Page 37 - Practical Ship Design

8 Chapter I

Chapters 15 and 16 bear a considerable responsibility for this book being
written as it was the author’s view that the arrangement aspects of design were
badly neglected, both in textbooks on naval architecture and in teaching in
universities and technical colleges, that provided much of the original motivation.
Both the task of creating the general arrangement of a ship and the work
involved in drawing detailed arrangements of each part of it seem to be regarded
by many lecturers at universities and technical colleges and, to only a slightly
lesser extent, by some designers themselves as simple tasks which can be left to
draughtsmen. This attitude is compounded by the fact that draughtsmen are given
only limited instruction in much of the skills of their trade and are largely left to
learn for themselves by studying the plans of “the last ship”. Whilst studying the
plans of ships should be a “must” for all designers, this study ought to go well
beyond knowing “what” was done towards a clear understanding of “why” it was
done.
Designers should have an ability to appreciate when good reasoning about a
multitude of factors has led to a good arrangement and, even more importantly, an
ability to see the faults in other arrangements. These abilities, which can and
should be taught, deal with as fascinating a subject as anything in ship design.
Chapter 17 goes back a long way in the author’s career to when he wrote a
standard specification for the Clydeside shipyard of Alexander Stephen & Sons.
This specification was intended both to ease the task of writing ship specifications
and to lay down standards to be followed where owner’s specifications lacked
detail.
Chapter 18 dates back to the same period of his career, but needed substantial
updating in later years to deal with the exceptionally difficult problem that faces a
consultant when his client wants an estimate of the price of a ship which may be
built, not in the adjoining shipyard (which shipyard estimators find difficult
enough) but in Japan or Korea.
Chapter 19 is, of course, closely related to Chapter 2 and might have adjoined it
in the book. The author cannot claim any specialised knowledge of this subject but
feels strongly that a book of this sort would be incomplete unless it addressed the
subject of operational economics, which is both the test of whether a good
merchant ship has been built and the starting point for the design of a new merchant
ship.
Chapter 20 deals with some solutions to the design problems that arise in major
conversion work whether this is undertaken to enable a ship to operate in a new
role or to rectify design errors.
In the hope of easing reference to the bibliography, this has been divided into six
sections, with each section covering a group of chapters whose subjects are related.
It has to be admitted that the bibliography is far from complete, but it is hoped
that the references given will lead to other relevant bibliographies.