP.
I still recall a National Geographic edition about the ship which had no clue as to its real purpose and just went on about the research it was going to accomplish!
Ha! Little did they know!
@@mikearmstrong8483 I would really like to visit that vessel, didn't know it was something the public was ever allowed to see.
@@chrislong3938 I don't know much about the value of "manganese nodules", but I guess they must be worth a lot if that was their cover story!
It can be scary watching new ocean related videos, until you hear "its your friend Mike Brady" and then everything seems brighter in the world.
Most appropriate name for a research vessel. FLIP
Aha! FLIP! Thanks for giving her a mention. She was beloved.
Never saw this channel before but in 16 minutes you covered three of my favorite stories.
Fun fact, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were named for HMS Erebus and HMS Terror that were used for Franklin's Lost Expedition.
And funnily enough, they shared the same basic role of shore bombardment.
Those penguins would never know what hit them
@@timmccarthy9917 There are no penguins in the Arctic. They can only be found in the Antarctic... or in zoos.
@@francoiscomeau9104 Or Australia and New Zealand, or Africa, or the Galapagos Islands.
@@francoiscomeau9104The Erebus and Terror explored the Antarctic before going north.
Thats why two mountains in Antarctica are Mt Erebus and Mt Terror.
@@AlbertaGeekThere are penguins in Australia, New Zealand & South Africa. Galapagos is too far north.
The Great Eastern as "just" a cable layer? Back then a transatlantic telegraph was cutting edge and paved the way for the rapid communication that we take for granted. Possibly one of Brunel's (indirect) greatest contributions to the modern world.
If you're looking for a wierd ship try the Glomar Explorer/GSF Explorer. When built it was the most expensive vessel conceived. The crane built specifically to construct this ship was just used to dismantle the Key Bridge after the Dali accident. The technology pioneered on the Explorer made modern offshore oil drilling possible.
You are absolutely right. An episode regarding Count Felix Von Luckner would be marvelous and much appreciated.
Okay that platform stick in the ocean thing with cranes? DEFINITELY gotta stay for this vid
I had NEVER heard of the FLIP. Never even considered it.
SOMEONE HAD TIME TO THINK ABOUT THE FLIP!
Oceanliner Designs, please consider making a video about the Glomar Explorer. It has such a crazy history that I am sure your viewers would enjoy it.
I never thought that I would ever hear Mike say, "Good ol' America!". Nice video.
Another quite weird type of ship you could add if you do another video like this are the roller boats. Covered those on my channel awhile back and they are easily some of the strangest ideas for vessels with one of them actually being built and tested in Canada. Would fit right in the FLIP as one of those oddball designs although the roller ships didn't really work properly in the end.
thank you for taking the time to make all these great videos!
I'm so glad the great Eastern was finally mentioned!
she is like the Titanic of the 19th century... all most like Steampunk, fantasy movie ship :)
Im surprised Hms Furious wasn't mentioned. At one point during her life, the ship had both a flight deck and a single 18-inch gun, firing the heaviest shell ever mounted on a warship. As a matter of fact, she was designed to have two. However, when she was fully converted in a sci-fi looking full on aircraft carrier, her two 18-inch guns were placed on two tiny monitors, those being General Wolfe and Lord Clive.
My day got instantly better when I saw a new video from our friend Mike Brady from Oceanliner Designs!
Fun fact: FLIP (or an analogy of it) appears in Frictional Games' rather mindbending 2015 sci-fi horror game "SOMA". It's one of the sunken wrecks the player has to explore and if you're ignorant of the history of FLIP, it makes for a truly bizarre exploration experience. The game is well worth checking out, even today, for its philosophical narrative implications if nothing else.
"Here's a neat sunken ship that's built upside down! If I just take my time to carefully explore, I'll never get lost!" (There is now a glowing naked man chasing you) "Uh Oh!"
The funniest part about the Saint-Nazaire raid is imagining the faces of the commandos and their interrogates when the ship went up.
Shocked and furious I imagine. There's a quote from one of the captured Commandos in Jeremy Clarkson's great documentary "The Greatest Raid of All" where the Commando essentially said "A German petty officer burst into the room shouting that we were all going to be shot as spies and sabouters. By that point we were all so tired that we just told him "All right, get on with it, just don't shout!""
The funniest part (in a dark way) IMO is that the entire thing was pointless and unnecessary because Tirpitz wasn’t a viable threat anyways.
Two hours late…
@@bkjeong4302As Bismarck’s sister ship, her existence was a threat to Russian convoys that tied down a massive proportion of the Royal Navy.
