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| At random: Probably the most expensive ballast ever carried by a ship was two tons of gold and eighteen tons of silver coins carried by the U.S. submarine TROUT while on a trip from Corregidor to Pearl Harbor early in World War II. TROUT had removed her moveable ballast to allow for a larger cargo of ammunition to be transported for the defenders on the embattled island. Lcdr. Fenno, TROUT's CO, planned on replacing the ballast with sand bags, but found none were available. The gold and silver from the Bank of the Philippines was substituted as ballast, which also solved the problem of removing the treasure to a safe place prior to invasion by the enemy. |
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Ric |
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Plankowner Posts: 9164 Location: Upper lefthand corner of the map. | Subject: Do you know of...... ...this page? Imperial Japanese Navy Page  http://www.combinedfleet.com/kaigun.htm I discovered this about 15 years ago. A really well done and important history to balance US Sub and Fleet actions. | ||
| geno |
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| Pedro |
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COMSUBBBS Posts: 2974 Location: Liverpool, England | Subject: RE: Do you know of...... Ric, Thanks for the post as there was some interesting reading in there. The story on Borneo was especially of interest as I was there on a boat during the Indonesia/Borneo uprisings in the sixties. Starting with Korea, somewhere along the line, we with our Allies started referring to any wars in the far-flung East as confrontations and policing actions. This turned out to be very far from the truth, considering their eventual cost in blood and treasure. They were wars - plain and simple. We were secured in Balikpapen just across the harbour from its huge oil refinery at which a number of tankers were alongside loading crude oil. An Italian tanker was loading paraffin wax for some refinery in Europe, when a fire broke out aboard her followed by an explosion in her pump room. I am not a chemist, but I understand that paraffin wax has to be kept at a constant temperature that prevented it solidifying whilst being loaded and throughout its transportation to, and its discharge, at its destination. A ships engineer and its Pump Man had been killed outright in the blast and emergency fire crews and services were quickly in attendance. Once the fires were extinguished with the help of fire-boats and two minesweepers from the RN and Dutch navies there were the spillage problems into the harbour to be dealt with. Nobody aboard our boat knew if this wax was toxic or not, but breathing the smoke-filled atmosphere did cause eye and skin irritations for a lot of the duty watch. The harbour was partially covered in huge floating clumps of solid crystallised wax that looked like mini-icebergs and the smell was overpowering. We immediately moved out to an anchorage in the outer bay as a precaution to prevent this stuff being drawn into our seawater intakes and creating sludge or God only knows what other hazards. We were told that quite a few of the Italian lads had suffered severe respiratory problems and burns of varying degrees as a result of the fire. They say it's an ill wind that blows no good; we later learnt that paraffin wax had huge pesticide properties when it was observed that it had killed off large colonies of bed bugs and mosquitoes in the port following the incident. Pedro  | ||
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