Ferry Strip Down | Engineering Giants | Spark

[Music] 32,000 tons of steel seven decks each the length of a football pitch engines burning two and a half thousand liters of fuel an hour so when you're out insane I've got my two men oh is that right massive feet here the North Sea ferry the pride of Bruges don't get too much more up close and personal with the ship than we are battered by the sea for 25 years it's being taken out the water for the biggest overhaul that's life as key parts are stripped down as a unique chance to explore deep within its hidden features where as far as any sensible person would walk every complex system must be rigorously tested and repaired before it can return to service if you've got a high clearance you could actually lose your order so these checks they're very important for once again very important 120 strong team of highly skilled engineers take on the challenge so the place order is a massive job they must examine hope separate parts and repair over 10,000 square meters of steel hull this wasn't being done the steel itself will just to do it and we'll reveal these giants when they reach the and none stopped by the sheriff that they're given a new lease of life Wow it's just an incredible firework display this is engineering Giants I'm Rob Bell I'm a mechanical engineer and I've always loved to get my hands on complex machines to discover how they work I'm Tom bigglesworth I'm a trained electrical engineer with a passion for big machines [Music] is the pride accrues the North Sea ferry that's going to help us explore exactly how it works it's arriving in Newcastle where we spend the next three weeks being stripped down try to bruise your temper let's we're coming to you no girl we like a mouse come alongside an elephant here look at this all the ships key components including its engines propellers rudders and whole we'll be quite a detailed check to repair [Music] many of the most important parts of it very underwater before any of the checks can take place the first challenge is actually to get this beast into the dock and that's no mean feat Engineers one know the extent of the work ahead of them until all 32,000 tons the weight of over 2,000 double-decker buses safely out of the sea and to do that the ship must now be precisely maneuvered into the drydock facility at the A&E shipyard on the time the job of all the guys here around the dock is to get this ship absolutely central and in exactly the right position in the dock on the bottom of the dock underneath the water or what's called docking blocks and they've been laid out in exactly the right position for the design of this ship the fried of Bruges today I met up with site manager John Leckie to find out how his team was going to accomplish this engineering feat these blocks that the ship will sit on leaving foot in particular positions for this ship okay in accordance with its docking play the meter high steel bases topped with oak bluffs which cushion the immense weight of the ferry preventing damage to its hull while enabling engineers to work right underneath the ship once they're in place the team can flood the dock if by some means it started right now where we had time to get out a quicker runnin oh yeah pretty quick but using water from the river next door fed by gravity the dock is flooded with a hundred and thirty three million liters of water equivalent of 53 Olympic sized swimming pools Wow absolutely flooding out that did not take long at all it takes another three hours before the water in the dock is at the same level as the river outside the gate could be dropped engineers have calculated where the hole needs to be positioned in relation to the dock so that the ship ends up exactly above the block tonight this task is particularly challenging as there's a strong crosswind this is quite a tense moment and it was the bit that they weren't sure whether they were gonna actually carry out tonight because it was so windy with the margin of error less than a meter the ferries attached by steel lines to winches known as mules so that the ship can be precisely maneuvered from a central control tower [Music] it's such high precision work and with the wind coming across as well it's certainly not easy caught by a gust of wind the ferry is pushed perilously close to the edge of the dock any damage sustained to the ship on its way into dock could cost millions and set the whole schedule back days okay big high school hello Justin back here know the start saying will vote to beat us to the port side finally after two hours of maneuvering the team get the ferry into position and raised the gate [Music] next comes the most dangerous part of the operation if the ship is not in exactly the correct position above the blocks as the waters comes out the hull could be badly damaged these three electric pumps will drain the 133 million litres of water out of the dock each one pops out eighty an hour thousands tons of water an hour after another four hours it becomes clear that the engineering teams measurements are spot-on as the pride of Bruges finally comes to rest on its blocks [Music] Wow I'll get too much more up close and personal with the that we are here and you can see the effect at the weight of this ship all 32,000 tons of steel has had on these docking blocks it's variants amazing with the pride approves now out of the water for the first time in years engineers including site manager John Leckie can examine and begin to repair the most important parts of the ship it's home so job now with this close to the vessel it strikes me that there's actually very little of it under the water volume displaced by what's under the water equals the weight of the vessel