[TheForge] Quesiton about a weird event...

[Garrick Peterson]

Strangely enough, this sounds like the effect you get when you take a
cylindar of clay, grab it with both hands, and twist quickly in
opposite directions. A nice, clean sheer.

That would be my guess: a defect in the metal combined with a seisure
of the prop caused  the shaft to sheer. I can't even begin to imagine
how rare such a failure might be, though.

~Garrick

On 6/6/06, Demon Buddha <osan at netlabs.net> wrote:
> I had an old (literally) friend, Walter.  He is a retired merchant
> marine captain.  He had a hundred stories of his life on the sea, but
> one of the ones that really stands out involved an equipment failure.
> He was captain of a freighter passing scross the Carribean.  As they
> made headway one evening, the ship experienced a vibration and then
> stopped making headway.  He called down to the engineers and they said
> that everthing was OK by them.  He went below and they walked the prop
> shaft.  He told me that in mid-span between two bearings the shaft, some
> 24" of solid steel, split such that there was about 1/16 inch gap
> between the rotating end and the end attached to the prop, which had
> stopped dead in its bearings.  He told me that the shaft was cut so
> perfectly that you would swear it was done by machine, so to speak.
>
> They had to get a tow.  When they got into port, NSA, FBI, and CIA were
> waiting for them.  After the inspection, the crew were warned not to
> speak to anyone about this for any reason, lest dire consequences befall
> them.  It never happened and they never saw anything.
>
> Anyone have any clue as to what this could have been about?  How does a
> shaft that large fail in such a fashion that the break is so perfect
> that you could not perceive motion of the shaft by observing the break?
>   Walter was a character, but he was dead serious about this one.  Said
> it was the strangest thing that he'd ever experienced.
>
> Comments/speculations welcome.
>
>         -Andy
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