High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace (2008)

http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys?currentPage=all

by incision • 12 years ago

62 15 12 years ago

archive.wired.com

incision• 12 years ago

I thoroughly enjoyed this article in the Wired years ago. I see that it was submitted way back when, but never gained traction.

Beyond the general drama and unique work described the inclusion of a laptop wielding naval architect as part of the team was just fascinating to me.

'They're a motley mix: American, British, Swedish, Panamanian. Each has a specialty — deep-sea diving, computer modeling, underwater welding, big-engine repair. And then there's Habib, the guy who regularly helicopters onto the deck of a sinking ship, greets whatever crew is left, and takes command of the stricken vessel.'

'Again, the Dutch called for cranes, but Titan won the contract by proposing a novel approach: It hired a naval architect to create a computer model of the ship. The model indicated that the vessel would float again if water was pumped out of the holds in a specific sequence.'

na85• 12 years ago

The idea of creating the model more or less in real-time as they walk through the ship is what I find most compelling.

I want to know what laptops they're using. No way your standard sissy macbook pro is being taken out there where it can get wet and batteries might not be charged for a while.

Toughbook maybe?

danelectro• 12 years ago

I was not a salvage guy but in cargo measurement it turns out I had one of the first "laptops" on the Gulf Coast.

We used "regular" 16-digit hand calculators for regular calculations from ships' calibration tables, but when a vessel (especially heavy oil tankers) was far enough from even keel then the tables would not apply, and hand modeling was very tedious, so I developed a more realistic model on the "PC".

Radio Shack PC-2 (Pocket Computer) with accessories and case was about the size of a small laptop, including a 4-color printer-plotter, and RS-232 interface:

http://www.trs-80.com/images/hw-pocket2-carrying.jpg

This was way before IBM-compatible laptop PC's were developed.

You have to board the vessel for access to its dimensional drawings, and if they were inadequate then you would take hand measurements.

My application was fundamentally way more advanced than the few oil companies doing it on a TRS-80 themselves, and that was just the calculations and conversions.

I can look back without embarrassment at my UI/UX, computer-experienced marine gagers did not yet exist, home computers still very uncommon, and most offices not yet having a computer either. Gagers still have a fairly challenging job but most are not very academically oriented, even more true decades ago.

So I made it where you just hand the portable to the gager, he hits the "ON" button, it asks the questions on the one-line LED screen, then prints the questions & his answers on the little printer and the ticket advances as the calculations proceed for each compartment.

You finished hours before the company gager, and could go back over all data & results just by looking through the ticket.

The real excitement was boarding an offshore platform in the Bahamas one time with 20' waves and the crew boat was only about 30' long. They had multiple wooden landings to accomodate the tides, one was virtually submerged, the next was slightly below the waves' crest and the third was out-of-reach at the time. A knotted rope descended from the main metal platform at the top of the ladder, draping all 3 landings. Each worker waited for the pilot to sync a wave properly, then he would quickly reverse the boat to within inches of the target landing, you step off the back of the boat grabbing the wet rope, hang & swing onto the landing as the boat drops a dozen feet the next second and he powers away to a safe distance to repeat it for the next person. Climb the ladder quick before the next wave submerges the landing you are on.

Here's the rest of the page about the TRS-80 portables:

http://www.trs-80.com/wordpress/trs-80-computer-line/pocket/

I never had to worry about recharging my portable, it ran on AA batteries.

pchristensen• 12 years ago

One of my favorite early long-form web journalism, along with Mother Earth, Motherboard (http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html) and The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist (http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diam...)

oldmanjay• 12 years ago

i feel like this would make an amazing movie. it has everything, manly men, fast cars, technology, huge machinery, massive risks for massive rewards, officials ineffectually trying to stop the heroes, drama, pathos, a dude with a funny accent who curses in a not-quite-correct manner...

on the other hand, very few giant robots destroying exquisite cartoon cities

emgee3• 12 years ago

I'm not sure what the current status is, but it was being developed by Dreamworks. I'm sure they can Bayify it if it moves forward.

voltagex_• 12 years ago

http://www.joshuadavis.net/salvagemovie.html - can't find any better info than that, other than it'd been optioned in 2008.

mikecb• 12 years ago

Wired used to have fantastic long forms like this, I wonder what happened. Some of my favorites:

Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street http://archive.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?...

The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diam...

Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf...

Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief http://www.wired.com/2010/03/ff_masterthief_blanchard/all/1

js2• 12 years ago

This is an amazing story. I'd totally forgotten I'd read it years ago until I clicked through. The pictures brought the whole story back to mind.

blunte2• 12 years ago

I remember when this article came out. I found it fascinating and engaging, although the ending was very disappointing (what happened in reality).

Luyt2• 12 years ago

You mean the shredding of the cars? Those were mere pieces of recycleable metal. The good part is that the salvagers were able to prevent the leakage of 176,366 gallons of fuel into the sea.

blunte2• 12 years ago

True, there was still value in their operation. It was just a sad thing that someone died in the recovery process (only for the whole batch of cars to be written off).

EddieLomax• 12 years ago

This was a great article-- I originally read it on Epic magazine, which in my opinion has amazing graphics and a very interesting format:

http://epicmagazine.com/2013/08/deep-sea-cowboys/

High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace (2008)

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