Today´s ship

[Mich the Tester]

The Saga Ruby has just sailed into port here in Amsterdam, once the MS Caronia of the Cunard Line, the last ocean liner to be built in Britain. A very graceful ship of the type we should still be building, with elegant lines and a subtlety of design, instead of those ugly, bad taste cruise palaces that look like floating blocks of flats.

[singhr]

well said. was in Venice the other year and one of those cruisers belched it's foul smelling cargo of american tourists all over the place, no wonder the place is sinking - they should be banned.

[gingerjedi]

Saga Ruby... so it's true, cruising really is getting younger.

[Sysman]

Ship graveyard poisons India

It's odd what related searches bring up:

Ship graveyard poisons India

Alang, where ships "die"

Alang is known to be the largest "graveyard of ships" in Asia. Every year, hundreds of old oil tankers, container ships and other vessels continue to be found on this coast, where teams of 150 - 200 workers, mostly without any protection, dismantle ships weighing an average 10 thousand tons in under three months, recovering almost everything. In 1997 India banned the import of ships containing hazardous substances, in accordance with the Basel Convention. This establishes that the vessels of member countries of the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) must be dismantled in the same countries belonging to the organization. Such prohibitions, however, are systematically ignored or circumvented - often falsifying the origin of the boats. According to the Christian Science Monitor, from 2000 to 2008 alone at least 91 commercial vessels flying the American flag, were "re-baptized" with new origins and then sent for scrapping to Third World countries.

[Paddy]

The Saga Ruby has just sailed into port here in Amsterdam, once the MS Caronia of the Cunard Line, the last ocean liner to be built in Britain. A very graceful ship of the type we should still be building, with elegant lines and a subtlety of design, instead of those ugly, bad taste cruise palaces that look like floating blocks of flats.

I went en-board the original Caronia when I was a kid.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Caronia

[Mich the Tester]

It's odd what related searches bring up:

Ship graveyard poisons India

Indeed. Recently the glorious SS France, one of the finest liners of all time, was renamed the ´Blue Lady´ and scrapped at Alang. It´s a shame that such great ships are dumped and scrapped; we have all sorts of charities and subsidies to protect great old buildings, but these ships, which are some of the finest examples of marine architecture, are scrapped to provide cheap metal.

Perhaps I'm just an old geek, getting all emotional about machines but something tells me we're all losing something every time a great liner is scrapped.

[gingerjedi]

Indeed. Recently the glorious SS France, one of the finest liners of all time, was renamed the ´Blue Lady´ and scrapped at Alang. It´s a shame that such great ships are dumped and scrapped; we have all sorts of charities and subsidies to protect great old buildings, but these ships, which are some of the finest examples of marine architecture, are scrapped to provide cheap metal.

Perhaps I'm just an old geek, getting all emotional about machines but something tells me we're all losing something every time a great liner is scrapped.

The SS Great Britain which is arguably one of the most important ships ever built spent nearly 100 years rusting away down in the Falklands before someone saw fit to bring it back.

Well worth a visit if you're ever in the area.

[RichardCranium]

Saga Ruby... so it's true, cruising really is getting younger.

Yep. And it is crumblies complaining about "young people" on the ships that made Saga realise there was a market for gimmers to cruise without "all that loud noise and dashing about".

Which means fewer Zimmer frames and scrote-moaning for the rest of us on the other ships.

[Sysman]

SS France

I built an Airfix model of the SS France, and its very mention brought back a vivid recollection of the distinctive funnels. I think I also did a model of the QE2, which if I remember correctly generated enough power for a town the size of Huddersfield.

Perhaps I'm just an old geek, getting all emotional about machines but something tells me we're all losing something every time a great liner is scrapped.

Indeed. If you spend any time in a former ship building area, you quickly realise that there was also an enormous amount of pride in building the things. It gave communities a sense of identity which no amount of call or data processing centres can replace.

Back to the real world and correcting some 'orrible code isn't the same somehow

[threaded]

Back to the real world and correcting some 'orrible code isn't the same somehow

Dunno about that. I'm currently working on stuff that's acknowledged as world class, and some other stuff that is literally out of this world.