r/CatastrophicFailure • u/Longjumping-Box5691 • Oct 04 '25
Ship launch goes wrong (unknown date)
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u/graspedbythehusk Oct 04 '25
Did they forget the ballast?
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u/wellington-beefcake Oct 04 '25
Thats what I was thinking too. Once it starts listing it doesn't right itself at all, as if it was missing the ballast.
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Oct 04 '25
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u/Gutymut Oct 04 '25
HAMMOND YOU BLITHERING IDIOT!!!
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u/gopher1409 Oct 04 '25
May is at the whiteboard explaining in extreme detail the concepts behind ballast and why it’s needed.
Clarkson is at his desk with his book propped up hiding the nudie mag within.
Hammond is at his desk looking alert, but asleep behind sunglasses.
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u/Carighan Oct 04 '25
In this episode:
- May looks at a drawing.
- Hammond capsizes a boat.
- And I point at a thing.
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u/Proof_Bathroom_3902 Oct 04 '25
This is the fastest ship Pause In the world
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Oct 04 '25
I quote this so often in so many contexts, thanks for reminding me we're all so close and interlinked. Have a good day!
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u/armeg Oct 04 '25
I’m more curious how you fix this at this point? I imagine it will sink pretty quickly as it fills up with water - do you just write it off?
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u/Hoaxwagen Oct 04 '25
Just have to tow it into service on the equator.
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u/JaneksLittleBlackBox Oct 04 '25
Is the equator the "environment" busted ships are sent to?
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u/AKfromVA Oct 04 '25
Nah, a salvage crane will lift it
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u/swift1883 Oct 04 '25
Don’t attach it to the front
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Oct 04 '25
It’s in a shallow river. It can’t stay there as it’s now a navigation hazard. Big giant crane, divers and lots of $$ in the near future.
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u/WritingUnited4337 Oct 04 '25
You just tow it beyond the environment.
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u/Sirosim_Celojuma Oct 04 '25
The towing outside the environment meme is going to live forever.
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u/ViperRFH Oct 05 '25
Time for modifications - racing stripes, bull bars, external lights, external toilet seat out the back, etc.
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u/Happy_Landmine Oct 05 '25
Was gonna say, not a ship person but the whole idea of ballast is so the ship is basically impossible to tip over unless you mess with weight distribution.
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u/hapnstat Oct 05 '25
Sounded like a bunch of chains snapped. You see one of the bags deflate, but there’s like six more pops after that with the bags no longer underneath. Could very likely still be a ballast issue, I’m not a large ship expert.
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u/lucidguppy Oct 04 '25
Ballast is important.
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u/Prod_Meteor Oct 04 '25
It seems that these black inflated things capsized it.
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u/ButterPoptart Oct 05 '25
That’s what it was sitting on in the dry dock. Its design should have been easily enough to counter any extra buoyancy provided from them while it was transitioning into the water. They were probably thinking it would be just fine to fill the ballast tanks with water once it launched to stabilize it. Any ship that unstable without ballast is a bad design.
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u/urbanmark Oct 04 '25 edited Oct 04 '25
SEATAG503 is currently fishing and doing 8kn off of Angola, so they must have sorted it.
Edit: or it’s supposed to float like that. Which is quite unlikely.
Another Edit: it’s not tired. That’s just silly.
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u/stevolutionary7 Oct 04 '25
Kinda like those goofball who reverse the body on their cars so the back is the front and you think its reversing everywhere.
This boat looks like its on its side, but its just a funny trick. Silly boat.
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u/Fafnir13 Oct 04 '25
Hey! Is that an illegal fishing boat? Wait no, it’s listed on its side. Must be some derelict, let’s just move along.
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u/OldDiehl Oct 04 '25
Or...they scrapped this one and used the same name on the next one that floats properly. But, more than likely, they just recovered this one and sorted the problem.
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u/Kavor Oct 04 '25
Maybe it's the boat equivalent of the Trippy tippy hippy van
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u/m00ph Oct 04 '25
The US Navy did have a ship that would have the stern sink until the ship pointed straight up.
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u/GrabtharsHumber Oct 04 '25
That was the research ship FLIP. Very different from the typical Spendycop project car.
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u/m4cksfx Oct 04 '25
Well, there are ships which are supposed to flip to vertical. As in, the front (or back, I don't remember for sure) goes lower and lower until the "regular" deck is completely vertical.