and its entirety so it does actually quite a lot under the water especially with this type of ship so if you lowered it if you lowered it into the water as it started to enter the water it would displace one ton to two and three ton photon when that displacement weight matches the weight of the ship yes and it stops the shape of a ship's hull depends on the type of work if designed to carry out for speed v-shaped hulls are best enabling ships to cut through the water minimizing drag the stability a boxy u-shaped design like our ferry is better creating more cargo space and minimizing rocky [Music] but the shape of a ship's hull isn't enough on its own to ensure its stability and seaworthiness a perfect level of buoyancy is also needed and to make that happen the ferry can pump up to 2,200 tons of seawater into the network of ballast tanks that runs throughout the lower part of its hull the ship is designed to sit a certain depth in the water if the ship was empty carrying no load it would actually sit so high up in the water that it would appear unstable now this is a bit of an extreme example that's not classic ship shape now we can make even this sit in the water with a good degree of stability if we put enough ballast in it and cause it to lower its buoyancy point like that while the dock was being drained the ballast tanks on the pride of Bruges were emptied so that engineers could begin to filter jobs for cleaning out the water inlets known as sea boxes I hope there's a man in there but their contract Josie just dodging affair engineer Colin grant has the job of ensuring that this major overhaul runs smoothly guys are working up they're cleaning the mud and everything that accumulates because eventually it will clog up and a problem so when the ship needs a drink this is its mouth it is it has to pull in cooling water all the time yeah for the engine put it out again yeah the forward end of the engine room has rows and rows of big pumps for different purposes under circulate water on the engines and there's lots of engines in there and some to push the ballast water up when it's required right through the length of the ship once the sea boxes have been cleaned engineer food tight access holes as they venture deeper into the ship's ballast tank system to inspect and repair their steel interior against corrosion the thing that makes this one stand out for me is that we have a great big ship here and you've got the daftest access to it you'll never come across in your fight Colleen qualified as an engineer at the Ministry of Defense and has always been passionate about ships there are all sorts of plans of the ships but the one that we need for this exercise is this before Colin's team can begin examining the ship's labyrinth of ballast tanks he first needs to check that they're safe and that no water remains inside them [Music] so normally when this or the ships out at sea vision or we fill with water there would be a slaughter ballast tanks yes it's pretty poke around there the tanks are divided into a series of smaller pockets designed to prevent the volume of water equivalent to an Olympic sized swimming pool from sloshing around the hull and making the ship unstable to call it now we're pretty much right down inside the for paper wear as far as any sensible person would rule moving around inside these tanks is cramped and claustrophobic the check you'd have engineers coming down here to do what kind of maintenance the condition of the shell has to be checked it's steel it rusts and therefore it has to be monitored locked at all ships of this plane in effect of two things you've got the law part that sits in the water and that's the real ship it's got all the machinery and everything yes all the stuff up I hate that passengers go in and it can also go in and also all that stuff er its cargo on the actual ship even though it's a permanent part of it yeah this is the bit that has to do the work of getting from here to there safely [Music] that safely depends on making sure that the home sits at the correct level in the water too heavy a load and the ship could become dangerously low in the water and susceptible to swamp ting so the simple horizontal line across the circle the plimsoll line indicates the maximum load level the other little marks there are indicators for different particular conditions which would be freshwater in saltwater yeah and is that because freshwater had so far off the different planets different densities the saltwater is more buoyant as denser than freshwater and similarly cold water it's Lord buoyant then warm water cold water is all buoyant than warm water I never never been correct yes and the Bruges is designed to compensate for these variables by pumping water in or out of its ballast tanks a part of this ship that I'm keen to get out of I don't envy the guys have to actually do their work down there Oh ha ha hard work as I call him one of the one of the perks of the jobs you wouldn't do with all of it I wouldn't want everybody to know this but I was one of the attractions of the job I get Nicole places where normally it's brilliant it's a real privilege to come along with it I went to become an engineer because I just any anything internal combustion anything that goes banging up and down and round and round in their lives and the bigger the better it's in the areas of the ship beneath the waterline but most of the important maintenance work over the next three weeks will take place this is where many of the ships most vital components are located and where I found pianos chief engineer hands prompt he was part of the team that took delivery of the pride of Bruges 25 years ago my roots are Etsy so see what that his