@@allangibson8494
No, the Allies THOUGHT she was a massive threat when she wasn’t. It was their misplaced fear that kept so many Allied vessels tied down.
Two weird vessels that come to mind are USS Sable and USS Wolverine. They were Great Lakes sidewheel steamers converted to flattops so pilots could practice carrier landings, making them the world's only paddle wheel aircraft carriers.
The Ramform Titan has got to be one of the strangest ships ever built. A seismic survey ship has a length to beam of 1.5, it looks like somebody sliced the bow off a huge ferry.
I agree. She's a giant triangle
Another awesome video from our friend Mike Brady!!
This deserves a sequel!
NEW OCEAN LINER DESIGNS VIDEO LETS GOOOO!!!!!!!!!
I know we aren't true friends
But I feel good inside when Mike says it
Thanks
We’re all mates on here - cheers brother from Australia 🇦🇺
Another really odd looking type of ship is the "ramform" ships used to draw streamers for undersea seismic probing. The streamers are extremely long cables with hydrophones attached to them that float behind the ship and detect the soundwaves caused by a detonation after they bounce up from the seafloor. Since you need a large amount of hydrophones in slightly different positions to determine the way soundwaves reflect from hitting different materials the streamers need to not only be long, with multiple hydrophones along their length, but there should also be many parallel lines of them, necessitating the ship to be wide as well. So the ramform ships end up having a bizarre shape that looks like if you took a much bigger ship and sliced off the bow from it, with the ship having a triangular shape with a very wide stern.
Loads if information and great images with the right amount of subtle humor to make a enjoyable watch.....
Aw. Was honestly sad to hear the FLIP had been decommissioned. I liked that weird little guy.
I have a soft spot for the Douglas Reeman novel “HMS Saracen”. It is about a Monitor during the 1st and 2nd World Wars. A young Midshipman is aboard the newly built ship for the Gallipoli campaign, and returns to her in the Mediterranean during the 2nd World War as Reservist Captain commanding the ship that was now considered obsolete.
Every time you said, "Pre dreadnought," Drachinifels' voice popped in my head.
I actually saw the FLIP offshore in Elliott Bay near Seattle about 10 years ago. No idea what it was doing there, but NOAA has significant operations in Seattle so they were probably using it for something at the time.
Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.
No joke-when I’m highly anxious I come to your channel and watch a video I’ve already seen, you are very calming. When I’m not in the throes of a panic attack, I find one I haven’t heard yet :)
Hi Mike, I'm following your channel now for a month of two. And I must say you are really, really a great commentator/narrator!
Yes, the Great Eastern deserves her own video!
Always good to watch another video from our friend Mike Brady from Oceanliner Designs
I know you usually do ocean-going ships, but I have a “weird” ship from the Great Lakes that fits the bill: the John D Leitch. She’s still currently sailing. It’s a strange design, some call it the “floating apartment building”, and her hull mods make her a “guppy ship”. 😄
Not going to lie - Every time I fire up a video and hear "...Its your friend Mike Brady..." I know its going to be a good video and interesting dive into history.
A truly remarkable video. Lots in there that I didn't have any inkling of. Many further research notes to follow up
Lighthouse ship/boats would be interesting if theres enough information out there on them to us
And Pioneering Sprite (just popped up on my facebook aint seen her before😅)
and pirate radio stations! like I used to listen to when I was kid in the UK, and would you believe later on in Auckland NZ. The governments in those days were so pathetic.
8:00 I know that Monitor, It's SMS Bodrog or KB Sava, she started WW1 by firing the first shells on Belgrade. She is in fact still afloat today close to the confluence of Sava and Danube and is in fact a Museum ship.
All of those oddball French ships are so interesting. Makes more sense now that they built the battle sub Sarcouf!
Thanks to our friend Mike Brady & the team for another great episode.
Weirdest 'ship' I spent any time 'aboard' was the mighty HMAS Rushcutter.
That pair deserve an episode! Cheers.⚓
Hughes Glomar Explorer would be a really cool ship with a very unique purpose to see on the channel! Keep up the great work!
For weird historic ships, how about the Japanese atakebune which were basically floating castles, Caligula's pleasure barges, or the Korean geobukseon turtle ships Admiral Yi used that were some of the earliest ironclads?
those french tumblehome hulls i can only imagine how much bigger a target it was for plunging shell fire
Awesome treat from you today :D
I know your general focus is large ‘ships’ But being an automotive enthusiast along side my interest in maritime vessels, i would love to see you do an episode dedicated to amphibious vehicles. Including of coarse the DUKW’s and their original role, and eventual tourist industry usage. But also vehicles like the Amphicar and Watercar built for personal recreation. I feel like there are many more amphibious vehicles that have been built for various purposes, beyond my knowledge. Thanks for the great content!
