Does a capital ship sinking actually SUCK a swimmer down to drown?

[Tony Hwang]

Do you have any maritime experience? Worked on any kind of ocean going vessel(s)? Possess any knowledge gained from real life experience?

[O]

Back then, the reason to get away from the sinking ships was not the suction but the boilers exploding.

[gfretwell]

I was a sailor (blue water USCG) and there are lots of reasons to get away. For one, you really don't want to get caught in the oil slick. That is plenty of reason, right there. The oil can be on fire or catch fire. On a war ship, there might be some ordinance that will go off. If you are close you might also get snagged in the rigging. That will drag you down for sure.

[Sylvia Else]

Experience of ships? No. How would any of that help in deciding whether the vessel would suck me down if it sank?

Or do you think there's some sort of mechanism that allows enlightenment by osmosis?

Sylvia.

[Micky]

Just one year. At Can Tho for about 4 months and Cu Chi for 8.

He's a doctor, and might have been drafted as an intern, but the army encouraged people like him to enlist and then they would let you finish your residency before you had to serve. That way the army got a specialist instead of a GP. My brother is a radiologist (but lately I've learned how much medicine he knows about other areas, which isnt' surprising since he went to med school, but even things which are new since school.) It was called the Berry Plan.

Then he did a year at Ft. Devins, near Boston.

My mother kept a map of Viet Nam and watched the news for stories about the areas where he was. I just waited.

Something to be proud of.

How did that happen.

My lottery number was 17, but I had two shoulders that repeatedly dislocated. They both got somewhat better after a summer's hard work, but then I got 2000 volts from a TV and dislocated one of them, fell back and dislocated the other. The first side came out 10 times that month and I finally had surgery. I can't sleep with my arm above my head anymore, but otherwise it's 36 years and doing fine.

[Poutnik]

Dne 22/12/2015 v 01:04 M. Stradbury napsal(a):

I suppose there are many eye witnesses.

My not confirmed idea is,

that for very most time is sinking too slow to be dangerous in this way.

But in final stage, the one ship end is often submersed and the ship is sliding down fast, or the ships turns upside down, or horizontally positioned ship accelerates sinking toward the bottom.

In such scenario the motion is fast, causing vertical streams and vertigos.

[Poutnik]

Dne 22/12/2015 v 02:56 Micky napsal(a):

But it could be because of your motion dynamics, as you inertially continue water under, until your buoyancy gradually reverted your velocity.

[Poutnik]

I have often the impression their experiments are designed in the first place rather for the effect, than to really investigate the nature of phenomena.

E.g. I watched their investigation of economic effect of frequent switching on/off the incandescent, fluorescent and LED lights.

They were over focused to refute the obvious nonsense the light at switching consume more power than saved by being off, and were successful there.

OTOH, experiment part about saving power versus shortening device life was very poorly designed and result had no statistical value.

[Micky]

True. I'm no longer convinced. (Even though I doubt mythbusters on general principles). If one were right by the ship when it went quickly down, one would fall into the hole it left, but the water it pushed aside would be crashing back right after the ship passed also. How deep the person would go is a question.

I think if you were standing on the deck, whether the deck was horizontal or leaning, you could drop as fast as the ship did. Why not? Until there was enough water surrouding you for buoyancy to matter.

But if you were 3 inches from the ship, already floating in the water, would you fall over like in a waterfall? I think so, but like I say, you'd be competing with the water to see who and what dropped first.

One could experiement with little floating balls and big rocks dropped close to them, or better yet, held close to them at surface level and then released. A method for determining how deep they go would be needed.

Anyhow my point originally was no swirling. I coudl have kept silent on other stuff.

[Poutnik]

Nautical society has advantage of collective experience of huge number of people, surviving the ship sinking.

Even if I had been Nobel laureate for physics, sailors would know more about surviving on sea than me.

If personalizing, Sea has already laughed to many theoretical thoughts.

[Poutnik]

Dne 22/12/2015 v 05:36 M. Stradbury napsal(a):

I have seen a video where a boat was in a lab sinked by this way,

in document about the Bermuda triangle, following the hypothesis about sudden huge gas release from the sea bad or underwater vulcanos.

Sinking a swimmer with density close to water is much easier than sinking a boat.

[Poutnik]

Dne 22/12/2015 v 07:06 O napsal(a):

I agree it is the best to get far from a wreck independently on if whirl sucking is a danger or not.

[Micky]

I knew a guy who drowned in club soda.

I think there was a lot of scotch, too.

[Sylvia Else]

For most things, perhaps. But how many sailors have experience of a sinking, much less such experience from the the immediate vicinity of the ship. Those who got sucked down, if any, won't be around to tell the tale. Those who didn't get sucked down, and survived, would be counter-examples.

Sylvia.

[Poutnik]

I do not say current sailors, but history of survival records and withnesses.

There are 2 other options.

Those surviving seeing others being sucked down, Those being sucked down not enough to die.

[Poutnik]

But the did not make any attempt to maintain geometrical similarity.

IF a sailor size was 1/4 of a ship size, he would not be sucked either.

I am not sure, if the viscosity has to be scaled as well for that matter, but I guess it has.

As I mentioned in my other post the Mythbusters do not care much about reliability of their experiments and interpretations.

[taxed and spent]

mythbusters is a crock.

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per M. Stradbury:

Dunno what a capital ship is but am guessing it's big.

I saw an interview clip in which Lord Louis Mountbatten told of surviving his destroyer's sinking - along with a senior NCO who said at the time something like "Well sir, the scum always rises to the surface" so I am guessing that both were in the water when the ship went down under them.

[M. Stradbury]

My bad for not defining it, but you, sir, are correct, although in looking it up, I realized I was not correct:

[Phil Hobbs]

Yes. The main mechanism iirc is that air escaping from the sinking ship causes enough bubbles that the swimmer can't stay afloat, and sinks too deep to get back to the surface.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs