SS Manhattan (1962)
The turbine tanker Manhattan is still the largest built in the United States merchant ship. At the same time it was after a reconstruction of the largest icebreaker in the world.
She was a converted icebreaker for supertankers and had a length of 306.9 meters and a displacement of 152 407 tonnes. Your turbines brought a power of 43,000 hp. It was built in 1962 at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts. The conversion took place at the Sun Shipbuilding & Dry Dock Company, where the ship was divided into four parts and the bow against a spoon - Eisbrecherbug from 38 mm steel has been replaced - by the spoon shape to an icebreaker pushing while driving on the ice sheets and breaks this by its weight. The screws and rudder system differed already at the initial delivery of other supertankers because a twin-screw system was used with double helm.
Data
- Length: 306.9 m
- Width: 40.2 m
- Draught: 15.8 m
- Maximum Speed: 17 knots
- Engine power: 43,000 hp ( available when traveling backward, only around 10,000 hp)
Northwest Passage
In 1969, she went through the first tanker through the Northwest Passage from the east coast of the United States to Alaska. The research trip with a total cost of 54 million U.S. $ was supported by the Humble Oil & Refining Co. to find a transport for the oil discovered in 1968 the Prudhoe Bay oil field. During the expedition, the Manhattan was Captain Roger A. Steward, Master commanded.
After she left Chester, Pennsylvania on August 24, 1969, she met on 2 September on the way to Baffin Island for the first time on ice. The tanker first then took on 9 September, the northern route through the Viscount Melville Sound and reached on 11 September, the McClure Strait. There, the tanker hit on an ice floe thickness of 20 m and a diameter of about 1.6 km, which she broke at a speed of 10 knots. It was the thickest ice, which until then had been dispersed by a ship. But when she reached the piled by wind plates of pack ice, the limits were reached. The Manhattan got stuck and was rescued by several helicopters only by their small escort ships, the Canadian icebreaker John A. Macdonald and Louis S. St- Laurent and the American icebreaker Staten Iceland and North Wind and thanks of exploration. The tanker then reached on the southern route on September 15, Sachs Harbour, and on September 19, Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, took on a symbolic barrel of crude oil and was on his way back. On November 12, the tanker New York City reached.
In April 1970, the ship on a second trip was to prove that a passage in the Arctic winter would be possible, but failed before Baffin Iceland and instead took the trip to Alaska some research tasks.
As a result of the project of oil transportation was not pursued by ship and from 1975 to 1977 instead built the Trans-Alaska pipeline.
The Manhattan remained until 1987, serving as a tanker before it was sold to a ship breaking in Hong Kong and disassembled in China.
The trip raised the question whether the Northwest Passage Canadian territorial waters ( Canadian position) or an international waterway or strait are ( U.S. position (see maritime law ) ). Climate change and the associated defrosting the ice has raised the issue date.
Only in 2008 happened with Camilla DESGAGNES back a cargo ship through the Northwest Passage. They supplied from Montreal, Canada from settlements in the far northwest of Canada.