NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
QE2 grounding
From: Nigel Gardner
Date: 2001 Aug 30, 5:20 AM
From: Nigel Gardner
Date: 2001 Aug 30, 5:20 AM
The MAIB report certainly pointed up the lack of detailed knowledge about squat, although it has been known about for a very long time. For example, Thames barges in the 19th and early 20th C. used to skate over large areas of sand in order to beat tides and competitors, and spoke of the vessel 'smelling the bottom' as the change of trim caused by squat was felt by the master. The amount of squat is a function of type of sea bottom, underbody shape, speed of vessel, speed of tidal flow (and probably the price of lard as well). If I remember rightly, what caught out QE2 was that the general depth around Rude's rock was not particularly shallow and that the squat was much more than had been anticipated NG.
