POSH Spice of the Spice Girls

‘Port out, Starboard home’  A popular theory holds that the term Posh is derived from the initials of “Port Out, Starboard Home,” the cooler, and thus more expensive, side of ships traveling between England and India in the mid-19th century. The acronym POSH was supposedly stamped on the tickets of first-class passengers traveling on that side of ships owned by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company.

2011 gCaptain Pirate Quiz to test your knowledge of the marauders that plague our seas.

Scorecard:
0-50% Pirate Bait
50-60% Landlubber In Disguise
60-70% Danger Will Robinson – Go Hire Armed Guards
70-80% Do you have a citadel? You might need it!
80-90% Congratulations, there’s a 50% chance you’ll survive pirate waters.
90-100% Damn those pirates…. full speed ahead.

BMT Group and SUSY Come to the Rescue of Sinking Vessels

13-Dec-2010: Damaged vessels at risk of sinking could soon benefit from a revolutionary new system being developed by a consortium led by BMT Group Ltd, the international design, engineering and risk management consultancy.

Using technology originally developed for submarine rescue, the research team is developing a system which can be used in a wide range of maritime applications. These include salvage, emergency sub-division of roll-on/roll-off ferry car decks, self-righting buoyancy for fishing vessels in the event of capsize and emergency buoyancy to stabilise ships with holed compartments.

The new solution uses Kevlar reinforced balloons that can be rapidly inflated to provide extra buoyancy, expelling water and keeping the vessel afloat until repairs or other emergency measures are implemented. By preventing damaged ships from sinking, the technology could help minimise the risk of major loss of life at sea.

The team consisting of researchers from nine companies spread throughout Europe call the system SUSY (Surfacing System for Ship Recovery) and were inspired by submarine rescue technology from ASTRIUM and ideas proposed by the German firm, BALance Technology Consulting.

Rory Doyle, senior research scientist at BMT Group, said: “While we may not be ready to raise the Titanic, the SUSY project team is developing a system which will allow us to salvage or stabilise damaged vessels more efficiently than we do today.” He continued: “The potential environmental, safety and financial benefits of SUSY are enormous, providing us with the first tools to assess and advise on the impact of using buoyancy systems to stabilise or resurface ships.”

The research team at BMT Group Ltd secured a 2.65 million Euro grant from the European Commission for the consortium to carry out the research. [SOURCE]

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Ok, now for the trivia… MAC tells us:

Now, to MAC the idea of fitting inflatables to ships to increase buoyancy sounded familiar. Indeed one inventor came up with a similar idea to reduce buoyancy to enable heavily-loaded riverine ships to pass over sandbars. He even made a a scale model of it, which he was required to build in order to apply for the patent he receive on 22 May 1849, which now resides in the Smithsonian Museum.

Can anyone name the inventor?  Let us know in comments and click HERE for the answer.

The following questions are pulled from last week’s headlines. Most answers can be found on gCaptain’s blog and Twitter page, so be sure to study up before

This month’s maritime quiz was pulled from the Maritime News Headlines.

So what is it?

The answer is Sweden’s new VISBY Class Corvette. More details HERE.

We know that Friday is not gCaptain’s most popular day of the week so today’s nautical quiz should be an easy on. At least for those of you who follow the Maritime Blogosphere.

So what is it?

UPDATE:

Congratulations to Mike who stressfully identified this boat as “A” the personal yacht of Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko. You can find all the photos, video and information on this yacht at Monacoeye.com and The WSJ. Thanks to Peter for the find.

Test your marine geography knowledge with this URI/NOAA map of the World’s Largest Watersheds and Currents. To get you started here are the first three answers:

1. Bearing Bering Sea
2. Gulf Of Alaska
3. California Current

Click HERE for the large printable version of the Quiz and HERE for the answers.

For a full sized color version of this map download the zip file HERE. Makes for a great desktop background.

Congratulations to the 5 readers with the correct answer: Antwerp.

The top ten ports for ship detentions are:

1. Antwerp
2. Bandar Abbas
3. Novorossiysk
4. Constantza
5. Ningbo
6. Shanghai
7. Nikolayev
8. Gladstone
9. Koper
10. Singapore

Details can be found at the very interesting site Lloyds MIU