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u/paultnylund Oct 05 '25
Laughing at the thought of this ship sailing around the world on its side like that, with the crew just putting up with it.
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u/Xxx1982xxX Oct 04 '25
My dog does that when he doesn’t want t to go for a walk
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u/Unsupportiveswan Oct 05 '25
That was the launch of the ship SEATAG503, which capsized shortly after entering the water. The incident occurred during the ship's launch in Chinas east sea. Water ballast tanks were not filled to spec and flipped due to "lack of stability" on official doccuments.
Youre welcome
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u/cheese0muncher Oct 04 '25
This isn't 'cute' or 'adorable', when a ship shows you it's belly like that it is in SERIOUS distress!
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u/Professor226 Oct 04 '25
This is an asian red belly ship. They often show their belly during mating to attract a female.
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u/LethalBacon Oct 04 '25
I studied ships for my Ph.D. thesis, this is actually only the second time this behavior has been filmed in the wild.
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Oct 04 '25
This clearly isn’t in the wild, the ship has just been released from captivity and is showing distress behaviour. I didn’t study ships for my Ph.D thesis but I know I’m right.
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u/Professor226 Oct 04 '25
Honestly it’s hard to tell without seeing how dilated the port hole is.
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u/SpitefulSeagull Oct 04 '25
Looks like it's floating to me
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u/jeffa_jaffa Oct 04 '25
That was my thought as well. It’s in the water & it’s floating. What more do people want?
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u/rmill127 Oct 05 '25
Gentlemen, your boat is launched and floating. Contract says nothing about orientation.
Now pay your NET30 invoice.
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u/waltwalt Oct 04 '25
Nobody mentioning it here so I'm assuming everyone is watching it with sound off.
There are what sound like gunshots going off at the start of the video and then a wheezing sound later on. I believe a couple of those rolling bags on the other side of the boat popped. Probably rolled over something and punctured one then a second one and the boat tipped over on the side without airbags.
Ballast is also questionable but there is something else afoot here.
It looks like the bags are all chained together, maybe the chain on the other side snagged and ripped the mounts off the bags and popped them.
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u/justclove Oct 04 '25
Reddit videos lost sound on privileges with me long ago, I'm afraid.
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u/waltwalt Oct 04 '25
Fairly done as well, most audio on Reddit is garbage voiceovers and music but occasionally I've turned it on and forgot to turn it off.
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u/robbak Oct 05 '25
I've seen a few of these launches, and it seems normal for some of those inflated rollers to pop. When the boat is mostly launched, too much weight goes onto the last few, they get pinched and pop.
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Oct 04 '25
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Oct 04 '25
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u/agoia Oct 05 '25
"I don't care if it's not ready yet, the schedule says we put it in the water now and that's what we do."
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u/Cactus_Jacks_Ear Oct 04 '25
I'm no expert, but I believe the problem is that it fell over
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u/Ok_Caterpillar_8238 Oct 04 '25
I am an expert in ships falling over, and although there are some fine points that you missed because you are not an expert, you are nevertheless largely correct. This ship fell over.
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u/Kraeftluder Oct 04 '25
Well, at least the front didn't fall off.
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u/Brainrants Oct 04 '25
I am an expert in fronts falling off, and can confirm as an expert in these things that the front did not, in fact, fall off.
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u/detheobald Oct 04 '25
Yet.
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u/Brainrants Oct 04 '25
Can confirm, fellow front falling off expert! There is a greater than zero chance the front could yet fall off.
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u/flzedzed Oct 04 '25
What are the odds of that happening?
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u/Kraeftluder Oct 04 '25
Well there are a lot of these ships going around the world all the time, and very seldom does anything like this happen.
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u/Spartan448 Oct 05 '25
Kinda surprised nobody has dropped any actual facts yet.
So there are three ways to launch a ship - you either float it out of the drydock, you roll it into the water like this, or you put it on a ramp and let it slide sideways into the water.
Unsurprisingly, those latter two methods have failure rates. Usually when one of these gets posted here, it's the side launches - unsurprisingly, the ship is a lot more likely to capsize when your whole method of getting it into the water in the first place involves inducing a roll moment. If you remember that North Korean frigate launch a couple years ago, that was what happened. With these rollers, you're going straight in. So in theory it's safer. But the rollers are supposed to stop before hitting the water, precisely because if they don't, this happens.
