Trivia Questions

[Engineer]

Ok here's an easy one
Who remembers, years ago when the ferry fell over in the dry dock???

Which ship was she.
I am still looking for my old pictures of that one , its was a real mess.
After we flooded the engine room the high tide level was up to the middle of the turbo chargers.

[Koastal Karl]

It was the Queen of Coquitlam??? She tipped once in the drydock. I think! Is that correct?

[NMcKay]

i remember that alberni capsized in Active Pass.

[Ian]

I thought the coquitlam was launched prematurly

[Balfour]

That was the QPR.

When the coq tipped over in drydock, it was because a support gave out.

--I remember Material on John's website very well.

[Ferryman]

I couldn't imagine what it would be like to see a ferry fall over in the drydock. It sure would be scary. Would deffinitly not want to be anywhere near the ferry if that happened. Just imagine the sound of that solid steel falling and then hitting the ground or whatever got in it's path. Or even on one of those floating drydocks in North Van. and having like SOBC fall over. That drydock would probably shake like a Xylophone for a long time

[Balfour]

We would probably hear such a thing up on Grouse, if not certainly at my house near the bottom of Grouse.

[Doug]

You have pictures of the incident? I'd sure like to see those if you can scan them. Or if you prefer to email them, I can give you my email address.

[Balfour]

I don't don't have pictures of the coq falling on her side. It happenec before I was the face of the earth.

[kylefossett]

does anybody know which ferry "sank " before it even had a sea trial? the answer has been mentioned before on the yahoo site by mirleeskvsm. also there are some masters who believe that this ship is now cursed and refuse to work on it.









the spirit of bc on launching from the drydock started taking on water.

[Doug]

Was it the Queen of Prince Rupert? Or did you answer your own question.... Well if it ain't the SoBC than I think it's Queen of Rupert just because she was supposedly launched prematurely.

[Doug]

Engineer, I see your online. Do you have pictures of the Queen of Coquitlam toppled in dry-dock?

[Engineer]

Points for you Karl
Yes it was the Coquitlam. I think it was around 1982 or 83
It turns out it was on a weekend, there was no shipyard workers around. Just the ships engineers.
Burard knew they had a leaking compartment in the floating dry dock, so they rigged up a Honda pump to keep pumping out the water for the week end.
But they forgot to have somebody come in and refuel the Honda.
Hence the dry-dock started to fill up with water, healing over to one side causing the ship to tip over, resting against the dry-dock sides.
The only way to put right the ship was to sink the dry-dock. Once the ship was level and sitting on the dry-dock bottom again, they sent down divers to weld up all the holes where the ships side valves had been removed.
Once the dry dock was lifted, the work started, pumping out the flooded engine room.
The water level was up to the middle of the main engine turbo chargers.
There were about six engineers working that afternoon.
They were lucky nobody got killed; there were deck plates & 45 gal drums flying around in the engine room.
One engineer crawled up to the bridge to send out a Mayday.
The must be the first Mayday from a dry-dock…….

I remember standing on the car deck looking down into the dark floated engine room , what a weird feeling.

[Engineer]

I had pictures years ago, but who knows were they are now lol.
If i find them I will post them for sure.

[Doug]

Ok thanks. Wow, how did they get the ship back level? It must have required a hell of a lot of crane power or something.

[Engineer]

they flooded the drydock which in turn flooded the engineroom causing the ship to sit level.Then pumped out the drydock after sitting the ship back on the chauks

[Doug]

Now I see

[Engineer]

would love to know what the insurance bill on that one was.
everything in the engine room was opened up, rebuilt flushed etc to remove the salt water.