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Comment by helsinkiandrew | Hacker News Reader

These are probably taken at the Alang (India) and Chittagong (Bangladesh) Ship Breaking Yards, where they run the ships aground at high tide. Both visible on Google Maps satelite view:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/21%C2%B023'21.9%22N+72%C2%...

https://www.google.com/maps/place/22%C2%B027'24.5%22N+91%C2%...

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I'm not in a position to look right now, but I'm pretty sure there's video of this happening out on YouTube. It's pretty fearsome seeing these big vessels coming in under power and crashing into the shore. Tons of inertia.

I doubt it's the video you were referring to, but it reminded me of when YouTuber bald and bankrupt was in Bangladesh: https://youtu.be/iq_76McFVLo?t=1260&si=WT-yCAefa1vIHXli

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5kDbwE7mFck

I'm sure you mean this one. There are probably others though.

This video gave me chills...

There are a number of shipbreaking videos and documentaries on YouTube.

> where they run the ships aground at high tide.

Read an article about this years ago. It seems they had special pilots to do this. Like wetting the bed on purpose, trained ships captains had a very hard time intentionally running ships aground.

>where they run the ships aground at high tide.

Probably a dumb question but what do they do on the next high tide? Wouldn't it interfere with their work?

A ship running to shore at full speed has quite a lot of inertia. And then they winch it further. So pretty much only the end is dealing with tides.

Ahhh, ok. So they ram it in and then winch it up closer to work on it. That makes sense. These things are huge and it would seem to take a bit of time to safely break them down.

Safely?! Ha ha, unless you mean safe for the ship ...

Ekaros answer is definitive, but if you didn't have those facilities and wanted to buy more time, you could beach the boat during a high spring tide (which is when the solar tides and lunar tides are in line), which would only occurs twice each lunar month

They start with superstructures etc, making the ships lighter. Then they pull them further up the coast as needed.

They just take a break from the work? The hull of the ship that came in on the last high tide is now broken, it's not going to float away.

I've seen the video. They drop an anchor and attach it to shore with a chain.

Some photos show the work continuing even with a ship surrounded by a little water.

Thanks for that, some pretty cool street view panoramas at that location

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