[Public-list] Re: SS John W. Brown

[Gordon White]

  I very much enjoyed the talk at Saturday's Alberg seminar (Feb. 19th) 
by Sherod Cooper about the SS John W. Brown.

    I asked him whether the Brown was riveted or welded, as there were 
severe problems with cracks in welded WW II ships, particularly in cold 
water. Riveted ships had fewer problems, as where the plates were 
overlapped and riveted, a crack could not propagate across that 
discontinuity. Plates welded together become a continuous sheet and once 
a crack begins it can go all the way across a deck or indeed split the 
ship in half, as happened with a number of WW II Liberty, Victory and 
T-2 tanker ships.

    I served in 1954 on the SS Conastoga, a 1943 T-2, and the crew 
delighted in pointing out the place where the identical T-2 SS Sacketts 
Harbor broke in two in 1946.

    I will put here links to two URLS, one a photo of the SS Schnectady 
that cracked in two at her fitting-out pier and the other of the USCG 
report on that casualty.

http://www.crosslink.net/~gewhite/ship.jpg

http://www.crosslink.net/~gewhite/shipreport.jpg

    According to a report I have of welded ships and their casualties, 
the SS John Brown never suffered a crack incident, though the SS 
Jeremiah O'Brien did. There were 970 ships that suffered some cracks and 
24 ships that suffered a complete fracture of the strength deck. Most 
cracks were not disastrous, though on eight ships that were lost, 26 
seamen died.

    Crack-arrestor reinforcements, redesign to avoid stress-risers such 
as square hatch and gunwale openings, and use of a better grade of steel 
(nominally 1/2" thick) seems to have resolved the problem, although the 
new, welded, self-propelled tank barge Martha R. Ingram broke in two in 
Port Jefferson Harbor, Long Island, in January, 1972, under similar 
circumstances.

- Gordon White, Brigadoon II # 275