innovates yeah fans his engineering team are about to run tests on a part of the ship that few passengers would even know exists as why is this little room so important to the passengers on four on four corner passengers this controls comfort the ferry is fitted with retractable fins known as stabilizers which help limp the rocking motion at sea that can cause seasickness so this is the actuator that pushes the stabilizer arms out yes so at the moment and I hope you get a mouth full of bears cleaning maintenance over there during the tests engineers will be checking that all the hydraulic systems are functioning correctly and that both stabilizers are perfectly synchronized to work these would only normally be deployed in stormy weathers the flaps at the back are controlled and move up and down and make counteract the rolling of the ship from side to side as this flap goes up on the other side the flap will go down now the really clever thing about these is that they're controlled automatically by the ship through use of the Madeira scope system such that when that gyro moves to one side because of the rock of the ship and the roll of the waves this thing knows exactly what to do and it knows how far to turn because of how big those waves are clever stuff the pride approach was built in Japan 25 years ago specifically to carry passengers in cargo 200 miles across the North Sea as high up from there inside three freight decks can carry up to 850 vehicles above the Tradex are four more levels to accommodate over a thousand passengers and crew complete with two restaurants and nightclub the casino under hotel with 350 cabbages it's amazing just this massive almost like a town you wouldn't know you would see if it wasn't been rocking about all over the shoulder coordinating the maintenance of machine this large is a massive task the Newcastle engineering team are due to return the pride of groove to the North Sea in just 20 days time delays would be disruptive and costly working to a tight deadline the team's biggest challenge is to repair thousands of square meters of steel which is showing its age try keeping a CV pocket while let's see the whole steel surface has come under constant attack from marine life I mean if this wasn't being done the steel itself will just to do it sea water is also corrosive and would have caused much greater harm were it not for these metal bars currently being replaced by rich eh Richie what is this piece Donald Trump especially Lord sacrificial anode but protects the steel basically yeah protects the steel this is a new one is it it's new you odd so these are put on this out how many of them on the on the ship or the civil 50th or the sacrificial anode - made of zinc a more reactive metal than steel which means corrosion attacks them first as their name suggests they sacrificed themselves to save the whole while engineers carry out repairs on the steel exterior of the ship in sight work is underway to a place to steal floors each the size of a football pitch in the first target yes overseeing this complex engineering project is Neil Farquaad the reason with the place in the steel is the wear and tear over the years of the trucks and stuff that goes there oh yeah well stone here we gotta remember this 1820 tons have been brought before and tail of the stuff if it goes below a certain all of us has to be at a place to the place although is a massive job just rip out the old decking would take months so engineers will be fixing a new level of steel above the old one saving time and money the blue machine on the left on site is what we call a blast shock machine which shoots shock blast onto the surface to make it absolutely spotless oh it really doesn't it so that leaves the well does the Queen suffice to come along it's not filing it down before exactly over the next three weeks the team not only have to grind the old decking down but they also have to remove hundreds of man hit them to the new surface you added on topics will six Millwall I should say it writes another ten years yeah yeah extending the life of the fairy is the major goal for this overhaul than a week into the process there's still much to do over 600 square meters of flooring needs to be laid as parts of the passenger decks refurbishment the critical moving components that take the brunt of the forces at sea need to be checked and renovated and all four lifeboats must be removable these potentially life-saving vessels can carry up to 150 passengers each that we've thoroughly examined along with the release mechanism that lowers them into the water part of our service which makes sure that they are working and functioning correctly put them into the water check the release system and do the mating safety on the ship is paramount and the main focus for the Newcastle engineering team they're being helped by key members of the Berry's Dutch crew who have stayed on forward to operate the controls and working parts of the vessel a little chip 25 years plus well maintained when looked off that good crew and porked who loved the ship they do two weeks on two weeks off enough or we should treat it as a home it's a good thing we've got bite oniton 20 is crew working together with all the people that's most important thing that will help you through the two weeks the interaction is really great on this ship different nationalities yeah that's why I love it training for to eat on the ship and there are two weeks at home enough time to spend at home with your family no one knows the point of Bruges better than its crude today they're working with Colin and the Newcastle team to operate the ships to four times [Music] they need to examine their 329 meter change stored in lockers