A cursed Voyage?
A true story of manganese ore cargo.
The year was 1965.
We took a cargo of manganese ore in Laurenzo Marques, Moçambique. A few thousand tons. Destined for Hamburg? As we were about to sail, an inspector discovered that we were overloaded. The Plimsoll line.
The Plimsoll line showed that the ship was too low in the water for the winter season. We were going to sail around the Cape of Good Hope during the southern winter. We were loaded for the summer in the North Atlantic Ocean.
It took 5 days to unload a few hundred tons of the heavy ore. The cost of the ship was $8000 per day so this represented a considerable loss.
After we sailed past the Cape, the captain tried recover the lost time. To get the most speed out of the old ship he pushed the engine to its maximum. 122 RPM on the propeller. After a few days the engine blew a gasket. With the ship dead in the water, the engineers had to lift the 1.5 ton cylinder head off, replace the gasket and reset the cylinder head.
A heavy swell was running, remnant of a major winter storm in the “Roaring Forties”. The ship was rolling from 40 degrees to 40 degrees. Imagine the 1.5 ton heavy cylinder head hanging from chains attached above with this sort of heeling angle.
The manganese ore was so heavy that most of the space of the holds was empty. Just a small heap of ore on the bottom. If the heeling surpassed 45 degrees there was serious risk of the ore shifting. That would have been our end.
While the engineers worked feverishly, we, in the galley struggled to keep the food in the pots. Weather information in those times was scant. We did not know if the sea state was going to get worse. Anyway, the engineers were well trained ex German WWII Navy veterans who knew their job.
I am still here to tell the story.
Should I tell the story of the whole trip?
