What about the British, I think, build ships made entirely of ice. Supposedly, a torpedo was used to test the ten to twelve foot hull thickness, caused very little damage. By mixing sawdust and water, allowed to freeze the ice take longer to melt and is stronger.
I'm German-Lithuanian and often think i know a lot about WW2, due to family history and education. I know about some of the weird things which were built to save resources (especially the axis was very "creative" during the last year of the war), but concrete sea vessels were not on my list.
@@jamesphillips7977 that's the pykrete i brought up. they never built ships out of pykrete; the original idea pyke had was to make them out of ice. he couldn't convince his native britain but the americans and canadians tried it, and built a 60' vessel in canada. again, just out of ice, not pykrete. anyway -- it's fascinating!
I remember growing up down the street from this guy who had a cement hull in his front yard. We are about 2 hours from the closest beach. We all thought it was like a project for his kids but nope, he finished it out, had it towed to the ocean, sold everything he owned and just, dissapeared into the ocean. My parents didn't lose contact with him for about 7 years and I think the church said he is still alive somewhere off the coast of Tahiti
My 99 year old dad was a Merchant Marine officer in WW2. He was in port in the summer and concrete ship was in port with a friend from MM Academy on board. Dad visited his friend on the concrete ship. Dad wanted to see the engine room and while below a V1 hit the concrete ship destroying his friend's cabin. Dad told me the did not run concrete ships in cold waters and winter they were mostly used in the warm Caribbean. Dad said the only thing liked about the concrete ships is they had better sound insulation
They are not made with concrete. The real name Farrocement. The process uses 2 or 3 different sizes of sand. Zero rocks. The process uses lots of pencil rod, very small rebar. Then expanded metal lath, you call it chicken wire. The object is to get the pencil rod and 5 layers of metal lath as thin as they can squeeze them together. A 65 foot cement boat we plastered had all 5 layers in less the a 3/8 inch thickness. The cement is the filler. If you want a book written on Farocement contact me I will give you the book. It was written in the late 70’s. We were a plastering company in the Portland area and we did 10 boats . What killed this process was the price of the rod and wire. The price shot up and it became cheaper to build out of Steel. The big company in California was Daniel cement boats. We traveled to California and met with them. At that time they had to get the sand only from a plant in Canada.
The ferrocement process is used only for smaller boats. The large ships mentioned in the video were made of reinforced concrete. I mention some of the books used in the video itself, but here they are: Survey of experience using reinforced concrete in floating marine structures. Ship structure committee. 1984. apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA162559.pdf Concrete ships historical notes concerning them and a discussion of the problems involved in their construction. University of Illinois. 1918. www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/51651/concreteshipshis00kirc.pdf Concrete Ships. University of Rhode Island. 1978. digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1120&context=ma_etds
@@theshellchannel It's 'Ferrocement' not "Farrocement". Ferro for "ferrous metal" (ie steel reinforcement) and cement for "Portland cement" (ie concrete). All concrete construction, whether boats, buildings or bridges relies on steel reinforcement. Ferrocement hulls are never 3/8" thick and "Expanded Metal Lath" is NOT "Chicken Wire", it's sheet metal that has been perforated with rows of slits and then stretched in width. What "killed" FERROCEMENT Boat construction was the inability to get it insured because of the low quality of amateur construction and the chronic internal rusting issues leading to the bottoms falling out without warning. The economic savings were MINIMAL as the cost of a yacht is more determined by the price of it's fittings and hardware than the material of it's hull combined with the extremely low re-sale value of "Hippy built boats".
Vielen Dank über den tiefen Einblick in Farrocement. Habe selber ähnliche Mischungen entwickelt aber nie angewendet. Es war für Badewannen gedacht. Gibt es noch welche von den 10 Meisterwerken? Was Zement angeht hatte eine Universität in Darmstadt 1984 eine Spiralfeder geschaffen. Die Ultrafeine Mischung erreichte so hohe Zugkräfte das eine Feder ohne Bewehrung überhaupt möglich war..
knowing these ships, I always find it funny to see modern houseboats built for almost permanent anchorage and usually having very little loads still being built from steel rather then concrete.
@@solutionalwebdesignantwerp6122 not at all what I refer to, I have these fancy, multimillion new boxes on the water in mind ... and no, used ships aint 80% of the houseboat production
@@solutionalwebdesignantwerp6122 thats nonsense, newly designed and build from scratch houseboats are a large market these days .. there are entire lake developments building houseboats in series, especially around here in europe. And there are those silly luxury series in Dubai for example. ... that 80% are made from old ships too obviously just a silly number you pulled out of ur behind.
