Finding the optimum balance between design and performance is a process that never ends. Notice any unusual design about Oslo Express below?
Here’s midships. Anything strange there?
View from the stern shows a single stack off center.
The bridge is way forward; the overall profile resembles a LASH vessel, a Great Lakes ore carrier, or a pickup truck of a certain era.
With the bridge way forward, can you imagine pitching through heavy sea? Can you feel the motion way atop the bow? How often might the bridge windows get buried or splashed?
Some Moran tugs moved in to assist in departure Howland Hook a few days ago, but before they moved her out, darkness prevented clear fotos.
Oslo Express has carried five previous names in 20 years afloat.
Here is an interesting discussions about evolving c-ship design.
Photos, WVD.
tugster: a waterblog 
5 comments
Comments feed for this article
December 18, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Joe Naval Architect
One of the difficulties of designing containerships is visibility from the bridge. It’s more difficult on containerships to see where you are going because of the high stacks of containers than on other types of vessels
December 18, 2007 at 1:03 pm
tugster
i’d love to hear more about the downside of the house-forward design, literally the pitching downward into seas. on the visibility issue, some years back i studied photos of schooners a century or so ago carrying deckloads of hay and lumber. in one, a schooner entering a busy channel had a crewman posted forward atop the hay relaying traffic/navigation info to the helmsman blindsided literally at the helm.
December 18, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Joe Naval Architect
I think that is still a common practice when manuvering in tight locations or foggy weather, even on ships like oil tankers which have significantly less gear on deck. I think some ships use closed circuit tv also for this purpose.
I’m not an expert on container ships (I haven’t been on one since college). There are the obvious seakeeping issues which you point out, and that’s on top of the fact that container ships aren’t known for their good seakeeping. Ships often take waves over the bow which could cause major damage on a ship like that instead of just taking out a stack or two of containers. One other down side is that you can no longer have the house in the same locations as the propulsion and steering equipment (I suppose you could put the prime mover up front but that would be a very long and expensive piece of propeller shafting). There would be a secondary issue with getting crew from the accomodations to the machinery spaces. Most of the ships I have been to sea on prohibit crew on desk while at sea. It’s probably less of an issue on container ships because if memory serves, they typically have a longitudinal box girder that runs the length of the ship and doubles as a passage way. There is a solutions partway between the two, some ships have a stack or two aft of the house. Like everything else, it comes down to finding some optimum tradeoff given a mission metric or risk analysis.
July 1, 2009 at 5:18 pm
Klaatu83
That looks like one of the former Lykes Lines container ships, which were built originally built in Japan for American President Lines during the late 1980s. It is typical of U.S. container ship design influence in using the bridge and crew’s quarters as a breakwater to protect the cargo. Typical examples were the infamous SS Sea Witch and her sisterships. I sailed on three of those, the Export Patriot, the Resolute and the Argonaut. Other examples were the Sealand Consumer and Sealand Producer, as well as several nearly identical ships built for Matson Lines.
The three I was on rode like roller-coasters in any sort of heavy weather. The forward-facing windows on the main deck were plated over, and it was not unusual for the bridge windows to be blown out. On the Export Patriot they used to keep specially-cut wooden boards on the bridge, made to fit in the event that the bridge windows got blown out. There was also a special steel-tube frame built around the helm stand to help keep the helmsman in his place. I can testify from experience that both precautions were necessary.
Apart from those considerations, it was really unpleasant whenever the time came to drop the anchor which, for some reason, usually seemed to happen in the middle of the night. Nobody ever managed to get any sleep when the ship was anchoring. One look at the top photo will show you why!
July 1, 2009 at 5:35 pm
Klaatu83
A Further consideration of bridge-forward container ship design:
It’s true that forward visibility is excellent, but have you considered the effect on REAR visibility? When I was with Farrell Lines, sailing on the old Argonaut, Export Patriot and Resolute, one of our regular ports of call was at Livorno, Italy. We had to BACK HALF A MILE UP A VERY NARROW CHANNEL to our regular berth. The containers were always stacked up higher than the bridge and there was literally no rearward view from the bridge at all. The captain and the pilot relied on one of the mates, stationed on the fantail, who passed information to the bridge by radio. It never ceased to amaze me that we did that every voyage without any accidents. Those Italian pilots were GOOD!