deep in the bow of the vessel the potentially lethal where the anchors are the only breaks that the ship has run either hit something solid we have undesirable nun advisory and the captain gets embarrassed or you hang on to what's down there the ship will not stand still what are we looking for in that inspection any defects rubs on that yeah naturally that causes where remember of the are actually answer anchor those things are working all the time yeah and there's a maximum we're allowed on them so you accurately measure the wear on every single link all 329 meters of chain is released an operation rarely carried out on this very except in emergencies you see there are us flying off of it as the pressure of each one of the links of those chains goes through the tea from the wheel it's just grinding a stray off next the team must carefully organize the chain along the bottom of the dope a potentially dangerous task that has crushed dock workers in the past they load the chain onto the ship in length after they've loaded one length on you can see they join it with a red link after one length they paint one link either side with white paint after two lengths these two links I decide to get painted white after three lengths three links so you can see at a glance exactly how much chain you've fed out the anchor prevents a ship from drifting away due to the currents or tide a common misconception is that it's the anchor itself that acts as the main way to secure the ship in its position in fact it's the weight of the chain that holds a ship in place the anchor is maybe there to keep the chain in the correct place on the seabed [Music] the final link in the chain is attached to a single pin deep in the bowels of diversity it pull the pin there is pinned it down there's a backup on everything yeah hold that pin so that's there so I can't work its way out while nobody's looking yeah and then you get your mightiest prove with him hit him knock it out that pin goes through the bitter end the last link of the cable so the last link of the chain is called the bitter end yes and the whole anchor and the whole chain is connected to the ship by the bitter end exactly or more importantly the ship is connected to the anchor by the bitter end releasing the bitter end would be the case in the last resort it's free casting the ship adrift in the sea you build a ship and you hope that will never be used except for normal and caching changes yes the anchor and its chain is 25 years old the same age as the ship and like many of the ships 10 million components as it gets older it will require an increasing amount of maintenance and repairs in the end the pride of Bruges will simply become too costly to keep running then it will end up at a ship breaking the ark like this one in Belgium the largest of its kind in Europe [Music] over 50 ships Hispanics it's the perfect place to look even more closely - ships are built as all manner of activity going on here ships being sailed in to get cut up scrapped and it all gets loaded up and taken off to be recycled ships usually arrive at the yard in full working order looks like it's just been completely abandoned the salvage team led by Mario Mears then get to work removing any valuable components left on board that's a pretty massive engine [Applause] could fetch over 50,000 pounds so how much of this weigh roughly 27 bucks 27 tons 27 tons of engine the team must be careful removing a heavy engine while the ship is still afloat can weaken its thin finally balanced hull snapping it in half I mean that would be disastrous you've got people on board cutting and some people on board residues off oil into the water so let align the value of the ship which rather he could destroy it would be a cutter catastrophic [Music] got open offer it sits down job done engine safely out the remaining hole is now light enough to be pulled up onto dry land to be cut up and recycled effectively we're just dragging it from the sea here on to try that [Music] this Mexican dredging vessel used to pump sand and silt at the bottom of South American ports it has a hull that follows the same principle and dimensions of our ferry just half the size stand in front of this perfect cross-section of a ship cut right through it just gives you a brilliant picture of the structure and what goes on inside I mean better than any engineering drawing could ever give you and whilst this is obviously built and designed to transport cargo and our ship people and cars the principle is very much the same the flat bottom hull and the ballast tanks on the side the other great thing about this cross-section is it allows you to see how thick the hull is or in fact actually how thin it is that's probably what couple of centimeters and Max you just imagine how something as thin as this you can get ripped to shreds it came off against something solid like a rock it will take another two weeks for the salvage team to cut up the rest of this mm um hull ready to be recycled our ship the pride of Bruges should be at least another 10 years away from this stage of its life cycle in Newcastle the ferry is now halfway through its three-week overhaul and so far the engineering team are on schedule throughout the process one of its poor diesel engines has been ticking over to provide electrical power to the shift control system right at the back or the arc of the ship through the business end down here where the engines are the power this beast of a vessel it's the harder the beast that's where all the action is it's it's it's a lie it pumps the energy through this ship and you can feel it when you're in there you can't clear anything else but you even with ear protectors on when the ship is at sea