The dock floats of the marinas at the boat docks of a lake I go to we swapped out from plastic to Concrete many years back. It helped reduce the impact of waves on the deck level, and they are guaranteed to last like 50 years
@diedampfbrasse98 glad you think Wikipedia is my behind. Do some research .. +80% are repurposed commercial vessels.its not because you can buy fancy ones now that those have thr largest market share
I first heard of ferrocement boats in the early 1990's from a Ecuadorian longline fisherman who claimed that he had owned one and employed it for years on fishing trips far out into the Pacific ocean. It took me some time to wrap my head around the idea of a boat constructed in such a manner.
A well built ferro cement sailing yacht is indiscernible from one of other materials. The only giveaways would be poor workmanship, leading to a lumpy finish or the amateur design of an inexperienced builder. If you've spent much time afloat, MANY ferro cement hulls have sailed past you without your noticing.
Concrete was a TEMPORARY expedient for ship construction due to the high demand for steel by the weapons industry. It was only intended to last for a couple years, as, in times of war, many conventional steel ships didn't even last that long. Building a vessel from cement is a FALSE ECONOMY if you expect it to last any longer than that.
You miss on the main reason these ships were constructed. While they couldn't perform in battle, if towed along side a fleet of 4 or 5 steel ships they gave the enemy the illusion that we had many more ships. This was used to get Japan to deploy more ships than neccessary to these decoys while we would hit targets they left.
Man those times were crazy. Ntm the industrial experimentation and the drive to create new things was amazing. _now people have degrees but are still absentminded and the ones who really want to do something are stuck in room full of clowns , paralysed_
The only benefit I can see from a wartime perspective is rapid and mass construction of landing boats without eating up steel supplies for what were essentially single time use vessels.
I once mentioned to a builder that I was considering buying a 'concrete' yacht, he thought I was joking because he said it wouldn't float being made of concrete.
And then I heard about the concrete canoe that was paddled in down a river of lava. Google doesn't turn that urban myth up but it does turn up concrete canoe races.
There are 5 or 6 of the "hulks" being used as a breakwater around the pulp mill in Powell River, British Columbia. We used to row our little inflatable rubber rafts around them as kids. I think one of them was even used during the atom bomb testing in Bikini Atoll in the 50's.
There's some correlations here to concrete pool construction and Shotcrete projects. Lots of steel reinforcement, small aggregate, limited added water, high level placement consolidation. Racquet ball, hand ball court walls are/were built with lots of pencil rod & wire, covered with Portland cement rich plaster (concrete grout basically).
My father was a Navy Aviation torpedo man in the Pacific in World War II. He served on the aircraft carrier USS Belleau Wood CVL 25 in Admiral Bull Halsey fast attack carrier group task force 58. My father told the story that they refueled from a cement oiler ship in the South Pacific one time. He said the fuel was contaminated with seawater and that his carrier went dead in the water in a war zone for a period of time until they could take on fresh fuel and do some repairs. It was scary being a sitting duck unable to maneuver in a war zone. Thankfully you're going to be planes and submarines did not find them before they could be underway.
Fascinating! I knew nothing of concrete as a material in ship construction. But I recall that engineering students at a university near where I Iived back in the 70s, had to design and build a canoe of concrete as part of their curriculum.
As a young child I made ships out of Lego - long before Lego ships actually became a thing. The great thing was the plastic never rusted. The bad thing was that the ships usually sank within 10 minutes...
Habe mal ein kleines Boot aus stabilen Stahlblech geschweißt- beim einsetzen ins Wasser ist es sofort gesunken. War schwerer als seine Wasserverdrängung. Da sind 10 Minuten viel besser.
There was a period when ferroconcrete was a popular choice for homebuilt sailboats. Until people gained experience with them. They used inexpensive materials but were labor intensive. And the problem was that while they were strong and durable, if built properly, it was impossible to determine whether they were built properly from an external inspection.
In the 1970's, a group of us constructed a ferro concrete yacht. It was ready for plastering when gale force winds bowled it over. We stood it back up but the beautiful lines were no longer. I pulled out of the build as my GF was pregnant. The boat got finished, looked okay and spent the next few years as a dive boat in the Pacific.
