One of the last operating steam ships
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- Опубліковано 18 чер 2023
- When Seakay spirit scrapped in 2018 I thought my days on steam ships were over Jan 2020 low sulfur fuel requirements were coming in and they were all scheduled to be replaced. Covid hot and this vessel Horizion Spirit had a signed contract for repower and in the covid world the vessel was given an extension. This voyage was June 2023 and she will be going to chime for repower soon. The sister vessel Reliance is already there
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I loved working steam. Instead of trying to beat itself to death like a diesel, it just hums....
Good thing neither of us is old enough for reciprocating steam machinery
@@LafayetteCCurtis I was on steam turbine ships- smooth
Having spent my last 12 years aboard the Spirit and Enterprise as 1st A/E, I enjoyed your tour down below. I'll sail a steam boat any day. Hope to see more while it last. Thanks.
@Joentexas
Were you the C/E when it went to China for the yards in 2020?
I was the 8×12 OMU then!
Dan was the 2 A/E.
@@smytb Retired in 2011, but I did yards in Hong Kong and Guangzhou years before. Had some good times on the Spirit and the Reliance. Good ships, the best engine rooms.
@joentexas Ok, thanks!
The Reliance is now the George ll , converted to an LNG Diesel.
Have a Wonderful retirement!
Ahhh yes. I am a sucker for the sound of these propulsion units. The whistle of the turbines and the whine of the gears. Sugar.
I also am very interested in their mechanics and function. I have never seen one in person.
My grandfather served on board USS Arnold J. Isbell, when commisioned as "Sachtouris" for the Greek Navy, during the 70s, he was actually on the first crew that brought the ship to Greece, from San Diego (1974).
He used to tell me stories about how they had "cranked the turbines up" reachin max speeds of 30+ knots, but little me did not know the existence of steam turbines yet and could not grasp the concept of it.
Now I wish I could see this ship in person, preferrably with my grandpa (ship was scrapped in 2000). I thing Grandpa managed to get me in it when I was just 3 years old, before it left service for good, but I cannot remember.
Thanks for the video, wish you the best!
I was on the Spirit in 2014 and 2020- 2021, and 2023! I took it to the yards in China in 2020. That Benjiman Harrison plaque- I put it on the bulkhead , the C/E had bulkhead plaques & boiler plaques made in China, and I was the one that mounted them all! I recognized a LOT of work that I did when I was on OT. (8/12 OMU) I painted the handrails and decks in 2014 and 2021 when I was there! So many other memories from that ship!
I was on all of the Horizon steamers at one time or another, the Spirit, Reliance, Enterprise, Pacific, and even the Consumer!
Good times and bad times! I may have even worked for you sometime! Always an OMU or EU....
Your Engine Room is cleaner than most homes Chief.
I painted some of that myself!
In 2014. It's been recently repainted, but I did a lot of the engine room!
@@smytb That's obviously a very well run ship. I'll bet Chief is an excellent boss!
@bc-guy852 Yeah, most of them were very good! When everything was running good, it was Very Good!
But things do happen, so we have to be ready for anything at anytime!
@@smytb That's why you train, practice and run emergency drills right?
It must be very peaceful, at certain times. Enjoy!
@bc-guy852 Yes, Indeed!
Amazing to see a steam plant with no one roving but the camera. Thanks for the tour. It brought back many memories of my days running the propulsion plant on CVN73 USS George Washington, CVN74 USS John C Stennis, and CVN75 USS Harry S Truman.
Haha well there should have been 2 guys down there probably just hiding from me
Sooooo many things to bump your head on. 😓😄
If you sail engine department, you learn to duck.
Grew up along the Great Lakes, war baby. There were many steam lake freighters ("boats") when I was young, still a few left. Several have been dieselized in the last few years, several others have had their steam plants automated (don't know to what extent), some have been notched for a ATB tug. There are several museum ships with access to the engine rooms that I've been through. Took trips on both of the vertical triple expansion Bob-Lo passenger boats, got down into the engine room, with my 3 year old daughter. She still remembers it. Most oil burners, many converted from coal. I remember seeing at least one freighter in the 1960's that had an open coal bunker ahead of the aft house. Lock chambers limited the old boats to 76' beam by ~760' length. These all had/have wheelhouse forward, engine aft, long undivided bulk hold in the middle. I was more interested in the many large floating steam cranes used for dredging and marine construction. A big lock was later built at the Soo, a dozen boats were built to use it, 105' x 1005' x ~26' draft. Powered by multiple locomotive diesels.
Also got aboard Medusa Challenger in port, cement carrier, built 1906, Skinner Uniflow engine, original engine was a conventional VTE. Tiny forward wheelhouse like an old tugboat. Like all of these, steam ran length of the boat for winches, self unloading gear, and heat. Later notched for tug, still out sailing.
Steam is wonderful as Mate and Master as well. Call down below for a specific RPM and you get it. No verboten speeds like diesel. Steamers I sailed on: Sea-Land Crusader, Horizon Discovery, Humacao, Guayama, Horizon Producer, Resolute, Great Republic, Export Aide, Export Champion, Fortaleza, Atigun Pass, President Truman (the old steamer Truman), and AT&T Long Lines.
