Assalamualaikum, and welcome back to Orange Shots.
We live in Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.
I'm sure you've already seen tractors, trolleys, and all.
Their owners try
to load as much cargo onto them as possible.
Sometimes it looks more like a balloon than a tractor.
Overloading may benefit the owner,
but not only is it bad for the vehicle's machinery,
at the same time,
it's just as bad for us.
There have been many incidents
where all this overloaded cargo was damaged,
and so were the vehicles passing by.
People were also harmed.
By the way, if my voice sounds strange today,
I have the flu, a cough, and I'm running a fever.
Things aren't well for me right now but
I was sitting bored at home so I thought I'd sit here
and film a video.
So here I am right now.
Just like these modes of transport,
I'm sure ships come to your mind as well.
I'm sure you think their owners get greedy as well.
Overloading their ships.
Because sometimes ships.
while they can carry the maximum load they're meant to,
their cargo holds or spaces still have room.
This was actually going on for many years, decades,
before the load lines convention came in,
restricting ships from that practice.
But what practices?
Let me give you a small example.
When your car is on the road,
it has a number plate on it,
That number plate is your car's identification.
If your car does a hit-and-run,
or gets involved in any other mishap,
the car's owner can be identified via their car's number plate.
Just like that, ships have different markings on them
that help you identify them without having to come near them.
You can identify the ship's name, its registry, and its IMO number,
or in layman terms, a number plate.
You can also find out whether the ship is overloaded.
These numbers you see on six different sides
i.e., the forward, midship, and aft, port, and starboard.
These numbers show you whether a ship is overloaded or not.
Before I go into detail about overloading, let me tell you about
the different markings on a ship.
This is so you can identify what different markings on ships mean,
and know how those markings can benefit you,
how you can decipher them.
First, at the stern of a vessel, you can see its name.
You can see its IMO number,
it isn't always at the back, though,
some have it at the forward of their accommodations.
Regulations require such
numbers to be displayed on any select parts of a ship,
so some have them at the back, some at the forward of their accommodations.
All in all, IMO numbers are important for a ship.
Because an IMO number helps you determine the details of a ship.
You often see this at the forward of a ship too.
It kind of looks like a ship.
This shows that the ship has a bow thruster at its forward.
Just like a ship has a propellor at its back
which helps propel it forward.
Just like that, ships have bow thrusters at their forwards.
It's a fan-like object that throws water
left to right, right to left, port to starboard, and vice versa.
That way you can turn a ship's heading quite fast.
Otherwise, it would take longer.
You will also see different marks like these on a ship.
Some ships have "tug" written on them, some don't.
This shows that when they need tugs to push them,
this is where they should push them
The reason why is, wherever you see this tug sign,
there's either a transfer frame or web frame passing through there
or that part is extra strengthened.
There are different ways of doing it.
I'm not going to go into details
about how strengthening is done, there are many methods to do it.
But in simple terms,
this is where the ship's plate is the strongest,
and when a tug pushes it,
this plate can withstand that push.
Whether there's a tug sign or not, but if there are arrow signs present,
tugs know where to push the ship.
Besides that, there are signs like these on the sides (port or starboard) of a ship.
These are where you can hang your ladders.
Different ships have slightly different markings,
but most of them, at least the latest ones, have these markings.
This way, the crew can figure out which ladders to use, i.e., combination,
or just pilot laddering
and in case rigging is necessary, they
know the location where the pilot ladder should be shifted to be rigged.
Now, these are some of the different kinds of markings.
These are important, of course, but
let's get to the most important marking of them all, i.e.,
the draft marks along with your Plimsoll marks.
To stop ships from being overloaded,
they add Plimsoll marks.
If you look at any ship,
towards its port or starboard,
or midship (the ship's center),
you will see this mark.
The Plimsoll mark has a circle with letters around it,
show the classification society the ship is made for,
i.e., the classification society that issued the ship's certificate
for it to be loaded.
There's also another indicator
that shows the limit to how much the ship can be loaded.
This F and the backwards F next to it
shows whether a ship is overloaded or not.
So you're going to see different markings.
There's "F", "TF", "W", and "S".
They're all different things.
The F is for fresh,
the TF is for tropical fresh,
T means tropical,
W is for winter,
S is for summer.
If you see the Plimsoll mark,
the "S", this line should NOT be underwater.
There are different load lines for loading ships
some may cause this line to be submerged in water,
but I'm giving you a plain example.
