I was trained as a merchant watch keeper after High School. I joined the navy as a watch keeper after college. I understand the vast knowledge required for you to produce this. Regularly. Cheers. It's appreciated.
Mike narrating: "...and secondly they can shine into the darkness and around the ship and light up any potential hostile threats in case they're sneaking in close to engage" Me thinking: "Yeah, but they also can make you a target, like Hiei and that one destroyer in that night battle at Guadalcanal..." Mike continues: "In the 2nd Wold War in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal..." Me screaming: "GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
I swear every time I see a reenactment of the back of the Titanic sticking up out of the water while the front half is underwater it still gives me the chills to this day! That's just one of the most terrifying thoughts
Not only that, but every time I see this image in my mind, I now think about the absolute darkness all around due to a new moon. Imagine experiencing such a terrifying moment and NOT being able to see ANYTHING - like having one of your key senses taken away from you in a survival situation. Enhancing your other senses so you can hear every sound of crying and your mind using every bit of your imagination to fill in the gaps. That haunts me.
I’m recently new to this channel, and I must say. This channel has brought me a passion for the history, structural, architectural, and machinery of ships, I just can’t get enough! Thank you for these well told stories, from your friend Tyler!
Sailing at night not only requires exceptional night vision it also requires excellent hearing. On the open ocean it's mainly other vessel's you are watching for. On smaller bodies of water or near shore things pick up substantially. Not only are you looking for vessel's but also rocks and shoals in calm waters and moonless nights, your hearing is more important than your vision. I can't recall how many times bird's warned me of a rock that because it was under the skyline couldn't be seen. Modern navionics have decreased shipwrecks exponentially. But accidents still happen. I personally believe that it's because we have become too reliant on instrumentation and neglect to use our natural senses. As always, a fantastic video Mr Brady.
Very interesting, thanks for the insight. Especially the part about the birds giving you a warning when rock formations are near by! Does the ships other equipment not alert you to an event like this? Though I do agree that it can be a slippery slope to rely too much on all these modern technological tools only.
Mike, at 03:30, don’t forget, for vessels over 50m there should be a forward white light at the bow in addition to the steaming light, and 50m+ is definitely ocean liner territory 🙂 So you should see the port and starboard laterals, the mast steaming light plus the forward white light. And at 07:15 … who could ever imagine a ship running aground in the Suez Canal and blocking it for days? 🫢 Here’s looking at you Evergreen!
Hello Mike, thank you so much for another great video! You've put so much work into it! ❤ When I was 14, we had a small trip to Sweden with my classmates and teacher, we crossed the Baltic Sea on board of the wonderful ferry Silja Europa, which was the first to receive the Mayday signal from the MS Estonia. However, no one else was interested in the history of ships, I immediately checked the scheme of the entire ship, and told everyone that our cabins turned out to be exactly under the car deck, and I definitely would not sleep today😅. I remember the constant noise of ice screeching the metal right next to me all night, it was very scary then. It's hard to even imagine how it was for the passengers of the 3rd class on the Titanic to hear such thing. It is good that there are a lot of self-inflating rescue rafts, helicopters, wetsuits, modern rescue boats nowadays, but unfortunately, not all ships even now have wetsuits of the right size for sailors, as it was in the case of the MV Arvin.
Thank you Mike for this informative video. The next time I find myself on a ship I'm going to look around and see if it has any of the things you mentioned in this video. And if I find them I'm going to make sure I know exactly how to find them from my cabin, stateroom or anywhere on deck.
Ha! I’m barely awake from a heavy nights sleep, dazedly found this video, ended up in the comments section… and went “what wet blue stuff??” Thanks for the laugh To my credit, the ocean isn’t actually *blue* even though it appears that way to us ;)
Great video Mike! If I may make a suggestion, I think it would be a good idea to make another video on the SS United States. She's recently come back in the news, as she is now set to become an artificial reef in Florida.
COSPAS-SARSAT is an unsung hero. We all think of GPS and satellite communications nowadays. Heck, we'll just use a satellite phone and tell somebody of our GPS position! But COSPAS-SARSAT, a US-Soviet cooperation started at the height of the Cold War, was much simpler. The satellite did only one thing: It listened to the signals of distressed airplanes and ships at 406 kHz, and played back any signal to the ground station. Because the satellite's orbit and velocity were known, the engineers at the ground station could calculate the position of the wreck from the Doppler shift in the recorded signal.
As an occasional cruise ship passenger, this is the best synopsis of rescue equipment I have come across. I would still prefer to be in an enclosed lifeboat in case of disaster, but my confidence in a raft is much higher, now. I always attend the lifeboat drill, and I always pay attention.