It’s also possible to build a ship out of asphalt. Asphalt with steel fibers is 5 times stronger and is so strong that when it has to be demolished it has to be cut apart instead of using jackhammers. If steel isn’t available it’s also possible to use Raylon fibers, which are made from waste paper. They’re water soluble but the tar seals them so well it’s not an issue. In fact, raylon used to be used in car tires because the rubber acts as a sealant. They’re about half as strong as composites, which is still very useful, especially seeing how dirt cheap it is. Slash pine fibers are also insanely strong and can be used as well. Has higher strength to weight than the best oak, and obviously oak made very robust ships. Largest oak ship ever made was 10,000 tons. So a fiber based ship could still be moderately useful by modern standards
At 01:40 the list of ships includes one named SS Francois Hennebique. Where J-L Lambot (00:39) was the father of Ferro-Cement - Hennebique was the father of Reinforced-Concrete. Hennebique , or his licencees, built thousands of concrete structures in the UK including the famous Hennebique Bridge at Brooklands Circuit, Weybridge, the first purpose-built banked motor-racing circuit in the world. That bridge still survives, as does another Hennebique construction, the footbridge crossing the railway lines at Kew Gardens station.
@@theshellchannel Subscribed, I will check out to see if you have already done one of Ice Air Craft Carriers. After promising scale tests and the creation of a prototype on Patricia Lake, Jasper National Park, in Alberta, Canada, the project was shelved due to rising costs, added requirements, and the availability of longer-range aircraft and escort carriers which closed the Mid-Atlantic gap that the project was intended to address.
Ferro-cement yachts were quite common in New Zealand several decades ago. I owned one as did a friend. Mine was named "Sea Bridge" but in Dutch. There was a ferro-cement builder Ev Sayer who was internationally known for his skill and his innovations in ferro-cement boat construction. He built a ferro-cement yacht that won its class in the Auckland to Suva yacht race. The coolest name - Floating Footpath. The letters were shown being poured out of a cement mixer.
I wish I could put pictures on here. The Egyptians moved large stone this way. Kind of. They had giant bulls. They used the bladder. Filled with air. They were canal builders. They floated stone right into place. Some drawings. Hyroglifs. Show ships hanging blocks of stone off the side. Everything is a lot lighter under water. If they had to flood a valley they would. They even left a ship by the pyramids to show the future how they did it. It's true. Look at Khufu hyroglifs.
There is a concrete barge called the Louise Catherine in Paris that you can see when crossing the Seine on metro line 5. Built in 1915, it did sank some years ago when the Seine was high in 2018 but was later refloated in 2020. I believe there are plans to restore it, but work does not seem to be taking place from now. Thanks for the video !
This technology seems perfect for house boats. They stay in one place and what homeowner doesn't like low maintenance. The added mass damps out waves and ripples.
my father built a Ferrocement sailboat that we lived on and sailed for five years. There was a small community of Ferrocement boat builders/owners in the San Francisco Bay area during the 70s.
As a boy, with little idea of water displacement and Archimedes bathtub, I was amazed seeing a squarish concrete barge with A-Frame hoist tied to a San Diego dock. The thing was loaded with tools and tackle and had freeboard about equal to draft, gunwales about a foot wide. Not built for waves and that A-Frame bolted to the cement hull it's uniqueness among all things I saw floating there I've never forgotten.
In the later part of WWII, by utilizing smaller aggregate and a special type of silica sand in place of the usual washed plaster sand, Germany issued experimental concrete underpants to some units of the Luftwaffe.
The first oysters I ever ate were from the sunken concrete troop carriers that formed the breakwater at Kiptopeke ferry back in '80. Teaming with marine life then and I watch over the next five years oysters becoming harder to find having to dive to collect rather than float along the surface. The concrete construction intrigued me as the boat across from me in the boatyard was a concrete ketch.
A ship that floats like a log can reduce the weight penalty with concrete ships while swapping trains in one hour and would allow small islands to trade with the world.
i don't understand. do you mean car floats/rail barges? they already exist. i live in alaska and our railroad isn't connected to the rest of north america, we have a few barges with rail track on them to move rolling stock from seattle to here.
Mmmmm I recall DIY ferrocement yacht hulls being popular in the 1970/80s apparently cheaper and able to be curved like sailing yacht hulls etc…. Laurie. NZ. 😊
The SS PaloAlto never saw service and was towed, anchored in Santa Cruz California, it was made into a dance, bar, music boat, Tommy Dorset, Benny Goodman and others played there, it was damaged in a storm and yet continued to be used for fishing and playing on until 2001. It is closed to the public now but it still remains there today, yet broken in half and only the cement remains.
Concrete ships had one more attribute which should not go unmentioned: During WWII a submarine commander would identify one and stand down... nobody would waste a torpedo on a concrete ship.