Usually when the "S" is submerged in water,
i.e., the line next to it,
that means the ship is overloaded in many cases.
Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh are usually where they use the "Summer" load line.
If we go back in time,
there were cases where they'd
load the ships to the point where
the ship would be overloaded.
What does overloading do?
The more you overload a ship
the ship's topmost part, i.e., its deck,
keeps getting lower.
Meaning, if a swell hits a ship and it can't reach its deck,
it will definitely be able to do that once the ship is lowered.
In that case, a ship has cargo holds, compartments where water might get in
and when there's a swell that has reached the ship's deck,
and if it gets into the cargo compartments,
then you might remember that I made a video about the Crimson Polaris,
about how it broke apart due to the ingress of water.
It's cargo had absorbed all the water, gaining weight.
A lot of ships have cargo
that could absorb water, getting heavier as a result.
They weight the ship down even more.
You can't take the water out of the bilges
because they soak up all the water,
causing the ship to break, and possibly sink.
Money would be lost, and most unfortunately, lives would be lost.
This is why we have load lines now.
No matter what happens, you cannot exceed them,
These indicate the maximum load a ship can take, no more than that.
Of course, these load lines were established considering
how much freeboard a ship has,
i.e., the area between the load or water line and the deck,
basically, the area out of water.
That area is called a freeboard.
The ample amount of freeboard was calculated
for a ship's safety.
So these load lines and numbers tell you
that you shouldn't overload a ship, no matter how greedy you get,
you cannot exceed these numbers.
Besides that, for support, there's a line next to it,
referred to as draft marks.
Draft marks have two benefits.
The first I already told you about;
it's for you to know how deep your ship is submerged in water.
What this does is, if, God forbid, you're heading towards shallow depth,
and let's say your draft is 20 meters,
and the water depth ahead is 16 meters, you'll know
a ship with a 20 meter draft can't enter shallow water 16 meters deep.
If I do that, my ship will be grounded.
This is the safety aspect, at the same time,
you can use this draft mark to know
how much weight a ship is carrying.
We have Hydrostatics tables,
stability calculations, in simple words,
by eyeing a ship's draft, you can find out
how much load it is carrying.
This includes the ship's crew, their baggage,
bunkers, fuel oil, fresh water, ballast water, and the cargo loaded.
The third advantage is that;
let's say you ask a ship, MD = XYZ, their maximum Summer draft.
The one I told you about earlier, the "S" that shouldn't go below water.
They tell you that their maximum draft is 17 meters,
but a surveyor notices that the ship is 17.1 meters under water.
In this case, the ship could get fined for overloading.
It could also get fined for
entering a port overloaded, the port could also have been in danger.
Why?
Because, had the ship been grounded,
that could've stopped all the traffic coming in and going out.
And when that happens, not only is the port control affected,
the owners of the cargo, but
ships waiting to enter the channel could also be affected.
You find draft marks everywhere on a ship,
all six sides.
The front, the middle, the back.
Interestingly, they also serve another purpose,
I already told you in my Crimson Polaris video
about bending movement and shearing forces.
A bending movement is when a ship bends,
shear, vertical and horizontal.
You can determine that by calculating the draft of all six sides.
Let's say the draft of a ship's midship and starboard is 17 meters,
but the port side is 17.1 meters.
The front is 17, the back, also 17.
That way you'll be able to tell that the ship is twisted.
That's how you can determine if your ship is in danger.
At the same time, if the ship is bent in the middle,
bent like this,
we call that sagging, for when a ship sags in the middle.
Simultaneously, if a ship is bent upwards in the middle,
it means that the ship is hogging.
You can determine these phenomena
if you calculate all six of a ship's drafts in person.
Not only is your ship safe this way,
safe from being overloaded,
think of it as a limit set for the owners,
a limit they can't exceed in terms of loading
no matter what.
Even today, there are shady pratices,
but this is one thing that can keep a vessel safe,
its crew and cargo safe as well.
If you want to see the video of the ship
that was split in half,
I've linked it here.
There's a video about the Bermuda triangle linked here.
If you enjoyed this video,
don't forget to like, share and subscribe.
Take good care of yourselves,
remember me in your prayers.
With tons of love to my Orange Shots family,
and to-be Orange Shots family.
This is me Zahid Nisar,
you're watching Orange Shots,
and until my next video,
ALLAH Hafiz!