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design money was spent to create the

For each column I write, MREN has agreed to make a small donation to an organization of

Exxon Valdez and, as they say, the rest my choice. For this column I will donate the money to myself and buy a bottle of extremely is history.

nice Scotch. I will leave it in my of? ce and whenever a ship designer or engineer visits me,

I will share a dram with her and toast to Capt. Hazelwood’s memory. Capt. Hazelwood was

Whatever the reason, somewhere out a very capable ship captain, and his drinking problem had absolutely nothing to do with there a designer put pencil to paper and the Exxon Valdez spill. At worst he made a mistake, and he was unfairly vili? ed for it. We all nobody ever said: What the hell is going make mistakes, but choosing a bad design over a good design is not a mistake. on here? And created, what I consider to be, the worst ship design in history.

Right after the Exxon Valdez disaster,

I was asked to perform a study and de- termine how much less oil would have been spilled if the Exxon Valdez had been designed with a double bottom. I estimat- ed about 50% less oil would have been spilled. I was mercilessly grilled in depo- sition by opposing attorneys and their ex- perts ? ercely argued against my ? ndings.

However, later studies showed I was dead on, not because I was particularly bril- liant, but because I was young and afraid of embarrassing myself. Therefore, I me- ticulously stuck to real analysis.

The older opposing experts ? ercely expounded on the advantages of single skins, but, as per the Max Planck Maxim, are now mostly dead, and nobody any longer argues that single skin tankers are better. And double hull tankers are much better than anybody could have even imagined! We know, because oil spills from tanker hull breaches have been vir- tually eliminated.

But here comes the irony. If the Exxon

Valdez had been built with a double bot- tom, there still would have been a very bad oil spill in Prince William Sound, which I personally believe, on a nice day, is the most beautiful place in the world.

There still would have been a massive uproar, but would anybody have sug- gested that all single skin tankers need to be retired and all new tankers should be double hull?

One can imagine the comments of the doyens: Well, here is proof that double bottoms don’t work, we might as well keep building single skin tankers.

Is it possible that the worst ship de- sign in history actually, singlehandedly, eliminated oil pollution from tanker hull breaches?

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MR #12 (1-17).indd 11 12/5/2023 9:52:21 AM