I've done the recovery, after they test the viking rafts. Those things are pretty cool. Self deploying life rafts, with the chutes to get from deck height down to the water. I never got to go down the chute, but I did have to dive down and recover the big sleds they ride on.
Nice video! Thanks for producing this great content! Also, in addition to radar, modern vessels can utilize FLIR (Forward Looking InfraRed) cameras to visually see into the darkness without a spotlight and spot a variety of obstacles and issues. Definitely doesn't replace radar but seems to be a great supplement to it.
Mike, look into the atmospheric conditions that night. There was refraction, a kind of mirage that made relatively close objects disappear behind a kind of horizon. It was a major factor in not seeing the iceberg in time.
My first video was about why ships don't have spotlights. And now I'm addicted to this for sleeping like cocaines while awake. Thanks, my friend. Mike Brady, I hear your name is.
Gotta give credit to the folks that actually have to sit down and analyse all these potential risks, and then come up with all these safety solutions. Remarkable!
One of your best videos. Thank you. My one comment is that I think your thoughts on open life boats and life rafts would be very much different if you ever had to use one. Life rafts are cheap, difficult to handle, and a poor alternative, to which the staff and crew are typically relegated. It is one area where one can see the class system still in place on modern cruise ships. Personally, I think they should go the way of Edwardian collapsible-life rafts, i .e., into the history books. They do have their beneficial uses, which you highlight nicely. I just do not feel they should be used as a front-line rescue tool of choice for anyone and certainly not for any particular class, but rather as a backup. One thing I would add… a far more common danger on modern ships is fire. I highly recommend that anyone, passenger or crew, when they first board and find their stateroom, seek out the closest fire fighting utilities so that know where they are kept. You will not be able to locate them once smoke is billowing in the passageway. I also recommending counting the number of steps from your room to the closest exit to the deck, because again you may not even be able to see the door when the passageway is full of smoke. Mike, there is so much more in regard to fire that it could make for a totally separate safety video. Just a thought.
Your section of the emergency equipment available, it's use and function, plus how safe they are/they make you, should be available for all cruise ship passengers to watch! Maybe even mandatory viewing BEFORE that first cocktail gets served... ? 😊 Its well thought out. It's as detailed as it needs to be. And your delivery style is sure to have passenger complete watching the segment. Overall an excellent video. Details about a few things I wasnt aware of. Such as Titanic's actual stopping distance. I knew it was part of her sea trials (like with all ships) yet i can't recall ever hearing the recorded stopping distance. Nor her turning radius...! Thank you for enlightening me of that one oiece if information.
I wonder why a red spotlight might not have been possible to both preserve night vision and provide distance illumination. My only guess is that that colored light is so weak that a spotlight wouldn't really be possible.
As someone who worked briefly in the merchant marine in the early 80s, I'm still astonished by the size and performance of modern cargo ships like the Evergiven. Just keeping track of the boxes (containers) must occupy some data servers somewhere. My god, the manifest for each voyage must be gigabytes of data!The idea of slow shipping to save fuel is interesting - do you suppose that will become more common in the future? BTW, in a real emergency, dropping anchor to stop might be necessary, but the amount of damage to undersea cables and the like can be substantial! Very interesting presentation, and I'd recommend it to anyone thinking about going on a pleasure cruise...cheers!
I've seen all these individual videos before, but I still watched this whole thing 😁Actually I'm not even sure why I've watched every one of your videos and became a channel member, I have submechanophobia and I'm absolutely terrified of large ships, what am I doing here, LOL
We were entering Sydney Harbour at night a few years ago when we lost all steering, as we weaved around trying to steer using two screws a large cruise ship behind us lit us up with their searchlight, it was actually quite intimidating.
My father had 20/10 vision until the day he died. I remember being up in the mountains and he could see small details from hundreds of yards or even a few miles that I would miss even after he told me where to look. There is no substitute for excellent vision/night vision. By the way using a spotlight in fog doesn't work well as the fog scatters the light making it useless.
Watching your channel is like diving into a world of fun adventures and incredible events. Keep surprising and inspiring us with your bright talent and creativity!🐛💕🤸
We have ARPA, and ECTIS. When we are steaming in the dark there are three in the bridge(captain, mate and AB Unlimited as lookout and navigator. Daylight two officers.
As a pilot, I learned that accidents, incidents and disasters seldom happen because of one wrong thing. It takes a cluster. Similarly, with Titanic, if they had heeded iceberg warnings, or radios were better used and distress rockets were the correct colour and keys to the binocular safe were available and if she was going more slowly and, and, and. Like I say, a cluster.
1:01 @OceanlinerDesigns During a moonless night, the new moon isn't hidden by the earth's shadow. That's just the half of the moon that's in lunar night. Similar to the nightside of earth, it is just the portion that is facing opposite the star. When the moon is in earth's shadow, that is a lunar eclipse; and those can only occur during a full moon.
