What Happened To The Napoli?

in january 2007 the container vessel napoli was alongside in antwerp undertaking her regular cargo operations she was a 53 000 ton 276 meter container vessel with a capacity for 4419 teu or 20-foot equivalent units hamburg was just one stop on a regular route which took her from cape town to las palmas felixstowe hamburg antwerp la halves signs back to los palmas cape town and then around south africa calling at port elizabeth durban back to port elizabeth and completing the loop back at cape town on this particular loop she was quite a few days behind schedule to make up time they cancelled the usual stops in hamburg and lahav and planned to do all that cargo from antwerp instead the crew carefully planned the cargo operation to determine the optimum location for each container taking into account its weight and the distribution of weights the vessel needed to ensure sufficient stability in addition to that they wanted to make sure the vessel would have a maximum sailing draft of 13 meters to be able to sail at any state of tide unfortunately the only way they could get all the cargo on and keep the ship within her strength limits resulted in an aft draft of 13.5 meters to get it down to 13 they needed to add ballast up forward levering the stern up by half a meter the force applied to the hull by this levering action is measured as a bending moment along its length on ships you produce a graph of bending moments to check that you stay within safe limits safe limits in port are usually somewhat higher than sea going limits as there's less stress applied to the hull by external forces the condition planned for the napoli resulted in stresses higher than her seagoing limit but within her harbour limit the plan was to just adjust the ship's ballast once she cleared the shallow part and bring her within a sea going limit from then on once all the containers were loaded on board the vessel's draft marks were checked and entered into the loading computer to compare to the loading plan the draft survey determined that there was approximately 1250 tons difference between the planned weight of the ship and the true weight of the ship effectively there was 1 250 tons of weight spread throughout the vessel that the crew couldn't account for in itself that wasn't that unusual see with containers there wasn't actually a requirement to physically weigh them all before loading predictably shippers would often declare a lower weight to save money regardless the draft survey could be used to determine an average position for all this unknown deadweight and account for it in the stability calculations with that complete at around 8 am on the morning of 17th of january 2007 the napoli departed her birth with an after after 13 meters once clear of the locks they adjusted the ballast bringing the draft to 13 and a half metres after the bending moments within limits for the sea passage she then made her way through the dover strait and continued down the english channel towards the atlantic ocean as she made progress however the wind and weather started to worsen the waves grew larger and larger resulting in the vessel rolling and pitching with spray coming over the foxhole at around 11am the napoli struck a couple of waves particularly violently sending shockwaves throughout the hull remember we talked about bending moments a minute ago well imagine the stress that the hull is under now with all the additional force from wave-induced bending moments as the bowel slams into a wave it's lifted up flexing the hull the energy from the flexing dissipates slowly and each time it flexes back potential energy makes it keep going if the hull starts off straight the forces will be even most container ships however naturally hog this means that the bow and stern sit lower than midships when the bow slams the ship's back straightens then as the energy dissipates it flexes back making her hog even more than she did before a few minutes after the large shock waves a loud cracking sound was heard accompanied by the activation of several bilge alarms and the engine room flooding alarm the crew noticed cracks had appeared right across the deck of the engine room and continued on running up the side of the ship the napoli had literally broken her back after preparing the lifeboat she sounded her general emergency alarm and the crew abandoned ship they maneuvered the lifeboat around one mile away and activated their epervan sart search and rescue resources were quickly dispatched and the crew were rescued by two helicopters within three hours of abandoning ship the napoli herself was taken under tow by a high seas emergency towing vessel and started heading towards the south coast of the uk as they proceeded up the channel concerns grew that the napoli would break apart and sink spilling over three and a half thousand tons of fuel oil that she had on board to avoid that the decision was made to run her aground on branston beach in lime bay instead as she was run aground she listed over and a number of containers were lost overboard they would later wash up on the shore and the cargo would become a magnet for scavengers before the police closed the beach people made off with all sorts of things including a number of bmw motorbikes that were being shipped to south africa due to maritime laws however everything that was scavenged had to be reported to the official receiver of the wreck otherwise it's classed as theft anyway back at the ship itself salva's worked to remove everything they could the fuel was pumped to another vessel and the remaining cargo was removed the containers themselves were weighed to compare their actual weight to the declared weights on the ship's manifest around 20 percent of the containers were at least three tons different to their declared weights and one was found to differ by 20 tons remember back to the discrepancies at loading it was clear that a lot could be attributed to the discrepancies and container weights five months later the empty hull was refloated with the intention of towing it away however the condition was so bad that it was beached again to be broken up in place explosives were used to break the ship apart at the point where the hull had already given way the forward section was towed away from recycling in belfast leaving just the aft section on the beach the heaviest components like the engine propeller and propeller shaft were blown off using explosives and the remainder broken up in place before being taken away all in the entire operation took around two and a half years and cost close to 120 million pounds and that brings us to the end of today's video don't forget we're on patreon if you'd like to join our new community and discuss anything from these videos or hear about what's going on in between uploads otherwise we publish here on youtube on the last friday of every month until next time thank you for watching and goodbye [Music] you

Channel: Casual Navigation

Views: 525,304

Rating: 4.9244905 out of 5

Keywords: casual navigator, marine, shipping, casual navigation, maritime explaination, merchant navy, sailing, marine animation

Id: DWN5Bdvn-08

Length: 7min 7sec (427 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 24 2021