The contrast between the beautiful Normandie and those hideous pre dreadnoughts hurts my brain
On the odd aesthetics front, the American cruiser Long Beach and the subsequent Albany class had very unusual appearances.
That last one would make one hell of a war movie
7:11 I thought you'd have shown HMS Lord Clive which had an 18 inch gun from HMS Furious (which was technically the most heavily armres aircraft carrier ever) it was so big and heavy that it could not be traversed around the ship and it had to have a little railway ontop to carry the shells.
Eh, _Furious_ didn't ever have a full flight deck _and_ an 18" gun at the same time. And the _Lexingtons_ were simultaneously equipped with a full flight deck and eight 8" guns; a lower instant throw weight (2 670 lbs vs 3 320 for _Furious)_ but a faster rate of fire. It is, at the least, an arguable point.
11:44 If you're talking about the steam explosion off Hastings, that wasn't a boiler explosion. It was a feed water jacket around one of the funnels that exploded after it was accidentally closed at both ends.
Here are some interesting ships to cover:
HMS Incomparable. A massively overgunned battlecruiser project.
German H-class battleships. Basically Bismarck on steroids.
Indian light cruiser Mysore, who just couldn't stop crashing into things.
Japanese cruiser Yahagi. It went into battle with wooden boards on deck. Why? So the crew had something to keep them afloat when she'd inevitably sink in a hopeless battle.
Absolutely fantastic keep them coming
Yayyyy another extremely amusing and interesting video.
My good friend Mike Brady, you always deliver interesting content on your channel. Thanks, mate.
You need to talk about the whaleback ships of the great lakes
The Massena just has a Habsburg Bow 😂.
As usual, very well done. Thank you sir
Thank you!
Thank you my friend Mike Brady. Great video
I’ve always been smitten by HMS Agincourt. It was a very unique warship, on account of its unusual origin.
A few fun facts:
1. She was built for Brazil and stolen from the Turks.
2. Her turrets were named after the days of the week.
3. Her nickname was “A Gin Palace”.
Every time she let rip with a broadside, she put out so much smoke that her squadron mates thought she'd suffered a magazine explosion.
@@alistercrowe8531 a 14 gun broadside is pretty nuts. And supposedly, there were some that believed that the recoil from firing a full broadside would cause the ship to break apart.
Diesel engines flying apart? Four stack destroyers? I'm sold!
We ❤ this channel.
Awesome video. Thanks for sharing
the commerce raider penguin would be a fascinating story to see here thank you
Honestly, I love the idea behind the BFG monitor ships. If they do their intended job, I have no complaints.
Mike, looking at those Royal Nav 8:33 y monitors I can't help but hear them saying -- *"SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!"*
Cambletown, an incredible story
This was one fascinating video, such weird ships here, love seeing these
16:55 IMO The best fiction written about British Monitors is HMS Saracen by Douglas Reeman. Covers both World Wars. The changes to the British Navy in those 25-30 years is fascinating.
Great book, I fully concur.
The Campbelltown incident sounds like those frag grenade bouquets that blow you up in Fallout 😂
Mike is just showing us his future upload schedule....no pressure 😮
I believe there was at least one British commando on board the Campbeltown when she blew up. To knowingly refuse to talk knowing you’re gonna be turned to paste requires an amount of gall and integrity that amazes me
Jeremy Clarkson covers this in his great documentary "The Greatest Raid of All" where he said that a group of Commandos were marched past the Campbeltown after all the fighting had stopped, and it called for some amazing acting - they couldn't look scared at the prospect that the ship would explode whilst they were standing there, they couldn't look puzzled that it hadn't gone off already (it took way too long to explode, something clearly went wrong with the time pencil fuses), and they couldn't look smug that it was crawling with Germans who were going to be vapourised, and they couldn't look nervous that the bomb would be discovered and disarmed.
@@lloydcollins6337That was some dirty pool and something old shady Churchill would pull.
Yes I read a book on the raid, she got a fair was up the estuary but eventually the jig was up coming in and she took fire . The we’re still 2 courageous commandos on the ship when she blew. Utterly valorous act, keep your mouth shut to ensure the dock blows to keep the battleships bottled up north. Rip.
2:45 that’s the mothball fleet in Pearl Harbor! A few years ago I used to live in hawai’i and those ships could be seen directly from the backyard of my family’s house