Correct me if I'm wrong but this is a collection of several previously released videos into one? I could have sworn I've seen these shot for shot before.
member the time they didnt pry open the locker to get the binoculars and the ship hit a snowball and sank or something.......should bring an owl on board they can see at night.....if it suddenly flies away you know youre about to crash lol
Seems the suez lights would have been beneficial as the source was below the rail and would have preserved night vision if it were aimed straight ahead and not towards the surface of the water.
I’ve been thinking about something after watching the Bruce I reputation video. Considering how it was basically expected that a gentleman, in that era, had a “responsibility” to go down with the ship rather than take a spot on a lifeboat when women and children remained behind - what of the crew and officers? Obviously some were assigned to man lifeboats. But was there basically an understanding that if a ship foundered, they were almost expected (in that era) to go down too? Or at least “every man for himself”? Was there any kind of escape plan for the employees of cruise liners?
Hi Mike. Love your channel. Chech out, Tallink Silja M/v Megastar, m/v My Star and Wasa lines m/V Aurora Bothnia ,new built ships that only has FRB(fast rescue boats) and MES(marine escape systems) no classic life boats. What will happend in a real evacuation if people suffering from mobility impairment has problem using them? Classic life boats can be loaded from deck level but MES requires that you use a "sock-like tube" reaching from a lower passenger deck to sea level into BIG life rafts. The FRBs is used to tow the life rafts away from the ship. Often there is only 4 of this systems onboard a passenger ferry that takes 2800 passengers. Well maybe I am worrying for nothing...the future will tell
Hey have you heard about the sisterships RMS Laurentic and Megantic if love to see a video about them because I'm building the RMS Megantic out of wood for a school project and have to present the history of the ships Would love to hear back
question for ya to, so I decided to start doing videos going though museums an when I was in Crescent City I learned of a ship wreck that happened by there which I never knew about but it was the Steamer Brother Johnson, could you do a video on it someday
At 1:01 "moonless as they say, when the moon is hidden by the Earth's shadow". Was there a total lunar eclipse that night? That's the only way the Earth's shadow blocks the Moon. More likely it was a New Moon lunar phase where the illuminated face of the Moon points away from Earth or had the Moon simply set below the horizon?
I've always thought the reason for calling these people Sailor's or Seaman, was with the changing conditions of the sea, these are the ones who know what should be done. So many times they've failed to do so. Capt Kendall. Keep ship moving to steer. Capt. Turner. move at speed in submarine areas Capt. Smith. Slow down around icebergs I guess they thought "At some point safety is just a waste of time" Richard Stockton Rush.☠️
Headlights should be had on the ships, but not used like one's on cars. In Titanics' situation, they could have shown the lights for 3 seconds at a time every 5 to 10 minutes. Just enough to spot an iceberg in the distance but not ruin their night vision.
fog and a light beam are very bad, about the worst thing possible for night vision in fog or overcast? "Suez Lights" may? Be? How the Engineer B.W. designed the dam buster bombing sight system? Angles and centers of beams, or tangents? "I am" a smaller boater fisherman local very familiar with LB/LA Harbor Ca. out to about 15 miles radius out to sea. They come in HOT! Some with huge wakes just outside the harbor's break wall and into the inner harbor's shipping ways, tug, tugs, or not, same on their exit. About the best fishing botton structure a mile or two out of Angels' Gate is next to their shipping channel's navagation bouyes? Worked on the bilding peirs G, E, Queen Marry parking, Spuced Goose demo, new Cruise Line terminal and pier, Aquerium new shopping area, Hi Rises in about 83 and 84,and others.
Huh, I just realized starboard has the same amount of letters as “right hand”.. I always remembered port and starboard by port having 4 letters, the same as left lol
I still think Titanic would have been fine if it hit the iceberg head on. If the watchman happened to miss the berg just a few seconds later, it probably would have hit it head on, and barring some damage to the front, it would have been ok.
The moon isn't hidden by the Earth's shadow... A New Moon is when the moon is on the same side of the Earth as the sun so the lit side is facing the sun while the dark side is facing us. It's how moon phases work.
warships had search lights back in the day... don't know whetehr useful or not. rivadavias had several on top of the central cranes (1915) and the pocket battleships had those lights around the funnel
In 2015, I was on the tall sail ship SS Alexander Von Humboldt-2. I learned all necessary rescue techniques and everyone on board, just even the trainees, knows that these are seriously important. (28:24) The German RU-vidr Jules, did make a funny video about this: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-MyEpru0wm3k.htmlsi=8bD_9EPW0Lm82pcJ