Producer was one of my favorites. I never sailed on any of the others you mentioned but I night worked the discovery, wasn’t a fan of that class.
@@steamman9193 yeah, no control room on the Lancer class. Stand watch nearly leaning on a boiler.
@@yankeexpress not just that it was having to duck around everything in those engine rooms
As a retired US Navy BT/GSM this is like porn to me! Lol
Gotta admit... the hanging fan blowing on the bearing... nice touch! Lol Gotta do whatcha gotta do!!!
Those fans were hanging there when I sail the Spirit in the early 2000's. Weathered more than a couple good storms on the Spirit. Great ship.
I was a 3 rd ass engineer on c2 c3 c4 class steam ships in the 1969 and 1970
Where can I find some videos that explain these huge steam engines. There are quite a lot of good ones explaining diesels. I've seen several about Titanic's steam engines, but that was a long time again, a different world. Thanks for the tour, even if it was kind of too fast and dizzy.
Navy still has several steam boiler ships. 2 LCC, 2 AS and 6 LHD class. But yeah, they’re slowly going away… although technically a nuclear ship is a steam class ship as well. All the nuke does is provide steam Instead of a fuel oil boiler.
I have sailed both Spirit and Resolute .
Perhaps you can do a video on the time the bottom blow valve broke off instantly filling the ER with steam .
The rescue crew entering at top of er could not get in , too hot and no O2.
What? I sailed over 30 years as Engineer. One of those ships was the Spirit. Never heard of that incident. It must have killed everybody in the Engine Room. Can you tell me more?
Second was near bottom blow valve .
It was a bad weld or a cast valve instead of forged . Broke at the weld , entire boiler water flashed to steam .
They went out shaft alley escape .
Rescue crew thought they had it too …
Steam cleaned every square inch of ER !
Controls and electrical disaster .
I came on as night engineer when they got in port , so I was Not there when it happened .
I've only ever been on older vintage ships (just as a tour, I don't work on ships). I've never seen the burners aimed down like that, very interesting.
Was the diesel gen set working too? Over the noise it sounded like it was but it could be my imagination.
No, the SSTG was on
The SS Badger car ferry still crosses Lake Michigan running on coal. Hopefully she's around for quite awhile longer since she has been designated a national historic landmark and her route is considered part of highway US10.
TS Kennedy heading out this April. Go Bucs!!!
I wonder what kind of ship it is, where it usually operates, and how it lasted so long?
A huge semi submersible oil rig almost fell on a crew boat I was on in the Mississippi River at Avondale in the late 60s. It was resting on the bottom of the river and got partially buried in the sand. When they started pumping the water out to move it, only one side popped loose. Probably the only thing which kept it from going over were the 3 tugs pulling on the high side. They figured out that it was about 3 degrees from falling over, in which case you wouldn't be reading this comment since we were tied to the low side of the rig.
This is an interesting build it was a combination container and Lash/ barge carrier. The lash concept never took off and it was later converted to all containers
Looks a lot like the USS Alabama when I toured it. Pretty crazy how similar it is.
I heard both ships are being converted to motor ships!
Reliance is back in the USA with a noisemaker onboard. She was apparently an absolute beauty and example of steam power. I hear Spirit is laid up waiting to go to China for repower. Those hulls are beautiful nothing has lines like that anymore
@steamman9193 The Reliance is now the George ll...Great old steamer!
Steam man, I am a marine engineering cadet. Like you, I love steam, and I really want the chance to work with it before it’s gone. Do you have any tips for finding these jobs?
Personally there’s no money in being and expert in antique engineering. Look to the future and that’s alternative fuels. Try to get in with Matson or Pasha in the lng fuel fleet.
The government will run steam ships for awhile but they rarely get underway
Pasha still had 2 my last count and interlake 1
Otherwise it’s the foreign lng fleet but they are so automated you won’t get a feel for it
Government has steamers in the MARAD program, but most of them are AMO. They still use cadets when they activate them.
Holy shit was your watch partner Chris from MEBA?
I wasn’t a watch stander
There are still plenty of steam ships being built mainly VLCC's, LPG carriers and FPSO's
Where? Now that you can burn lng in a diesel I thought they stopped building steam ships a decade ago and lng was the nice’ everyone else stopped building by the early 1980s
@@steamman9193 I had assumed that the switch to LNG would mean a conversion to gas turbines. To get great efficiency, gas turbines are usually paired with a heat recovery steam generator and a steam turbine. So that would have meant steam might get a new lease on life for shipboard applications.
Nope, someone figured out that medium speed and low speed diesels could run on (mostly) natural gas. Given that a low or medium speed diesel is about 1/4 the cost of a gas turbine of similar power, it makes sense that the LNG burning ships are sticking with diesel engines.
Interestingly, the marine gas burning diesels are making inroads in the power generation world. The combined cycle plants are more efficient, so they do the bulk of the base load. But medium speed diesels are both cheaper and more efficient than open cycle gas turbines, so quite a few new peaking plants are going in using the medium speed marine engines.
What ship is it?
Horizon Spirit