When picking through the odds and ends in a corner of the Grover House, I came across a set of prints that were issued by the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater in 1979. They were a reissued and updated version of the 1845 William Wade panorama of the Hudson River between the Battery and Albany. Wade… Read more »
I have a soft goal of exploring all the New York harbor navigable creeks and water ways. This weekend I decided to try the Raritan River. The Raritan, Passaic and Hackensack are sort of the poster rivers for industrial pollution and decay, and somehow it seemed like a daunting, but challenging expedition. This weekend the… Read more »
Doing is learning, and I learned when I had the pleasure of doing some shore side support for the Apollonia effort. Apollonia continues to move cargo by sail between Albany and the Port of New Jersey/New York and points in between. Occasionally Apollonia loads coffee cargo at Carteret, New Jersey. Carteret is a very interesting… Read more »
It is a pleasure to introduce Capt. Murat Kilic as a member of the M&O consultant team. I first met Murat as a client on the construction of two high speed catamarans in Sicily for the Oman National Ferries Corporation. At that time, he was the fleet manager and there were some construction issues… Read more »
Hudson River Maritime Museum has a great blog that regularly puts out interesting Hudson River historical tidbits. One of those blogs had a story about World War I subchasers. It provided some drawings for the vessel, but Wikipedia provided an even more complete drawing with a lines plan. They have the following particulars:… Read more »
Note: The Waterpomptang family is fictitious and occasionally a Waterpomptang story appears on the M&O website. Some say their adventures resemble real events, but that is just a coincidence. It was the early 1960’s and Bolle and Truus had just moved into their new apartment in the South of Rotterdam. Because Bolle was now… Read more »
My grandfather was planning to retire as a ship’s Chief Engineer in 1964. He and his wife had mused about getting a boat to cruise the Dutch waterways. That vision was adopted by the extended family and resulted in this design. As a yacht designer I have occasionally shot myself in the foot by telling… Read more »
My brother-in-law, Jim Forsyth, owns a boatbuilding and repair business in the Adirondacks. The Adirondacks is sort of a Rodney Dangerfield of American parks. In area it is larger than Yellowstone, Everglades, Glacier and Grand Canyon National Park combined, but few people see it for the treasure it is. If National Parks are America’s best… Read more »
Maritime transportation takes advantage of huge economies of scale, but it was not always that way. Even quite recently there were many maritime ventures in the United States that operated on quite a small scale and in certain places in the world maritime transportation still takes place on very small scales down to the canoe… Read more »
Jacksonville Shipyard was a well-known repair yard that was particularly well known for servicing the Jones Act tanker fleet and Gino Ferrari was its New York representative. Each Christmas season Gino hosted a reception at the Four Seasons restaurant for tanker Owners. Gino Ferrari was a close friend of the company and my father… Read more »
The present US West Coast container logjam is a system instability that will be studied for many years to come. At this stage there is no single cause for the logjam and the various analyses of the problem tend to result in across the chest finger pointing up or down the chain. Interestingly the problem… Read more »
Offshore wind is inching closer to reality off the New Jersey coast. The public review process is underway and the big question is: “Will offshore wind make it past the public opinion barrier?” The advantages of offshore wind are most tightly focused to what now is becoming a screaming need to reduce carbon emissions. Wind… Read more »
I was searching for some local rainfall information and came across a lovely meteorological summary of New Jersey weather posted on the NJ State Climatologist website. It provides a long listing of temperatures and rainfall, and Mirna captured New Jersey average temperatures since 1895 in the pictures below. In reviewing the data I found myself… Read more »
Mathematically, worldwide sustainable energy is a real possibility, but it will require a very significant change in thinking, attitudes, efforts, and financial commitments to accomplish. All over the world we are encountering experiments, trials, and even significant changes in human attitudes, but, so far, we cannot point at an integrated success story of societal change…. Read more »
Maritime is too easily defined as ships passing in the night, and most of our maritime lives we work to make sense of the darkness. Sometimes you know the ship is there, but since it does not appear to be a danger you don’t pay attention. In many ways that is poor form. There is… Read more »
That’s me in the yellow foul weather gear. Twenty years ago I was standing on this beach. I was working as a Salvage Naval Architect for SMIT, and we had just connected the tow wire to the tug offshore. It was a crazy project that I think of very fondly. Undoubtedly it was the… Read more »
At Martin & Ottaway, we all love being part of the maritime community, but maritime is 24 hours per day. Therefore a call may come in at any time. This time it was Sunday Morning, just while I was getting ready to survey a boat for my personal use. So I modified the schedule for… Read more »
Newark Liberty Airport – October 19, 2018 David and Pierce’s cars parked side by side late at night in Newark Airport while both travel overseas to different locations. What are the odds of two surveyors parking side by side arriving in a full parking lot at different times?