@@josephmccord4511 Sorry bud, but thats the way it goes. Oh, by the way. Mind reading is a comic book super power. You just cant sound like a rational, healthy, well adjusted adult by simply refusing to contact reality and spew your fantasies. Try looking some of this crap up. The entire web at your fingers and the best you can do is simply regurgitate your need to protect your presumptions?
@@josephmccord4511 Here... I know of no test. I know of no record either. I know ONLY that I never said they wont sink. You fabricated a straw man. I do know there are problems with the attempt. I can see it maybe cracking, but punching through like a sheet of steel and peeling it back to a ten foot hole? No way. Is a moot issue though. I do know the quotes from several Nazi Captains who themselves made that very claim. They would not waste a torpedo on a concrete ship. That is what I said, that is what the captains said. You of course, with no clue at all, no involvement and no history say differently. Heh, is funny. We're talking a minimum of foot thick or greater of steel reinforced concrete. Even today with our modern toys we can find multiton missiles coming down on bridges built similarly and at best they put in a three foot hole but usually much much smaller if at all. Much of the torpedo's effective efforts went into creating an air bubble under the ship... and area there was no water to support the ship at so as the explosion pushed in, the lack of support folded it as the center goes down due to the bubble. The best torpedo 'hit' was when the torpedo passed UNDER the ship and exploded underneath... and cracked its back, breaking the ship in two because of the air bubble created. Go ahead and do that to a ship make of steel reinforced concrete and what do you have? A reinforced concrete bridge. Duh. They dont make bridges out of sheet steel, and if your concerned about torpedoes you dont sail in a steel hull ship. You choose a fortress. Made of reinforced concrete like they use on the bunkers that need armor penetrating warheads to deal with. If your going to argue, then do so rationally, and bring up some evidence so we can know that history has recorded a concrete ship going down to a torpedo, cause I couldn't find one. I would actually like to know, see direct evidence. I looked... did you? They cost less to produce. They produced them faster, cheaper, easier with less effort and less skilled labor, but they cost a mint in fuel to run because of their weight and because of the thickness of the concrete they had less cargo space so it was even more expensive. Come on, we be talkin mobile fortress. Really though, if you find a record of one going down to a torpedo slap that thing up here. I would love to see.
It is said that if you are crossing an ocean, the best ride you can get is in a ferro boat. The worst is in an aluminium or fibreglass one. This is because of the weight of the vessel. I believe the worlds largest barge is made of concrete. It was made in France and is used in conjunction with an oil platform off Africa.
I have sailed in heavier GRP boats than Ferro ones of the same length so that theory doesn't really hold water. I don't think you will get an ultra light displacement ferro boat built, but they did build ferro race boats at one stage.
I don't know if that silly seasteading movement is still going, but this might be a viable tech for such projects. The greater mass and fuel consumption doesn't matter if you're not moving. Also, concrete hulls don't care about barnacles.
Ships built with common, cheap materials and labour which didn't need the specialised skills of conventional construction. The maritime de Havilland Mosquito
Bluffer's Park Marina in Toronto has an entire row of floating houses built on ferrocement boxes, permanently moored to shore. They've been there for decades but are the only examples in the region.
My father built a sailing ferrocement one in 76' we still sail with it, nearly 50 years later. It's pretty and quirky. He told me he pushed to thickness enveloppe to the limit to make a reasonably lightweight hull. It does not look to have affeceted durability. I believe he was very cautious with cement composition. Other builder took less car and some hull were lost due to corrosion of the steel reinforcement shattering the structure. Maybe industrial could have get better displacement performance by using less thick hulls.
@@UguysRnuts Seawater entry is a problem for GRP too. The answer is a good watertight primer paint coating, just as used on GRP hulls (under the antifouling, if any).
@@NiklasHolsti GRP hulls don't suffer the catastrophic failure common to ferrocement. Longterm moisture penetration in fibreglass results in osmotic blistering that can be dealt with quite simply by opening them up, resaturating the sub-strat with epoxy resin, fairing the surface and applying an epoxy barrier coat like Interprotect2000. Fibreglass is infinitely repairable. With "ferro", the moisture does irreparable damage whether it gets in through microscopic porosity, fastener holes, hull damage or bilge water and is virtually undetectable until the bottom falls out.
When I lived on the island of Guam I used to go scuba diving on a wreck called the American tanker it was a concrete barge with a ship shaped hall the carried fresh water to the small islands in Micronesia
I grew up playing on the SS Palo Alto Cement Ship at Sea Cliff Beach near Santa Cruz, California, from early days until it was breaking up and access prohibited.
