A visit to hear a lecture from a marine engineer about engineering incidents at sea, their numbers, causes and costs. These last, in the examples given, being a million euros or more per incident - and that, I think, was just the cost of repair, not including the loss of revenue.
Pulled a Bullingdon at Kennington Lane Rail Bridge for an uneventful journey of 11 minutes 56 seconds to Storey's Gate, with the stand being quite near the Westminster Arms, an establishment which I used to use occasionally, on this occasion busy with tourists with just a sprinkling of workers who had bunked off early.
A little early so took a stroll around old haunts, getting close enough to the bar at St. Ermin's to be able to admire their front garden, a splendid bit of green in an otherwise rather brick filled area. Followed by a doze under a tree in St. James's Park, on the way to which I passed the odd mural illustrated above, in Carteret Street and decorating the back of No.5 Queen Anne's Gate. Easily found in gmaps, while google proper took a bit longer, but resulting eventually in 'on a reveal on Carteret Street is a ceramic mosaic, which is thought to be a 1920’s advertisement for the former ‘Victor Talking Machine Company’. The development provides a better visibility of this interesting feature and this is welcomed' - towards the end of some planning document from the days of GLC. Presumably an area which contained enough people who could afford such things.
Onto the Institute where there was light control on entry. Some evidence of past glory in the form of a large auditorium, large bookcases and models of ships, while we were shown to a small, but very smart conference room. With wall furniture including wooden boards with the names of past presidents, one for every year since 1889, with quite a good sprinkling of admirals. About twenty of us there, a mixture of veterans, students and everything in between to hear from our marine engineer, retired from the sea but still employed in the industry.
Our engineer was a competent rather than a good presenter, but he seemed to know his stuff about things which can happen to ships. Roughly half of the things being bumping into things, half engine failure and a sprinkling of other stuff. Mile for mile, passenger ships seemed to have a much worse record than cargo ships. He wasn't saying whether Chinese ships were better or worse than South Korean ships, with the two countries between them accounting for most new build. But he did say that quite a lot of incidents were down to operator error.
A ship's main engines appeared to be a scaled up version of a two stroke diesel engine. With the additional complication that it had to be good for (say) 1,000 hours continuous running, with break down on the high seas having plenty of potential for disaster. Break downs which might include bits of piston breaking off and generally fouling up the works, perhaps causing terminal damage to the cam-shaft. In which connection he talked of the bolts holding the various bits of the pistons together being too tight, or at the very least being unevenly tight. Which reminded me of my short exposure to mending cars, many years ago now, during which I learned that torque wrenches were all the thing when it came to fixing the cylinder head back on the engine block.
He told us that ships' engines would be much more reliable if owners invested more in engine monitoring systems. The technology is there, but too many owners would rather take a chance than spend out on prevention.
Another problem was unauthorised spare parts, spare parts that is which had not been passed by the manufacturer of the engine in question. Another was contractor competence. Hard to be sure that some miscellaneous contractor in the far-away port to which your ship has been towed is actually competent to do your repair. Another was loss of on-board engineering skills, making a ship's captain unhealthily reliant on what said miscellaneous contractor might tell him. Another was cutting corners on fuel and lubricating oil. All very difficult in a highly competitive, low margin business.
On the way out, I completely forgot that I had been thinking of going back to Vauxhall, and headed back to Waterloo, where I made the pole position at the top of the ramp in 10 minutes 29 seconds. Parliament Square seemed a bit tricky, with the road markings not seeming to work for the cyclist who wanted to head out onto Westminster Bridge. But not so tricky that we did not have a family party of Dad, Mum, girl on the back of Mum's bike and two more, quite young girls on their own bikes. Not sure that I would care to cycle with such young children in the middle of London's rush hour. The girl on the back got very excited telling me about losing her upper front teeth, with her knowing the exact date of each loss. Mum told me that the going rate was now £2, up from the sixpence (2.5p) of my day. But then the girl on the back was told to calm down as Mum was getting windy about her bounding around in her seat so much.
Then the cycle lane on Westminster Bridge was completely blocked by rickshaws whose passengers had been let off to take pictures of the sights - presumably including themselves.
Trains were in a bit of a mess but I got a train to Earlsfield and a couple of minutes or so after I arrived there, a delayed train to Epsom pulled in. A train containing a young lady who pulled the prize for being tall, the prize for short skirt and the prize for high heels. And perhaps a fourth prize for being able to pull it all off, unlike a much younger lady attempting the same feat at Epsom Station. She also had a slight limp, something one seems to see quite often in ladies, although it was not clear whether it was hips or feet which were the problem.
Decided it was too hot to walk to a hostelry to take a beverage and caught a cab home.
PS: a bonus was a couple of issues of the house magazine 'The Marine Professional'. IT seemed to be quite a big issue - from ships without crews to cyber attacks. Plus all sorts of bits and bobs - including the fact that big cruise liners are big sources of air pollution in the places that they call at. Rules about pollution from their exhausts piffling compared with those that apply to today's motor vehicles. Plus a flyer advertising course in ISO 55000, the standard for management of assets of this sort. Which reminded me of the days when we spent large amounts of money on quality certification of civil service computing. Never quite convinced that it was money well spent, although it was certainly a push in a good direction.
Reference 1: https://www.imarest.org/.
Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Talking_Machine_Company.
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