A long time ago I enjoyed a Car Talk episode where a listener asked Click and Clack what car he should buy for a cross country road trip. Click and Clack right away started making suggestions about late 1960’s or early 1970’s great American cruisers. Their argument was simple. Those cars are not expensive,… Read more »
Wave energy converter (WEC) systems have not yet made it to the stage of development of wind and solar renewable power systems, but wind-generated waves are a concentrated form of wind power covering over 70% of Earth and present a fascinating opportunity for the future of sustainable energy and power systems. Figure 1. Point-Absorber Configuration of… Read more »
While cleaning out files and I came across a 2004 collision that my father, Henk van Hemmen, handled. In the file there was a copy of a survey report on a 1971 collision with an angle of blow determination. The 1972 report was forwarded to some of the members in the 2004 survey party to… Read more »
Design is complicated, but often we try to explain it in a quick catchy phrase. There is a saying: “The Devil is in the Details”. Mies van der Rohe is often credited with flipping the concept upside down by saying: “God is in the Details”. Regardless, it means that if you do not pay attention… Read more »
Scale is a difficult concept when novel technologies are being introduced, especially when it comes to marine renewable energy projects. Let’s assume we are talking about a 1000 Megawatt wave farm. It is quite interesting to visualize such a farm off the coast of New Jersey (see Figure 1). Figure 1. A visualized 1000MW… Read more »
I joined the industry in 1981 and, before that, remember playing with the tarballs on the Dutch Northsea beaches. Things don’t always get better, but as far as international shipping is concerned, boy, have things improved. A huge portion of the credit goes to all the hardworking mariners who notice things that are wrong, and then come together… Read more »
While diving in an undisclosed location in the Fall of 1990, I experienced my first visceral encounter with exponential decay and exponential increase in wave energy as a function of depth. The gear I was wearing on my back was: US Divers/Conshelf XIV First and Second stage SCUBA regulators connected to a US Divers twin… Read more »
It is a pleasure to introduce David Del Corso as a member of the Martin & Ottaway consulting team. David is a 2015 US Merchant Marine Academy Marine Engineering graduate and, after stints as a ship’s engineer and design engineer, has joined Martin & Ottaway to reinforce the junior engineer echelon. Martin & Ottaway has survived… Read more »
May Paper: Engineering Ethics Clashes and Crashes Presenter: Hendrik “Rik” van Hemmen, President of Martin & Ottaway, Inc. Both licensed engineers and SNAME members function under a code of ethics. While it may not occur often, just about every engineer will occasionally encounter ethics challenges and proper conduct under those challenges can mean the difference between… Read more »
It is a pleasure to introduce Capt. Leonard Pucci as a member of the M&O consultant team. I have known Lenny for many years, and worked with him on quite a number of projects. Besides providing our standard basket of services (particularly in the Rhode Island area, where he will be based), Lenny’s area of… Read more »
I am not sure if I have ever expounded on my theory on the path to the middle class in the M&O blog. The theory is simple: Only maritime provides a reliable path to the middle class for those who seek it. There are very good technical and economical reasons for that assertion, which I may make… Read more »
By traditional training I am not a Naval Architect. I actually studied to become an Aerospace and Ocean engineer. My education at Virginia Tech as an Aerospace and Ocean engineer was nothing more than a lucky coincidence, since it allowed me to indulge my youthful passions of sailing, flight and space. Over the years I ended… Read more »
Maybe I am getting old, or maybe I am getting less stupid. But looking out of the aft cabin hatch for a quick run from Slaughter Beach to a ship at Big Stone Anchorage, I did worry a little about the ice building up on deck. I started thinking, “Am I nuts? Are we all nuts… Read more »
A few weeks ago we surveyed the No.4 Union Drydock for purchase by Bayonne Drydock. The deal was consummated, and now the No. 4 drydock is in Bayonne. By now most of Union Drydock in Hoboken has been liquidated. We are sorry to see this 100 year old company go, but, on the positive side,… Read more »
Martin & Ottaway has been involved in dozens of capsize investigations. Capsizes are strange events because the cause of a capsize can be difficult to determine. There may be clear incidents of negligence with regard to capsizes, but, in our experience, about half of the world’s capsizes strike like lightning on a clear day, and are totally… Read more »
Wanted: Licensed graduate Marine Engineer or graduate Naval Architect (0-5 years experience) for junior consultant position at Martin & Ottaway headquarters in Red Bank, NJ. Varied work, long and random hours, excellent opportunity for rapid professional growth. Desire to learn and to interact with a wide variety of clients, projects and maritime settings. Awareness that… Read more »
On Friday April 8, 2016 we lost our dear friend Gino Ferrari. Gino was an icon in the New York maritime industry and a person who both maintained the highest standards and at the same time always looked for ways to make life just a little better and a little more fun for everybody in… Read more »
When I wrote the blog on SWATHs I decided to see if I could locate my Virginia Tech research partner, Mark Tesh. With LinkedIn this was not all that difficult. He enjoyed hearing about the Monoform all these years ago, and remembered having taken photos back in 1981. In those days cameras and video tape actually did exist, but it… Read more »
Welcome M/V “Molly Pitcher”, the newest addition to NY Waterway’s fleet. Alan Colletti from our office provided new vessel construction oversight services while the vessel was built at Yank Marine. Here’s Arthur Imperatore during the boat’s christening, thanking Al for being such a worrier!