I spent years wanting to see that ship in person, and finally got the chance to a couple of years ago. As luck would have it, we visited on January 4th 2023, which was one day before the pier got destroyed in a storm. We were able to walk most of the way down the pier and get some great photos of the ship.
My first thought was it'll over time soak water in. I mean if neighbor flooded his floor, person living beneath him will get wet ceiling and walls. So I don't understand how concrete is water-tight.
Dang so I was never wrong that some ships are made of concrete. Here in India while touring the islands, I remember seeing a ship which seemed to be made of concrete because of the finishing.
There is a barge near where I live. Its on the isle of Scalpay in the Outer Hebrides. It is named Cretetree, it's a 180-foot-long concrete barge built by the Aberdeen Concrete Shipbuilding Company in 1919 for hauling iron ore. (The first five letters of her name come from her con-crete construction.)
The picture of the Breakwater I think it's from Powell River if not it looks very similar. Some of them have been turned into artificial reefs but there are still some there
Of all the things I learnt about WW2, this was somehow never one of them, thanks for the video.
Project Habakkuk?
if you thought concrete ships are cool, look up pykrete if you haven't heard of it. such a strange idea, it'll give you brain freeze for sure
What about the British, I think, build ships made entirely of ice. Supposedly, a torpedo was used to test the ten to twelve foot hull thickness, caused very little damage. By mixing sawdust and water, allowed to freeze the ice take longer to melt and is stronger.
I'm German-Lithuanian and often think i know a lot about WW2, due to family history and education. I know about some of the weird things which were built to save resources (especially the axis was very "creative" during the last year of the war), but concrete sea vessels were not on my list.
@@jamesphillips7977 that's the pykrete i brought up. they never built ships out of pykrete; the original idea pyke had was to make them out of ice. he couldn't convince his native britain but the americans and canadians tried it, and built a 60' vessel in canada. again, just out of ice, not pykrete. anyway -- it's fascinating!
All ships are concrete, I've never been on an abstract ship. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)
Thank you. I'm sure you'll find your way out.
you’re forgetting the ship of Theseus
- Slow clap (slow enough to wait concrete wall dry)
obviously! coz not all ships are set in stone
Now i cant unsee it 🤭
The lifeboats are bags of Ready-Mix!
I remember growing up down the street from this guy who had a cement hull in his front yard. We are about 2 hours from the closest beach. We all thought it was like a project for his kids but nope, he finished it out, had it towed to the ocean, sold everything he owned and just, dissapeared into the ocean. My parents didn't lose contact with him for about 7 years and I think the church said he is still alive somewhere off the coast of Tahiti
Everyone loves Tahiti
@@zorrodelaspraderas3840😂
Lol wow
Disappearing into the ocean is not an expression that you want to use when referring to a C-ment boat😂
does he ever talk about his plans? or mangoes?
My 99 year old dad was a Merchant Marine officer in WW2. He was in port in the summer and concrete ship was in port with a friend from MM Academy on board. Dad visited his friend on the concrete ship. Dad wanted to see the engine room and while below a V1 hit the concrete ship destroying his friend's cabin. Dad told me the did not run concrete ships in cold waters and winter they were mostly used in the warm Caribbean. Dad said the only thing liked about the concrete ships is they had better sound insulation
They are not made with concrete. The real name Farrocement. The process uses 2 or 3 different sizes of sand. Zero rocks. The process uses lots of pencil rod, very small rebar. Then expanded metal lath, you call it chicken wire. The object is to get the pencil rod and 5 layers of metal lath as thin as they can squeeze them together. A 65 foot cement boat we plastered had all 5 layers in less the a 3/8 inch thickness. The cement is the filler. If you want a book written on Farocement contact me I will give you the book. It was written in the late 70’s. We were a plastering company in the Portland area and we did 10 boats . What killed this process was the price of the rod and wire. The price shot up and it became cheaper to build out of Steel. The big company in California was Daniel cement boats. We traveled to California and met with them. At that time they had to get the sand only from a plant in Canada.
The ferrocement process is used only for smaller boats. The large ships mentioned in the video were made of reinforced concrete.