it's simply too loud in the engine room for engineers to work safely for long periods so while the ship is in drydock chief engineer misty for just a few days to check the thousands of valves for any leaks and carry out important system checks on the ancient complex electronic controls so you are able to see here and actually control everything out in the engines all the pumps all the generators all the things they'll be displayed on a screen like this as you see the controls are we put our four pumps their calls for propels the controls for generators they control for main engines glitching deep glitching staring sealing heavily despite the noise and heat hands is never more a home than when he's in an engine room when you're out at sea it's even more noisy than it is now at sea all four engines will be running constantly driving the ship's two propellers as well as supplying the ship with hot water and enough to power a small town my dear the size of the engines and the peasants than the diameter a piston inside the engine piston in a regular car engine is closer to the size of a fizzy drink cannoneer that's just been refurbished has it ready to be used again brand-new yeah wicked for use it's how much would one of these cost me roughly about seven thousand ported foot part is obviously split yeah and then if the lower part is enough same mm lovely around fourteen fifteen thousand pounds in addition to 30 Pistons costing a hundred and eighty two thousand pounds there are tens of thousands of valve pumps and pipes all working together to supply the ship with the power it needs so what's the power that we've got on here enhance its 5760 dealer watts the power output from average cars what in kilowatts but under kilowatts about so that means this is about the same power output as about 58 cards yes in total the ferries four engines generates a power equivalent to over 200 cars and on a 14-hour crossing of the North Sea that means the pride of Bruges will get through over 30 tons of diesel fuel [Music] back at the ship graveyard has been split revealing that the vessel consumed and how it consumed it the fuel they used on ships is one of the cheapest real heavy fuel oil you can get I mean look at it I mean this is kind of crude oil once you've taken off gas petrol diesel or a refinery this is kind of what's left it's like treacle so on a on a ship it has to go through the fuel gauge that's three different stages before it can actually be ejected into the engine and been burned the point where you can see running through it's kind of like the heating element at the bottom of a kettle this is used to heat up the fuel so it goes from this really viscous thick sticky stuff into something more liquid that they can start pumping through the fuel system so it gets thinned out by private income yeah it gets thinned out but it's not ready to be burnt yeah it's actually in this you've got all sorts of impurities there's water in there as well and they've got a really clever system for separating out the stuff that we don't want so we get a fuel oil that is burnable and that system is called a centrifuge which I'm going to demonstrate with a bicycle and a bottle full of a mixture of sand water and oil to represent the ship's fuel and its impurities so I'm gonna get this wheel spinning it uh-huh much as it would be on the centrifuge on a ship now as that spins the celebration forces the heavier objects or the denser objects towards the outer edge of our bottle so let's have a look at what's been left with well with our little makeshift centrifuge so you can quite clearly see there the heavier denser earth was thrown right out and that's the sand that's the impurities within the fuel on the ship yeah then you've got the water that represents the water in the fuel on the ship and up top you've got the least dense liquid in there and that's to the oil and that would be the fuel oil on the ship which can then be tapped off and burnt in the engines very good let's see two and a half thousand litres of this fuel is burnt every hour on the private room generating over 40,000 horsepower most of which is used to turn the ship to a lot more propellant linked to the engine by the long shot right from the transmission right out to the propeller yes the shafts are so long because if the engines and propellers whirred next to each other and their combined weight of over 200 tonnes it replaced too much weight in the stern of the ship making the ferry unstable the propellers work by pushing water in one direction causing the ship to be moved in the other the angle and speed of the blades affect the volume of water being moved and therefore the speed of the ship born 1/2 meters in diameter and weighing 14 tonnes each the two propellers on the roof to spend 120 revolutions a minute during the process have been polished by engineer Paul Baker and his team an essential job they can only do when the ship is in drydock once they've been polished then we will crack detect the areas that your craft detect or in the palm where the bolts are okay and on the tips of the blades okay this is purely to identify whether or not there is any surface imperfections or fractures within the blade material these surface imperfections can be caused by a phenomenon known as cavitation when the propeller is spinning the rapid changes of pressure in the water around the blades and cause cavities or bubbles to form the constant implosion of these bubbles as the liquid collapses into the void produces a shock wave which can damage the surface metal of the propeller if left unchecked cavitation could result in a ship losing a blade so this is being expected at the moment it is we will proceed with the polishing of