Is it the anchor or the chain?

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What holds a large ship in place when it has been anchored? The anchor?
.................or
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=636407

When an anchor fails to hold a ship in bad weather, then sometimes ship happens, as it did where I live. This was in 1999, and is the only disaster of it's kind since I have been here (1957)
Second story down/ New Carissa

http://ouroregoncoast.com/coos-bay-...oast-shipwrecks-in-coos-bay-by-misserion.html

http://www.newportnet.com/home.cfm?dir_cat=48465&sr=1

These large ships have relatively small engines, and that was just part of the problem in this instance. The ships captain should have kept the ship underway and farther off shore and kept moving rather than try to anchor so close to the beach in a storm. Ships stay off shore for days sometimes, waiting to be docked............. waiting for a 'parking space', or occasionally riding out a storm.
I hope this captain was retired because of his poor judgement. This ship's grounding and the sequences that followed in the following months and years were a comedy of errors.

The ship ran aground.

The heavy oil fuel was lit with napalm and explosives to burn out the 400,000 gallons of fuel. That took a lot of attempts.

Once the fire got going, the heat weakened the hull (like, duh) and the stern broke totally off from the rest of the ship.

The stern was pulled off shore to be sunk.

The tow line broke in the stormy weather and the stern washed back to shore a hundred miles up the coast.

A stronger, special tow line was brought in from..... Norway I believe, and the ship was towed out to sea.
A Navy destroyer pumped 70 five inch rounds into it. It didn't sink.
.....so the USS Bremerton, a nuclear submarine launched a $1.2 million torpedo at it. :eek:
........it sunk. Kinda spendy target practice.

It took years to get the rest of the hull salvaged off the beach. Legal, political and logistical issues.
 
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We always had to pull out of dock when a storm was approaching, and ride it out at sea .

If the wave direction is OK, and the winds from a good direction, and if they can get a local pilot put aboard a ship safely, they can bring a ship in during 50+ mph winds. .....not that they like to, but if a ship sets offshore instead of being docked and being loaded, it costs the shipping company thousands of dollars per day.
The ship is brought into port only if it is safe. The local pilot that will drive the ship in makes that call, no one makes that decision but him.
....we don't need a disaster in the bay. The bay is wide for most of it's 15 miles, but the shipping channel is only 300 feet wide. Ships are typically about 100 feet wide.
The 'thin blue line' is the shipping channel. The Army Corp of engineers dredge the channel when needed to maintain it's depth at around 35 feet.

http://www.portofcoosbay.com/hmupdate.jpg
 
If the wave direction is OK, and the winds from a good direction, and if they can get a local pilot put aboard a ship safely, they can bring a ship in during 50+ mph winds. .....not that they like to, but if a ship sets offshore instead of being docked and being loaded, it costs the shipping company thousands of dollars per day.
The ship is brought into port only if it is safe. The local pilot that will drive the ship in makes that call, no one makes that decision but him.
....we don't need a disaster in the bay. The bay is wide for most of it's 15 miles, but the shipping channel is only 300 feet wide. Ships are typically about 100 feet wide.
The 'thin blue line' is the shipping channel. The Army Corp of engineers dredge the channel when needed to maintain it's depth at around 35 feet.

http://www.portofcoosbay.com/hmupdate.jpg

What happens is the ship gets beat up if it tied to the dock during the storm .
 
What happens is the ship gets beat up if it tied to the dock during the storm .

....this is the Oregon coast .....we don't have storms.:D
High winds or gusts directly on the coastline itself can have speeds of 75 mph or more on a really bad day, but in port on the bay at the same time, winds might be 45.
In port, the ships are tied down. If the weather is bad, they can, and probably do, add more lines from the ship to the dolphins. Here are some wimpy dolphins. Ship lines get tied to them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(structure)
We don't have tornadoes or hurricanes here either..... almost never.

The ship I showed in the photo forum as I recall, had 5 lines on the bow, probably 4 on the stern.
I don't ever recall any ship damage from ship/dock contact, but I recall a time when some tugs were called to a ships side to help hold it in place against a dock because of high wind.
 
....this is the Oregon coast .....we don't have storms.:D
High winds or gusts directly on the coastline itself can have speeds of 75 mph or more on a really bad day, but in port on the bay at the same time, winds might be 45.
In port, the ships are tied down. If the weather is bad, they can, and probably do, add more lines from the ship to the dolphins. Here are some wimpy dolphins. Ship lines get tied to them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(structure)
We don't have tornadoes or hurricanes here either..... almost never.

The ship I showed in the photo forum as I recall, had 5 lines on the bow, probably 4 on the stern.
I don't ever recall any ship damage from ship/dock contact, but I recall a time when some tugs were called to a ships side to help hold it in place against a dock because of high wind.

How about this one a couple of years ago?
It pulled the bollards off the wharf

http://videosift.com/video/Cruise-Liner-Breaks-Mooring-Passenger-Falls-From-Gangway
 

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