I mention some of the books used in the video itself, but here they are:
Survey of experience using reinforced concrete in floating marine structures. Ship structure committee. 1984.
apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA162559.pdf
Concrete ships historical notes concerning them and a discussion of the problems involved in their construction. University of Illinois. 1918.
www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/51651/concreteshipshis00kirc.pdf
Concrete Ships. University of Rhode Island. 1978.
digitalcommons.uri.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1120&context=ma_etds
thanks everyone
@@theshellchannel It's 'Ferrocement' not "Farrocement". Ferro for "ferrous metal" (ie steel reinforcement) and cement for "Portland cement" (ie concrete). All concrete construction, whether boats, buildings or bridges relies on steel reinforcement. Ferrocement hulls are never 3/8" thick and "Expanded Metal Lath" is NOT "Chicken Wire", it's sheet metal that has been perforated with rows of slits and then stretched in width. What "killed" FERROCEMENT Boat construction was the inability to get it insured because of the low quality of amateur construction and the chronic internal rusting issues leading to the bottoms falling out without warning. The economic savings were MINIMAL as the cost of a yacht is more determined by the price of it's fittings and hardware than the material of it's hull combined with the extremely low re-sale value of "Hippy built boats".
@@theshellchannel Wow, everyone is an expert all of the sudden, I guess they feel smarter stealing the thunder 😊
Vielen Dank über den tiefen Einblick in Farrocement. Habe selber ähnliche Mischungen entwickelt aber nie angewendet. Es war für Badewannen gedacht. Gibt es noch welche von den
10 Meisterwerken? Was Zement angeht hatte eine Universität in Darmstadt 1984 eine Spiralfeder geschaffen. Die Ultrafeine Mischung erreichte so hohe Zugkräfte das eine Feder ohne
Bewehrung überhaupt möglich war..
knowing these ships, I always find it funny to see modern houseboats built for almost permanent anchorage and usually having very little loads still being built from steel rather then concrete.
80% of those are ex transport ships , they're only static at the end of their life
@@solutionalwebdesignantwerp6122 not at all what I refer to, I have these fancy, multimillion new boxes on the water in mind ... and no, used ships aint 80% of the houseboat production
@@solutionalwebdesignantwerp6122 thats nonsense, newly designed and build from scratch houseboats are a large market these days .. there are entire lake developments building houseboats in series, especially around here in europe. And there are those silly luxury series in Dubai for example.
... that 80% are made from old ships too obviously just a silly number you pulled out of ur behind.
The dock floats of the marinas at the boat docks of a lake I go to we swapped out from plastic to Concrete many years back. It helped reduce the impact of waves on the deck level, and they are guaranteed to last like 50 years
@diedampfbrasse98 glad you think Wikipedia is my behind. Do some research .. +80% are repurposed commercial vessels.its not because you can buy fancy ones now that those have thr largest market share
I first heard of ferrocement boats in the early 1990's from a Ecuadorian longline fisherman who claimed that he had owned one and employed it for years on fishing trips far out into the Pacific ocean. It took me some time to wrap my head around the idea of a boat constructed in such a manner.
As a child I remember seeing one sail past me near Oak Island, NC (around 1960). It left a lasting impression on me.
A well built ferro cement sailing yacht is indiscernible from one of other materials. The only giveaways would be poor workmanship, leading to a lumpy finish or the amateur design of an inexperienced builder. If you've spent much time afloat, MANY ferro cement hulls have sailed past you without your noticing.
There's a balance between the best product to use, versus the only product you can afford at the time.
Concrete was a TEMPORARY expedient for ship construction due to the high demand for steel by the weapons industry. It was only intended to last for a couple years, as, in times of war, many conventional steel ships didn't even last that long. Building a vessel from cement is a FALSE ECONOMY if you expect it to last any longer than that.
You miss on the main reason these ships were constructed. While they couldn't perform in battle, if towed along side a fleet of 4 or 5 steel ships they gave the enemy the illusion that we had many more ships. This was used to get Japan to deploy more ships than neccessary to these decoys while we would hit targets they left.
not the main reason...the reason was WAR REQUIRES EXPONENTIALLY INCREASING SUPPLIES
Man those times were crazy. Ntm the industrial experimentation and the drive to create new things was amazing.
_now people have degrees but are still absentminded and the ones who really want to do something are stuck in room full of clowns , paralysed_
War creates scarcity. Scarcities create the needs of creativity.
Canada once considered making a ship out of ice. If it had been successful, it would have proved very difficult to sink.
They did actually
Was that the "ice with wood shavings" idea? Easily repaired.
@@IanConcannonyes and it had better compressive strength than concrete no joke
Pykrete
Typical stupid halfbaked Friday night type Canadian idea that went nowhere
The only benefit I can see from a wartime perspective is rapid and mass construction of landing boats without eating up steel supplies for what were essentially single time use vessels.