the blades and the craft detection so when you polish it yes what's the effect that that will have in efficiency it will improve the efficiency it will prove the efficiency of the blade as regards the resistance within the water so therefore it will reduce these fuel costs okay it's all about reducing fuel costs those costs are further lowered by the ingenious design of the propellers which enabled the captain to control the pitch of the blades an invention that's best demonstrated by this replica model unlike in cars with the engine speed determines that how fast the curls going that's not necessarily the case in ships it's the angle of the blades in the water which is going to determine how fast you're moving so when the propellers are in this position now which they're quite flat it's pretty much like having a dinner plate slaps onto the end of the sharp so when it's spinning it's not giving you any forward thrust and when you start to change the pitch you start to get an increased amount of thrust and propulsion forwards on the ship if the captain then wants to reverse the ship what happens is he reverses the angle of these plates completely such that the water's being propelled in the opposite direction and the ship goes backwards and that means he doesn't have to slow down the propeller from the forward direction crank it in and then speed it back up again that whole process can be done whilst the shafts still turning so this clever design makes the ship that much more maneuverable with quicker response times and is more fuel efficient making it much cheaper to run it's now only 10 days before the pride of Brut is due to ferry passengers in cargo across the North Sea and with time running out engineers must make sure that all the critical components usually under water are in perfect working order [Music] any failures at sea would mean returning the ship to drydock resulting in a huge financial cost and a cancelled service a [Music] faulty rudder would prevent the crew from being able to steer the ferry in support are needed so Paul and his team was now checked that the rudders washers and bearings known as bushes haven't worn down due to continual movement in the water you do get a wear factor on these and sometimes you have to part the blade and the flap and renew these writing washers and what would be the situation where you'd have to actually remove the whole rotor if we have a problem with the main trunk housing yeah if the clearance is excessive then we have to lower the rudder remove the rudder take the port out and renew the bus so what's what's the danger of not spotting something like that where you've got really high clearance if you've got a high clearance you could actually lose your order at sea yeah you lose the river so these checks it's a very informed forward they're very important house directly above the fault on rudders are the hydraulic actuators that move them they're controlled electronically by the ship's steering wheel at the bow of the vessel I'm fascinated to know how you control a ship like this so I want to find the nerve center or to find the bridge I've arranged to make the most important man on the ship it's captain Barry cami Wharf on the bridge all right good morning hey morning Tom welcome this is the bridge sounded great yes it's hard to find it hidden behind closed doors seems to be for obvious reasons the main controls to maneuver the ferry in close quarters are located on the bridges wings that protrude beyond each side of the hole so that the captain can see along either side of the vessel we have the bow thrusters here at our disposal now these are just those little propellers well it well sail it about 64 a relatively little you know you can move the bow basically sideways yeah so you've got rudder here brother without twisters and both engines I thought you'd have a wheel you want to see the wheel I think it will be a little bit disappointed with our reveal this is this is it this has been modernized doesn't it this is it it isn't what I expected well the big steering wheels are getting smaller the the ships and the rudders that drive them are getting bigger how's that passenger in cargo ferry the ship is regularly in and out of Port so maneuverability is key therefore the vessel has been equipped with special rudders these are Becker rotors are a high maneuverability rudder you have a flap as you can see on the the mechanism here Becca flap so what's the advantage of having this on the back of the right he increases the maneuverability of the of the vessel water that's been driven through the propeller is diverted by the angle of the rudder changing the direction of the ship the addition of the Bekaa flap to the rudder is an ingenious yet simple way of getting extra maneuverability because of its position this smaller flap has a bigger effect on by Burton the water flow making tighter quicker turns possible so what would be happening if you're doing 18 knots top speed top speed clear day yeah and you just when the ship will list considerably okay everything that's not secure will fall down clearly there's no way to see area maneuver the ship while it's in drydock but fortunately the pride of brugge has a sister ship the pride of York built in Scotland to exactly the same specifications as its Japanese sister the York also carries out the daily halter Zadroga crossing between the two ships they ferry 400,000 holidaymakers and business travellers between Britain and the continent every year as dusk falls we're offered a rare opportunity to view the most challenging parts of its journey from the bridge so Alistair why is it so such mellow lighting all crafts are illuminated we have navigation lights as an