Roll-On Roll-Over: The Loss of Car Carrier Golden Ray

Happy to help make these by being a Patron. I hope you have a wonderful christmas and a happy new year Sam.

As always, first class work. Thank you.

Surprised they have such small bottoms. Figured they would have a wide bottom to dist weight and ocean roll.

I was living near that port when this happened, crazy to see a ship of such scale on its side like thay

Thank you for another interesting video

The speed that the car carriers come out of Brunswick is stupid considering the challenges that face them in the canal. I have faced them several times in that area and they are running way too fast for the situation they are in. Another accident is going to happen with the speed they are running through this tight section.

GR8 Job on Vid. Thanks

Give us the long rant about John Deere's international business and the ramifications that has on heavy industry and logistics please!

Thànk you Sam and your team .for a great job on these shows...

Tragic event in the sense of the damage done. This, the Costa Concordia, and other things makes me wonder if society needs to set some upper limit on the size of these things, or at least harsher minimum terms for how loaded they are allowed to be (prioritizing stability more and economic efficiencies a bit less). In hindsight, the gaps in procedure seem glaring, as do the gaps in design, which combined with human error lead to disaster. I have to once again say that economics seem to be at the root of it - why don't the figures get double checked, why doesn't every crew member involved in sailing decisions know how the stability software work? Why do they not collect and report all pertinent info automatically? Why was there only emergency access from one side and not the other? (And why would they leave a hull door open for that long?) As with any other thing, it seems that shortcuts are taken to either save money, or save time (and since "time is money" in the business world, well...) - dodging extra costs until something happens which costs you everything,

Yes,i agree,this was a good one, since there was no loss of life. Its a damn tragedy about all of that pollution, though. It's going to impact this area for generations now.

Please read my comment on your El Faro follow up video. I hope you find it helpful. I would love to discuss safety with you. -Cle Collins retired C/E

Theres no way I wouldve left until that door was shut tight.

It made me quite happy knowing everyone made it out alive. I think this might be the first video of urs where that has happened

When the Brick Immortar music starts playing... it hits so good 😮

Quality over quantity every time Sam. And, when You`re done with marine accidents, please consider others types. Im eager to see, how You`d tackle, for ex. Chernobyl disaster. Or some train ones. Thanks for in depth content. "In depth", because "in depth and entertaining", considering these are disasters, sounds really wrong.

Gotta say, I like your nerding out over small details from time to time. It helps illustrated your enthusiasm for the subject matter.

Just wanted to say this: I don't know anything about transportation logistics or ships. But I find listening to your videos to be very calming while I work. Your content has made me more aware of safety protocols. Thanks for producing quality content!

Is it normal for that many doors and hatches to be open when under way? I understand fumes from the exhaust of driving cars onto the ship probably required ventilating however wouldnt a ship underway necessitate a tight ship? Thats a huge ship for such a small crew size.

This is very reminiscent of the zebruger ferry disaster . Great content. Love the channel

Fun “fact” related to John Deere tractors wanted outside the US: Russian troops reportedly looted a number of John Deere tractors from Ukrainian farms, and given how expensive and wanted they are in Russia, arranged the expensive transport back to Russia…..only to find that John Deere has a geolock that blocked their tractors from running in Russia.

As neat as it is that John Deere can make good money shipping their equipment overseas, There's something I gotta wonder. Y'see, state-side, JD is notorious nowadays for being anti-repair. Even basic repairs require a representative from the company with special codes that aren't made available to customers to personally go out and make the repair. It's an utter shitshow here, with farmers losing product to rot every time their combine has a technical hissy-fit. What's it like in the rest of the world? Do farmers elsewhere get adequate, timely service? Are farmers in other countries allowed to do the repairs themselves? Is the software entirely different for equipment sold overseas? The US is generally behind the rest of the world in consumer protection and labor laws, so it'd be interesting to see how the money grubbers here cope with laws elsewhere.

It's strangely refreshing to see those in charge realize there is an issue quickly, take immediate action to fix the situation, and call in appropriate authorities and other help without delay.

Zero casualties. That's what quick action can buy you.

