Shipbreaking yards

[Nick]

Given that the V class are to be retired and sold off soon, I have been thinking a little about their eventual demise. Odds are, they are going to wind up, like the Victoria, on the beaches of Alang, India.

I did a little bit of searching to read a little more about the shipbreaking operations at Alang, and I found this website. It is a travel diary from a guy's trip to Alang and the people he encountered. I found it very interesting.

here's the link: www.moxon.net/india/alang.html

I thought this thread could be a place to talk about shipbreaking in general, and the various yards around the world that partake in this rather depressing and degrading end to a ship's life.

I am also wondering about other shipbreaking yards around the world. I am aware of several others in India, but there must be more elsewhere. I seem to recall that the US Navy has a requirement that all of their retired ships are broken up in US yards. Does anyone know whether there are any dedicated shipbreaking yards in the US, or if it is done by a standard shipyard?

[Neil]

Some time ago, I mentioned a book called "The Outlaw Sea", by William Langewiesche (North Point Press). It has a fairly extensive chapter on shipbreaking.

90% of the world's shipbreaking is done in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan. Half, at Alang alone. The book mentions shipyards in San Francisco, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Brownsville that did shipbreaking for the U.S. military. Since there is no profit in shipbreaking in the U.S., given labour standards and wages, there are no dedicated yards, at least not large ones.

The book mentions a Pulitzer Prize that was won in 1998 by Baltimore Sun reporters Will Englund and Gary Cohn for an investigative work on the shipbreaking industry, both in the U.S. and abroad. I would like to get a hold of that series of articles.

[D'Elete BC in NJ]

I'm not sure if they are still doing ship breaking in Philly. There are quite a few mothballed ships in the navy yard, but no obvious breaking activity. This is not surprising, though, given the significant loss of yard capacity over the last couple decades, and lower wages found further south.

I did find an interesting link regarding US Navy ship breaking proposed for either Washington or Oregon.

[Northern Exploration]

There used to be a ship breaker on the Welland Canal near the Lake Erie end. They would beach lakers there and gradually cut them appart. It was just before Port Colborne going south on the road that runs beside the canal. I would imagine that a Laker would be very difficult to get to India. Lakers are long and very thin, shaped to fit the Welland Canal perfectly. They are also designed for the wave action on the Lakes which is different than the open ocean.

The shipyard at Port Weller now part of a merged group called Seaway Marine and Industrial, had a large ocean going ship that was cut appart the last time I was by there. I don't know if they were dismantling it or doing a BC Ferry cut and stretch. It looked like a fairly new ship so not sure.

BCinNJ beyond the Philly ones, the ghost ship fleets in the James River south of Williamburg (still Liberty ships stored there from WWII), San Fran area, and Dan can tell us about Bremerton, mean there is a lot of metal rusting out there. With the price of metal you wonder when they are going to accelerate the breakup.

Prior to 9/11 I found the tour of the Bremerton yard interesting because it was one of the few facilities able to handle nuclear submarines. The funny thing was they would cut out the missle tube sections of the submarines and weld them back together and let them sit at the dock. This was so that the Soviets at the time could verify the neutering of the submarines by satelite for the disarmament treaties. After they sat there for a while they then would be broken up.