imperative that we see those lights as soon as possible any background light on the bridge would spoil our night vision we wouldn't see those other ships it's the same reason as in York is exactly the same exactly customers that if you have bright lights in your car you can't see what's outside the village captain Alistair Macfadyen shares the skipper role with his duct counterpart which means tonight he's free to explain how the crew maneuvers the ferry the now a lock on this departure from home all the navigations going on down the other end of it captain Rolly and the chief officer they're maneuvering the vessel at the moment so this is quite intricate maneuvers is like trying to get this impulse but it in through those tiny little that idea small gap yes yes okay one whirring that how much leeway we got you put about 18 inches either side of the vessel as we move it it's a very tricky maneuver we use our own machinery main engines and bow thrusters and of course the rudders to get the ship in here and as you can see we do things very slowly yeah nice and gently from up here back oh I complete that's 18 inches it looks like us man the smallest of errors could result in damage to the hull where many of the ships most important components are house but the York has been designed to the exact specifications of this particular lock is it not an argument economically to have a smaller ship or a bigger block that you can be quicker so you can you can get more ships through that the bare fact is that the lock is built and if they'd built it twice as big we would have built a ship twice a sphere now the ship has to wait until the level of the water inside the lock which is the same level as the river outside the whole idea of this dock basin is to maintain a certain depth of water all the time so any ships inside always have a guaranteed amount of water under their kill so they can work cargo throughout their stay in the port it's ok there we go opening up the crew now have to navigate the ferry 200 miles crossed busy shipping lanes in the North Sea this is the route that will be taken and so will be on the starboard side of the channel would come all the way down to the sea reach once we get to that point will alter course to of course a 1 to 4 degrees all the way down to Cebu go today ships are equipped with global positioning systems that use satellites to fix the ship's location to within meters at an automatic identification system their diversity superimposing that information on to the English Channel reveals how ships have to stick to lanes like traffic on a motorway but despite all the latest technology a captain must still be able to fall back on the charm like any prudent Mariner you don't rely on electronics so we could take a bearing and distance from a point of land using the parallel rules here yeah yeah very simple tool very effective and it's used by lining up on the compass rules here and then you line up to each other bearing required and then you can just simply move them across the chart to transfer a position line okay very simple very practical and sadly soon to disappear since it is appear how come well ships and modern ships are now moving towards electronic chart displays and that will be their main navigational source okay pendants will disappear ballestas works on ferries like the pride of your for 38 years and I'm keen to know if he has an emotional bond with these ships I think you do always develop a bond with the vessels you work on for any length of time it's not the ship the ship is just a vessel it's the people on it that really make a ship and you can have the best ship in the world with a rubbish crew and an everyday drags is horrendous and you can have a really order ship with lots of challenges but with the right crew it's a pleasure to come to work fantastic what was the most challenging thing feel when you're captain eh whether the weather weather where there were that chance is that something you relish as a challenge I don't think I would ever sell relish the challenge of the weather because we are mere mortals and and I think you know from my experience the people that get caught out other guys that relish the challenge one the ferry has all the latest navigation technology to help while sensors located throughout the vessel give early warning signs of any engineering problems and hazards including flooding but it still needs the skills of its crew to sail this ship safely in all weathers across 200 miles of North Sea with up to a thousand people on board this is such a gorgeous way to end a journey it's an incredibly civilized way to get across to the continent isn't it yeah it really is very civilized belinda belgium porta de braga gives us a chance to return to the ship salvage yard nearby to see what happens to a ship's carcass once it's been torn apart [Music] this is what ends up happening to ships at the scrapyard without any respect for the work they've done they're just getting munched up by this hero and thrown up on the scrappy and this is what the salvage team are after steel mountains and mountains of Steel ready to be shipped up the river to the Arcelor Mittal steel pipe while the next stage of life [Music] it's just so impressive the size of the equipment and the temperatures involved tons of Steel here we have just three days with and it's all waiting to be recycled and turned into cars bridges and fridges the scrap steel has loaded into enormous containers the size of a bus and transported to the convert a vessel capable of producing 295 tonnes of Steel Oh is a hellish noise so it's much kind of hellish prison anyway produced by melting iron ore in a blast furnace is then poured on top of the scrap metal