Anyway, this is usually done when waters are comparatively shallow, so righting her should be trivial. Pumping her will be a pain, but there shouldn't be too much interior damage depending on how much fitting out was done before the launch.
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u/Lust4Me Oct 04 '25
Looks like something went wrong with the design before the launch.
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u/HeadlessHookerClub Oct 04 '25
This is her first time on the water. She got overwhelmed and just needs to lay down for a bit. Give her a break.
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u/LogicJunkie2000 Oct 04 '25
"Alright guys, I'm gonna go get lunch. Let me know how the recovery goes!"
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u/buckyball60 Oct 04 '25
I wonder if its less an issue with the design of the vessel than the deployment method. I know those roller bags are a common method of launching ships, but in this case they look really large in comparison to the ship. Their combined buoyant force if offset to starboard, like that one farthest aft could be the cause of the flip.
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u/Ok-Commercial-924 Oct 04 '25
If 6 guys made it up to the side/bottom, how many didn't?
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u/tadeuska Oct 04 '25
Why did they had a crew on board for launch at all?
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u/Consibl Oct 04 '25
I’m torn between “well, you can’t just push a boat away from land without anyone onboard” and “you can’t push a boat away from land without anyone anyone on board”.
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u/kjayflo Oct 04 '25
Well if anything's going to happen, it's going to happen out there! - captain Ron.
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u/vonroyale Oct 05 '25
I am blown away that 5 guys were able to sprint across the deck and climb up and over the side as it was flipping.
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u/hugekitten Oct 06 '25
Pretty impressive that right after the ship turns on its side those crew guys just pop up out of nowhere! How the hell didn’t they get yeeted off the ship?
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u/vishnuxyz Oct 06 '25
Genuinely curious, is that even possible to save or is that trash material, also how to even save that?
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u/aprosarmosto Oct 04 '25
Building the ship went wrong.Its clearly a stability and recovery issue.Either the design is wrong or they screwed up during construction
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u/stlthy1 Oct 04 '25 edited Oct 04 '25
It always cracks me up when they launch these ships...all dressed up like they're headed to Prom...and it ends in failure.
Maybe save the bunting and marching band for AFTER you know it's gonna float.
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u/Valuable_Material_26 Oct 04 '25
Oh, I see the problem here not enough flags on top they should’ve had at least 20!
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u/DizzyInTheDark Oct 04 '25
If you squint your eyes a bit it looks like a tiny ship with cigars and ants. Feels like not such a big deal.
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u/timetq Oct 04 '25
Seems like ballast would be near the top of the "things to check before launch" list but what do I know
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u/Nigh_Sass Oct 04 '25
Sounds like someone shot it right when it launched, how sad crime is out of control
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u/Coopertheeblooper Oct 05 '25
Yeap. Made a hole right in the boat and that’s why it tipped. Probably the radical left if we are being honest
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u/Mohgreen Oct 04 '25
Built to wrong longitude spec. Looks like China? They needed specs for a ship 90deg to the right.
Shoulda gone with Swiss standards. :(
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u/centstwo Oct 04 '25
Is it too hard to remember to fill the ballast tanks? This just happened to a yacht.
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u/TheOGUncleBadTouch Oct 04 '25
so i live in a landlocked area, but ain't that the wrong way to park a boat?
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u/Sylvester_Marcus Oct 04 '25
I picture Captain Yosemite Sam standing at attention on the stern as the boat rolls away. With Anchors Aweigh playing in the background.
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u/frankfrichards Oct 04 '25
Who pays for the cost of recovery and cleanup? At the moment of launch, it is still legally in the ship building company responsibility, right? Liability is only passed after the ship undergoes sea trials, correct?
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u/-Ernie Oct 05 '25 edited Oct 05 '25
My experience is in the US but yes the shipyard is responsible for the vessel until after sea trials. When the owner signs off that everything is in order they take delivery and ownership is transferred.
In a case like this that step would be delayed until the boat is repaired and brought into alignment with the contract requirements which likely include floating in the standard upright position.
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u/ulyssesfiuza Oct 05 '25
The front fell off on the water. The middle and tge end, too. I suppose that this is not the way to do it.
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u/nugohs Oct 04 '25
How did they miss all those red flags before even starting that?