Assalamualaikum
and welcome back to Orange Shots.
This city you see behind me
or rather, this country,
this is Singapore.
When we were reaching Singapore
this morning
I saw one vessel.
It was a ship
and what happened to it was:
it was on the rocks.
It had washed up onshore
and it was broken into two parts,
Although, those two parts weren't
entirely separated from each other.
The two parts were still intact
you could easily see a crack in between.
This is a nightmare for any ship.
And whoever this happened to
must've been in a bit of a pickle.
Your ship is a second home to you,
so, whatever happens to it...
okay, so there are lifeboats
you can climb aboard a lifeboat,
immediately evacuate the wrecked ship.
But the safest place when at sea
is the ship you are on.
A lifeboat cannot be safer than a ship.
I mean, if I just imagine that
ALLAH forbid if this were to happen,
you've lost the safest place at sea.
If you take a closer look at this ship
its front is slightly lifted
the back is twisted.
It looks like it's been twisted
the shell plating in the middle
is completely cracked.
Very bad for this ship.
I don't know what will happen to this ship.
We'll receive a case study, later on;
we'll know what happened once we get it
the real cause of the grounding.
Now, the real question is:
why does this happen?
And what causes a ship to break in two?
How does a ship wash up on shore?
And if it does end up onshore
how can something so robust
break so easily?
You see, a ship isn't only floating on water
it's slightly submerged in it, too.
You keep loading cargo onto it
whether it's a container ship,
a general cargo ship,
or like ours, a crude oil tanker.
Whatever ship it is,
if you keep loading it
the more it will get weighed down.
One portion of it will be above water
and the rest, below it.
The portion that gets submerged in water
is called a "vessel draught".
The more you load a vessel
its draught will also increase gradually
(to support the increased load).
When a vessel is fully loaded
in order to navigate properly
you must determine the optimal water
depth (shallow waters), and the vessel
must sit at that very depth
so that no matter what happens,
the bottom of the ship
doesn't touch the ground.
And that ship was unable to do that.
Now, your next question must be:
that despite us knowing that we
have to level our ship
so that it doesn't touch the ground,
why do ships still run aground?
Why do they wash up ashore,
that too on rocks?
Let me tell you something.
Sometimes, yes, there is human error. But
where does human error originate from?
Whenever a ship/vessel is at sea
there are a lot of forces acting on it.
This ship of ours is as large
as an aircraft carrier.
Have you seen those old ships
the ones with sails attached to them?
The ones you see "sailing".
Such ships would use winds as fuel
to help propel them forward.
We don't need today's ships to do that
but haven't you considered whether
winds have an impact on vessels or not?
It acts on the vessel.
Winds help vessels drift forward,
towards one certain direction.
Second, when you're surrounded by water
you'll notice two characteristics
there are waves (lehrain), and then,
there is swell (mojain).
Again, both of them act on the vessel
they push it towards one direction.
The third characteristic
usually found commonly in the
Singapore Straits, and areas of the like,
are currents, sea currents.
The earth is constantly spinning
and everything on it rotates as well.
The water in the world's seven seas
never stays still.
It constantly moves
from one place to another.
This natural movement of the water
is aggravated usually when
water passes through narrow spaces.
The Singapore Strait is narrow
and it consists of many tiny islands.
So, the stream of current here
is continuously changing.
Like I've already shown you on my ECDIS
that whenever we're navigating
we don't have much room
on the left and right side of our ship.
You'll notice that we have hardly
200-300 meter room, say, on this side
and 200-300 meter room on the other.
Now, our ship is huge,
this is a 275-meter vessel.
It's also 60 meters wide.
Even the slightest of miscalculation
could lead the ship to drift
onto a shallow patch (of water).
And if it does end up on a shallow patch
to be grounded.
What's going to happen is:
let alone environmental damage, e.g.,
our crude oil carrier leaking crude oil,
the oil going everywhere,
the ship can also be rendered useless.
Sometimes, there is a lucky chance
when you begin to offload cargo
from the ship.
You remove all the containers,
discharge all the crude oil,
and discharge the general cargo as well.
If, by any chance, the shallow patch
isn't that deep,
chances are that when you remove
most of the cargo
the ship will slightly float upwards.
The vessel could end up floating again.
You might be able to control the damages
maybe you could repair them.
But if you end up on a very shallow patch
rupturing the ship's plate below it;
then most of the time
it's almost impossible to save the ship.
There is no machinery big enough
to recover a grounded ship.
If it does get pulled back into water
the big hole that's now probably under it
could cause the vessel to sink.
So, grounding is one of the most
terrible things to happen to a vessel.
And I think one of those things
happened to this ship, also.
This bank is known as "Batu Berhanti".
When we enter the Singapore Straits
there are a few places we're wary of.
We check for the current streams there,
the change of the current,
we check the sea, the swell,
we see all of those things.
Especially the current
because it could drag your ship
200-300 meters away
from its original location.
There's Batu Berhanti among these,
Brother's Light, Racon Delta.
As you can tell, there isn't a lot
of room around Batu Berhanti.
The slightest of miscalculation, e.g.,
a navigation error,
basically, any sort of human error.
Not calculating something right,
not monitoring the vessel's drift,
failing to monitor the vessel's set,
in that case, consider the ship destroyed.
There's no saving it.
So you see, as I showed you today,
we're not always
sailing across an open sea.
It's not always the open sea for us.
And no matter how
calm the sea may seem,
there are always forces acting on a ship.
We calculate all of these factors,
and keep them in mind whenever
we manoeuvre our ship.
So that, ALLAH forbid, our vessel
doesn't end up in an unwanted situation.
So, today you learned that
even if the sea seems tranquil and calm,
that doesn't mean that
any ship sailing it is safe.
No.
There are always many things
that can go wrong,
and this was one of those things.
So, this was today's video,
where I told you how vessels run aground,
what else happens after,
and how you can completely lose a vessel
once the vessel is aground.
I hope, again, you learned something new,
I mean, there has always been
this misconception
that only a storm, pouring rain,
raucous waves can wreck a ship.
No.
A ship can be wrecked in many ways.
There are so many things that you
have to take care of.
Once you're on a ship.
Upon my arrival to Singapore, I thought
that since I've been getting a lot
requests asking me how I stop a ship
since ships don't have brakes,
there are no breaks.
So I thought I'd make a video about that
but it's still raining constantly.
My camera is fully wrapped in plastic
and now it's starting to rain harder
so I think I should head back.
Take good care of yourselves,
remember me in your prayers.
With tons of love to my digital family,
and to-be digital family.
Take very good care of yourself.
This is Orange Shots,
I've been Zahid.
ALLAH Hafiz!