Except for the passenger ship terminal above 42nd street, commercial ship operations in Manhattan have pretty much come to an end. One of the last commercial shipping terminals to be built on Manhattan was Marine and Aviation Pier 40. It was built in 1962 at a cost of $18 million expressly for the use of… Read more »
As surveyors we rush around the world on short notice, arrive at some distant port and then are asked to look at a damage situation or some technical or operational problem. We crawl into tight and dirty spaces and end op taken pictures or measurements of broken components. Often we rush back to catch the… Read more »
The MAX1 conference, which took place in Wilmington, NC on June 24, 2015, set a new standard in Shipboard Waste Management studies. The conference was a rapid fire exchange of ideas by 30 industry professionals representing almost all stakehlders involved in shipboard waste management. For too long OWS and Shipboard Waste Management has been a… Read more »
The program for the MAX1 Studies conference in Wilmington, NC on June 23 and 24, 2105 is now in place and it has met its goal of trying to make the tent as big as possible. At the conference there will be points of view from different owner, regulatory, equipment, enforcement, training, operator, manager, design… Read more »
In engineering there are the difficult problems and the really difficult problems. Getting to the moon or designing a safe replica schooner is difficult. The really difficult engineering problems often require that the user also needs to be re-engineered. Such problems may involve removing addiction or stopping irrational behavior or reducing poverty or altering preconceived… Read more »
Life is complicated, and designing to deal with life’s complications is difficult. Unfortunately bad design unnecessarily punishes humanity by increasing inefficiencies and frustrations. Design mistakes get made, and sometimes the mistakes cannot be easily corrected. However, it is difficult to imagine anything more destructive to humanity than bad design that affects many people that can… Read more »
Of all the shipping companies that I have had any contact with National Bulk Carriers and its Owner Daniel Ludwig is probably more deeply submerged in lore than any other company. Every time I meet somebody who has worked for NBC I am regaled with yet another story of clever derring do led by Daniel… Read more »
Cold weather actually makes us busier. Cold weather makes people seek shelter so they pay less attention and cold weather makes equipment operate and fail in unusual fashion. It has been cold out (we almost had iceboat conditions on the river) so there is no time to ruminate any further. Instead I will post a few… Read more »
Harry Ottaway, past President of Martin & Ottaway, getting his balance on the SS SEA WITCH in drydock (stern section), August 2, 1979. The SS SEA WITCH was a container ship which lost steering control while leaving New York harbor and collided with the fully loaded tanker SS ESSO BRUSSELS on the night of May… Read more »
Inventions are often difficult to track, but they often start with a loose comment. Hannah came into my office and asked for my portable CD drive. Not too long ago CD drives were built into computers, but USB memory sticks are rapidly rendering CD’s old hat. Out loud Hannah wondered: “How long do you think… Read more »
Rik and I will be presenting our co-authored paper titled “Game Theory for the Maritime Professional” at the SNAME Maritime Convention this Wednesday from 1300-1400 hrs in the Technical Track 1 section, Sandalwood A&B room on the 4th Floor. If you’ll be at the SMC, come check it out! The picture is explained in the… Read more »
Watch a cool video produced in the 1940’s by the US Navy on the salvage of the SS Normandie (USS Lafayette) here. Frank A. Martin of Martin & Ottaway valued this vessel for the US government before the fire/capsize.
Maritime education is an incredibly powerful educational tool. While it does not necessarily have to be a path to maritime employment, it is always an effective path to provide Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, Philosophy, History, Language and Arts (STEMPHLA) education. The Lettie G. Howard project has a straightforward focus: Provide students with a tool to… Read more »