Higgins boats that were used for the Normandy landings were made of wood.
UMO had a concrete canoe competition every year for their engineering students.
queens university in canada still has one
I once mentioned to a builder that I was considering buying a 'concrete' yacht, he thought I was joking because he said it wouldn't float being made of concrete.
And then I heard about the concrete canoe that was paddled in down a river of lava. Google doesn't turn that urban myth up but it does turn up concrete canoe races.
There are 5 or 6 of the "hulks" being used as a breakwater around the pulp mill in Powell River, British Columbia. We used to row our little inflatable rubber rafts around them as kids.
I think one of them was even used during the atom bomb testing in Bikini Atoll in the 50's.
Steeling the plans of the concrete ship 'reinforced' the credibility of reinforced concrete ships? There is a bit of humor in that line for me.
They are forever "cemented" in history...
There's some correlations here to concrete pool construction and Shotcrete projects. Lots of steel reinforcement, small aggregate, limited added water, high level placement consolidation. Racquet ball, hand ball court walls are/were built with lots of pencil rod & wire, covered with Portland cement rich plaster (concrete grout basically).
My father was a Navy Aviation torpedo man in the Pacific in World War II. He served on the aircraft carrier USS Belleau Wood CVL 25 in Admiral Bull Halsey fast attack carrier group task force 58. My father told the story that they refueled from a cement oiler ship in the South Pacific one time. He said the fuel was contaminated with seawater and that his carrier went dead in the water in a war zone for a period of time until they could take on fresh fuel and do some repairs. It was scary being a sitting duck unable to maneuver in a war zone. Thankfully you're going to be planes and submarines did not find them before they could be underway.
Fascinating! I knew nothing of concrete as a material in ship construction. But I recall that engineering students at a university near where I Iived back in the 70s, had to design and build a canoe of concrete as part of their curriculum.
Fascinating, thank you.
I didn't even know they existed.
As a young child I made ships out of Lego - long before Lego ships actually became a thing. The great thing was the plastic never rusted. The bad thing was that the ships usually sank within 10 minutes...
Habe mal ein kleines Boot aus stabilen Stahlblech
geschweißt- beim einsetzen ins Wasser ist es sofort gesunken. War schwerer als seine Wasserverdrängung. Da sind 10 Minuten viel
besser.
I used cling wrap between pieces as waterproof membrane with success.
There are ways to put plastic bags in between pieces, i did that once
Have you been running this thought as an endless loop in your mind for the past 50 years ?
A lot of research has gone into this video !
This is one of those videos that makes you check to make sure it's not April 1st.
same here -- first time ive been surprised by an internet vid for a while.
At 03:11, I like how you danced nicely around saying that (unhelpful for RUclips videos) "H" name.
"The moustached corporal" 😉
There was a period when ferroconcrete was a popular choice for homebuilt sailboats. Until people gained experience with them.
They used inexpensive materials but were labor intensive.
And the problem was that while they were strong and durable, if built properly, it was impossible to determine whether they were built properly from an external inspection.
If they are labour intensive,then they are expensive
@@vincentkosgei7166 That depends on how much your time is worth...
In the 1970's, a group of us constructed a ferro concrete yacht. It was ready for plastering when gale force winds bowled it over. We stood it back up but the beautiful lines were no longer. I pulled out of the build as my GF was pregnant. The boat got finished, looked okay and spent the next few years as a dive boat in the Pacific.
@vincentkosgei7166 Labor intensive only in the plastering phase, and unskilled labor.
@@howardsimpson489 Any idea if it is still afloat or now a dive destination?
It’s also possible to build a ship out of asphalt. Asphalt with steel fibers is 5 times stronger and is so strong that when it has to be demolished it has to be cut apart instead of using jackhammers. If steel isn’t available it’s also possible to use Raylon fibers, which are made from waste paper. They’re water soluble but the tar seals them so well it’s not an issue. In fact, raylon used to be used in car tires because the rubber acts as a sealant. They’re about half as strong as composites, which is still very useful, especially seeing how dirt cheap it is. Slash pine fibers are also insanely strong and can be used as well. Has higher strength to weight than the best oak, and obviously oak made very robust ships. Largest oak ship ever made was 10,000 tons. So a fiber based ship could still be moderately useful by modern standards
Thank you for sharing
I hadn't heard about concrete ships...
Much appreciated
At 01:40 the list of ships includes one named SS Francois Hennebique.
Where J-L Lambot (00:39) was the father of Ferro-Cement - Hennebique was the father of Reinforced-Concrete.