the temperature inside the converter is now a scorcher so as they pour the hot battery now is just it it's just an incredible firework display turn within 20 tons of molten ping pong over 80 tons of scrap steel Melissa they should sell tickets to this on the landing essentially many impurities specifically the cow which is weakened to reduce the carbon the next stage is to add pure oxygen into the Wow [Music] extremely bright flame they're suggesting us the oxygen levels being on the inside they inject oxygen for about 15 minutes which help to take the carbon that's in the metal and turn it into carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide once that's extracted you're left with a more pure steel that we're looking for once the converter has been emptied the purified steel must go through a number of processes to collate and mold it into usable sheets this is where they call the ingots of steel down using water presumably from the local River or canal in Sheffield they use the local rivers and that cause the temperature in the river to rise by just enough to allow big trees to grow on the riverbanks of Southie [Music] Wow that is so impressive and this is a finished item a huge role of steel what I must describe too is how hot that thing is you can feel it from here it's searingly hot some of that was made up the ship that we saw floating on the ocean now it's been turned into this its next thing is going to be turned into your next car or washing machine it could even be used to build a ship in Newcastle there are now just two days until the fight of bridge is due to head back into service works begun to cover the part of the ship's hull usually underwater in a special paint designed to prevent the build-up for marine life therefore improving the ship's fuel efficiency as paint quality inspector Tim Emerson explains once up growth attaches itself to the ship it slows the ship down as a drug in effect on it yeah which obviously means that they've got to use more energy to drive the propellers to make the ship travel at the same speed which obviously is impacting on the on the fuel costs and firmly hard to believe that a few barnacles is going to cause the problem of build efficiency yeah it can cause a huge problem the amount of fuel used to drive these vessels is huge typically you're looking at around 90 tons of fuel a day typically if there was no unbe folded on there once you put the onion folding on you can reduce that down to between 4050 tonnes a day if it was going in your pocket every day until I would like it as well yeah you know we wouldn't have to work again the antifouling paint is a technological marvel in its own right [Music] it's been cleverly designed to react to movement of the ship through the water by continually shedding microscopic particles of itself this means that marine life is unable to get a grip on the whole every last square meter of the ship above and below the water line has to be repainted and with the bruise already scheduled to carry passengers on the same day the overhaul is due to finish for the next 48 hours they have to work around the clock to get the work done [Applause] it's the final day of the overhaul and the pride of Bruges is almost ready it's a bid farewell to Newcastle she's been well maintained and I think it's a dedication of the ship staff and all departments that they keep her in the condition it's in though over four tons of paint now cover and protect the ship's exterior after 25 years she's still in a very good niche so this is a major achievement and we'd like to keep her like this and try to maintain her affection the passenger levels have been refurbished relative complexed what we did that looks a lot better now yeah everything rots truly berthing interworking which is very nice to note propellers have been polished and tested and the rudders have been serviced ready for inspection looking good is nice look inspector it looks very very good yeah now the team have to get the ship back in the water Engineers opening statement reflections ship deservers the operations of docking master Alan Webster explains where to turn that we call the point of criticality no that's where the ship's it's most dangerous from laying on the blocks to becoming free floor how do you account for the fact that there's no passengers on it is no cargo on it so it's a it's a dangerously light point yet that's why we have to rebalance before she'll have softer blocks because if we didn't chances are the shipper capsized really yeah okay so to prevent that you've got to put the ballast back into the ballast bone [Music] [Applause] late in the evening the kind of Rouge slowly lifts off his blocks and floats for the first time in three weeks inside the dock is at the same level as outside gives the signal to wrap the gate were tough to see after his team have a narrow window of just over an hour to maneuver the ship into the river before the tide goes down and [Music] taco slowly tell the fairy from the dock and Alan's work is done not so bad knows her agent yet time it nicely thanks to the work of the Newcastle engineering team should now be in service for another 10 years [Music]

Channel: Spark

Views: 849,048

Rating: 4.6429787 out of 5

Keywords: Spark, Science documentary, north sea ferry, boat, ferry, ship, megastructure, demolition, inventions creativity, gadget geek, adventure culture, documentaryphotography, automotivephotography, scienceexplained, technologysolutions, autoaccident, windowseat, science side of tumblr, creativeminds, technology friday, boatlifestyle, off leash freedom, technology vine

Id: 4jNz5hs3m7A

Length: 58min 39sec (3519 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 01 2018