Can you imagine the fire if these had all been Lithium Ion EV batteries?

Great coverage of an awful incident.

Maritime LTL. As a long haul TL driver I appreciate that reference

The victory picture of them all standing on the hull after the beautiful rescue is phenomenal. Speaks volumes.

I was on a car ferry going from Scotland to Northern Ireland one time after they had been all cancelled all weekend because of a storm. The sea was still rough and probably the small faster car ferry shouldn’t have been running and just the larger ones because they can go out in rougher conditions. Was the only time I’ve been on a ferry where they lashed down the cars. Everyone had to wait a long time to get on a ferry because of how much traffic they were bringing over. We finally got on said ferry going home at 2am and the sea was so rough you could feel the boat go up the wave then drop back down again. Everyone was half asleep when we all got woke up by an almighty crashing sound. We had to muster and put on life jackets as a just in case basis but ultimately made it to port in Larne fine. Problem was though we all got stuck inside the ship because the car deck doors got stuck shut because the hydraulics lines got smashed during that huge crash we heard. I guess we were lucky in a way that the door was designed in such a way to make it stick shut and it didn’t open to let the water in.

I would rather have quality over quantity.

Thank you for your dedication BM.

I really like the level of technical detail in this one! 👌

Its hard to convey how huge these car carrier ships are till you see one on its side being salavaged. They are inmense. 4000 plus vehicles in one vessel doesn't seem possible till you see one of those vessels.

Thanks Sir. I’m tempted to join. Patreon thx to your channel. Former Great Lakes tug engineer myself.
Merry Christmas to you n yours!

Having worked in RoRo (specifically PCTC) shipping, and having been in the industry at the time (different line), this was really interesting. Great work summarising a very complex case!

You know I was about to go look up "stevedore" after you said it, but I wasn't even sure what the word was until you put the spelling on the screen for me, and I didn't need to look it up. Thanks haha. good video

As an retired Master Mariner (Captain) having more than 40 years of experience(20 as Chief officer) on Ro/Ro and PCTC my first guess when i heard of this accident was that it was a ballast issue, this due to the design of the ballast tanks especially the big ones on this ship the 5 port and 5 starboard, on most of the pctc's ive been on theese tanks are in an L shape and if one tank has the surface close to the lover end of the vertical and the ship heels over to that side you will get a large free surface moment which is not ideal. I did the calculation on one of my first PCTC's and it showed a stability loss of 40 cm. That said we usually left port at a GM of 1,25 m and the company i worked for had a minimum requirement at any stage of the voyage of 80 cm, There is a quick way to check GM under way that is quite reliable, and that is to check the rolling periode of the vessel, 'Rolling periode (in sec's) /ships bredth in m' i used this as Chief off when i got on the bridge every morning. And also when i was a Captain. Your video was well researched the only thing you missed out on was one of the major carriers of rolling cargo the Wallenius Wilhelmsen group. Kep up the good work.

US Coast Guard really showed how it's done. 5 stars for everyone involved.

Amazing work, thank you!

Don’t usually watch this type of video…but the happy ending made it well worth it. Respect to your research and reporting. 🐑🐑🇳🇿🇳🇿NZ

Yours is a very impressive deep-dive into this incident. Thank you for sharing; definitely keep up the good work. And best wishes from Aotearoa New Zealand!

This was an amazing one, Sam. Can't believe I didn't know much about this one though I vaguely remember it in the news at the time. Thank you.

Thank you for leaving your car and escorting others to safer decks. I've seen so many videos on RO/RO vessels that I'm scared to even walk past one at the docks.

I appreciate the details and your information regarding details id never learn anywhere else.

Was that the Bolivar Ferry in Galveston? If so, we’ve been on it many times! Once again, another amazing video! Ironically, we saw the Car Carrier coming through the Houston Ship Channel earlier today.

Kiitos!

I see the silver ray offshore fishing all the time off the east coast

You know. Sinking boats has never been on my to-do list as far as learning goes, but here I am learning, video after video.

Also .... similar to incorrect weight entered into takeoff program for emirates EK407 in 2009. Very very close thing !