Some sea-worthy vessels have this “hatch” at the vessel’s prow that allows loading/unloading vehicles and heavy cargo. How do they keep this watertight, and how do they keep the draft low enough to get near a coastline/pier while maintaining seaworthiness?
In: Engineering
Ships are well designed, but need to be operated safely which isn’t always guaranteed.
I still recall the Zebrugge ferry disaster in 1987.
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/zeebrugge-car-ferry-disaster-1987/zdsht39](https://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/zeebrugge-car-ferry-disaster-1987/zdsht39)
The cause was the often used practice of keeping the bow doors open as the ferry leaves port so the air can quickly be circulated now the cars are all parked up. This alone wouldn’t be an issue, but at the same time the ship was still pumping away excess water (so was still sitting low in the water) and as soon as the ship had left the port, it started to accelerate, causing a bow wave to form which washed inside the ship through the doors. This time water got into the car deck and movement of the ship caused the water to pool on one side, pulling it over and eventually capsizing it.
Report here esp. section 9: [https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/54c1704ce5274a15b6000025/FormalInvestigation_HeraldofFreeEnterprise-MSA1894.pdf](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/54c1704ce5274a15b6000025/FormalInvestigation_HeraldofFreeEnterprise-MSA1894.pdf)
As a result of this disaster, lots of safety recommendations were made, such as introduction of CCTV to monitor the doors and improvements in leaving proceedings, not overloading the ship etc.
The ship itself seems to have been built to easily withstand normal operations, but a combination of failures led to the deaths of 193 people.
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