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Comment by yeukhon | Hacker News Reader

I am actually more concerned about the 10 missing sailors, not just concerns for their lives, but I am really concerned how they went missing after the collision? The ship's damage is not very bad. I can understand they could have fallen into water, but this doesn't make a lot of sense. If they were facing the impact, they would have run away. If they were in other three directions, then I am surprised that ten sailors got thrown off the deck, and none of them could get back on the water surface. This raises my concern for the ship's rails.

--EDIT--

I believe this incident occurred early in the morning around 5:24 a.m and I don't think it was in total darkness. Also, what about the transport ship? Shouldn't they also have the ability to detect (and also human for lookup) since this is one of the busiest lane?

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Opening flooded compartments is not done lightly, you need to stop the source of the leaks first before you can open the hatches and enter the compartments and do a full search.

A collision between a 10,000 ton destroyer and a 20,000 (?) ton cargo ship dissipates a lot of energy into the water and churns up a lot of turbulent water, if someone fell into the water in the dark, it's not at all surprising that they'd be unable to surface. A human loses buoyancy around 30 feet deep in the water so if you're pulled 30 feet down in the dark, it can be disorienting and hard to figure out which way is up.

Is it a speculation suggesting some if not most are actually in the flooded compartments? Perhaps I didn't see this part in the articles I have read so far.

Since the missing crew are still missing, it's speculation that any are in the flooded compartments, but some of the flooded compartments are crew berths:

Monday's collision east of Singapore was the second involving a ship from the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet in the Pacific in two months. The Navy said "significant damage" to the McCain's hull caused flooding in adjacent compartments, including crew berths, machinery and communications rooms.

It is speculation, but unfortunately it's also the most likely scenario.

    - Crew berths were at the primary impact point, so are almost certainly sealed at the bulkheads by damage control.
    - Incident occurred at 5am local, when you'd expect berths to be popular.
    - Sunrise is 7am local, so it was dark - so you wouldn't expect to have any unnecessary crew topsides (precisely because finding MOBs in the dark is near impossible) - and you'd hope any that are, have protective or flotation equipment.
    - You'd also expect that 10 people running around on deck would have had a much better chance of spotting another ship.
    - The proof is in the pudding - for not one of them to have been spotted in one of the world's busiest corridors, doesn't bode well.

> A human loses buoyancy around 30 feet deep in the water

Learned something new today, thanks for that. Didn't even realize this was possible.

Learned something terrifying today, is more like it. No wonder those big wave surfers talk about being unable to tell which-way-is-up when they get washed up by a wave.

The science behind it is really interesting. I had always assumed that you'd get more buoyant as you went down and the pressure got higher; the thing is, buoyancy isn't about pressure as such, it's about relative density. Water is almost completely incompressible; even miles down, its density only increases by a few percentage points. But the main thing keeping humans buoyant is the air in your lungs, and your lungs are compressed as the outside pressure rises, making the airspace smaller and denser, until your average density is greater than the water's and you sink.

Yeah, I looked it up for the same reason, that's why I said I found it so interesting :) thanks for mentioning it though, I'm sure people will be interested to learn why.

Thank you for the explanation. This is entirely counter-intuitive to me.

I read in the other collision that water flooded the rooms very quickly, which makes it difficult to escape.

> The ship's damage is not very bad.

That's not accurate.

Not very bad even though water flooded in. But the ship was still in good condition since they were able to stop the flooding and isn't beyond repair.

By design, a modern warship can take an immense amount of damage and remain buoyant. That comes as little consolation to the poor buggers trapped in a flooded compartment.

The ship was hulled below the waterline; this damage is incredibly serious. The best that can be said about it is that the ship was able to return to port under its own power.

> the ship was still in good condition

This is just a crazy thing to say.

Sorry, I don't agree it is crazy thing to say. This ship is not beyond repair and is actually not hard for repair. A sinking ship or a ship on fire or a ship with half of the deck destroyed or a ship with a hole in the middle would be considered in serious condition. This ship would still be in active fighting if this ship was in the middle of a naval battle. No one would be crazy enough to abandon this ship just because some compartments were flooded and under control.

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