Was the Evergreen incident really an accident?
The recorded track says "no".
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I don't know much about these huge container ships, but can't the rudder still be operated theoretically without power if you use a large enough gear ratio? You would think it would be the sort of failsafe that you should plan to include in your design...
No... No no no. Your sense of scale is way off. There are a couple of the biggest hydraulic pumps you can imagine moving that rudder. It can be manually pumped from the engine room. Very slowly.
Edit: at a glace this looks to be a similar sized container ship:
https://www.damenmc.com/en/projects/5x20000-teu-container-vessels-for-cosco-containers
So if it can be manually pumped in the engine room then theoretically the ship's course could have been maintained and this was either ineptitude or done purposefully.
There is no way to pump it fast enough. Did you look at the size of the rudder? There are only 20-22 crew on a ship like that. Even if there was some kind of 20 man tweak pump handle (there isn't) they still couldn't correct fast enough.
I used to drive ships like that. You're constantly making corrections of a degree or two of rudder to maintain a steady course under the most ideal circumstances. Maybe, just maybe, in wide open ocean you could get the ship to go within 20 degrees of the desired course manually pumping. I doubt anyone had ever tried. It's insane.
Thanks I had no clue it was such a monumental effort to move the rudder on such a large ship. I suppose it makes sense, even with the buoyancy you're trying to move a giant piece of metal that ranges football field length and weighs thousands of tons... The math checks out...