Christmas day 1981 in Taranto, Italy
photo "Rick"
Rick writes:
Anyone who sailed on this 215,000 tonnes oil bulk ore (obo) carrier would have had great memories of her. The picture above was taken on Xmas day 1981 in Taranto, Italy. I was a 3rd phase cadet and was lucky enough to be given the chance by Ian Dalgleish to get my steam time for my watch keeping certificate as I'd missed out on my first two trips. She was another Mitsubishi built Japanese ship from about 1973. I sailed on her last 2 trips for Ocean with a tall blue funnel (voyages 48 and 49).
For such a huge ship she was a beauty. Down below she had a huge towering engine room with HP and LP turbines. I don't have any details of the output of the turbines or their make. They were again Japanese licenced units. The boilers were Mitsubishi Combustion Engineering V2M-8 (2 of) and produced superheated steam at 515 degrees C at 65 kg/sq.cm. They had 4 burners mounted in the front wall vertically. The internal temperature of the boiler gas at combustion was 1400 C finally passing to the Ljungstrom air preheater at about 240 C. I'll never forget the dry heat during steaming outside the air preheater where the lucky cadet had to check the max. temperature. The engine room also had 2 Yanmar generators but they were like new, the steam genny was always preferred.
We sailed from Italy to Brazil in ballast at 10 knots.
The ship downstairs was so good that we managed to sail Unmanned at Sea (UMS) for the first time when I was there.
One of my 2nd engineers was Alan Roe from Wolverhampton I think and the other Keith ? from Southampton way. Whispering Willie Sutherland from Dundee was one of my chiefs. Brian Ardbury the Englishman from Fife was the electrician, Dave Eaton the 3rd, Willie Walton the 4th engineer. Ian Webster was the captain, Doug Jones chief mate, Dave Smith was 3rd mate.
From Brazil (after a wee trip up to Rio) we sailed to Fos in France and then back to Brazil and then Marshvaalt in Rotterdom Europort. Unfortunately that was all the jobs we got and after going to anchor we sailed in to Ocean terminal at Southampton in April 1982 and laid her up.
I ended up showing some engineering cadets around the ship when in Southampton and will never forget how impressed they were. We were all so proud of her.
In 1984 she was sold to Norwegian owners and named Tatra.
She was later sold to a Cyprus company.
Another trip down memory lane.
photo "Rick"
Tantalus, now named Antarctica, ended her days after being hit by an Iraqi missile whilst being used as a storage tank at Larak Island. Sold to Chinese shipbreakers.