Hennebique , or his licencees, built thousands of concrete structures in the UK including the famous Hennebique Bridge at Brooklands Circuit, Weybridge, the first purpose-built banked motor-racing circuit in the world. That bridge still survives, as does another Hennebique construction, the footbridge crossing the railway lines at Kew Gardens station.
Cool, thanks for the story.
@@theshellchannel Subscribed, I will check out to see if you have already done one of Ice Air Craft Carriers.
After promising scale tests and the creation of a prototype on Patricia Lake, Jasper National Park, in Alberta, Canada, the project was shelved due to rising costs, added requirements, and the availability of longer-range aircraft and escort carriers which closed the Mid-Atlantic gap that the project was intended to address.
Ferro-cement yachts were quite common in New Zealand several decades ago. I owned one as did a friend. Mine was named "Sea Bridge" but in Dutch. There was a ferro-cement builder Ev Sayer who was internationally known for his skill and his innovations in ferro-cement boat construction. He built a ferro-cement yacht that won its class in the Auckland to Suva yacht race. The coolest name - Floating Footpath. The letters were shown being poured out of a cement mixer.
I wish I could put pictures on here. The Egyptians moved large stone this way. Kind of. They had giant bulls. They used the bladder. Filled with air. They were canal builders. They floated stone right into place. Some drawings. Hyroglifs. Show ships hanging blocks of stone off the side. Everything is a lot lighter under water. If they had to flood a valley they would. They even left a ship by the pyramids to show the future how they did it. It's true. Look at Khufu hyroglifs.
That ship was made of wood and couldnt carry multi ton blocks. Shoddy as pheck.
How well did it take a torpedo?
As well as British cardboard tanks could take a shell.
There's a small one abandoned on a river bank near where I live here in the UK
Where exactly?
Sunderland , SS Cretehawser it's visible from the A19 search on it as RUclips does not allowed links
There's an abandoned hulk in Baltimore too
There is a concrete barge called the Louise Catherine in Paris that you can see when crossing the Seine on metro line 5. Built in 1915, it did sank some years ago when the Seine was high in 2018 but was later refloated in 2020. I believe there are plans to restore it, but work does not seem to be taking place from now. Thanks for the video !
A canoe trip in Waupaca, Wisconsin had several concrete boats that took the customers to the start of the trip.
How well does concrete flex? Major storm will flex it and sink it? I am surprised how they held up
Concrete ships are two words that i never thought id hear together. I guess you can make anything float with enough buoyancy
This technology seems perfect for house boats. They stay in one place and what homeowner doesn't like low maintenance. The added mass damps out waves and ripples.
Great insulation too. Problem is they do rust. Invisibly and dangerously.
my father built a Ferrocement sailboat that we lived on and sailed for five years. There was a small community of Ferrocement boat builders/owners in the San Francisco Bay area during the 70s.
As a boy, with little idea of water displacement and Archimedes bathtub, I was amazed seeing a squarish concrete barge with A-Frame hoist tied to a San Diego dock. The thing was loaded with tools and tackle and had freeboard about equal to draft, gunwales about a foot wide. Not built for waves and that A-Frame bolted to the cement hull it's uniqueness among all things I saw floating there I've never forgotten.
"More resistant to rust" Oh my sweet summer child
In the later part of WWII, by utilizing smaller aggregate and a special type of silica sand in place of the usual washed plaster sand, Germany issued experimental concrete underpants to some units of the Luftwaffe.
There was a concrete barge used as a cafe at Glasson Dock near Lancaster. Known as the Bargee it was there until about the year 2000.
Very concrete explanation
Concrete is also used for houseboats in Holland
I had no idea about this.
Thank you
The first oysters I ever ate were from the sunken concrete troop carriers that formed the breakwater at Kiptopeke ferry back in '80. Teaming with marine life then and I watch over the next five years oysters becoming harder to find having to dive to collect rather than float along the surface. The concrete construction intrigued me as the boat across from me in the boatyard was a concrete ketch.
You mean my house can float and carry goods ? Will try that one day.
So the Release That Witch guy wasn't insane for building concrete ships
What I was thinking.
A ship that floats like a log can reduce the weight penalty with concrete ships while swapping trains in one hour and would allow small islands to trade with the world.
i don't understand. do you mean car floats/rail barges? they already exist. i live in alaska and our railroad isn't connected to the rest of north america, we have a few barges with rail track on them to move rolling stock from seattle to here.
Mmmmm I recall DIY ferrocement yacht hulls being popular in the 1970/80s apparently cheaper and able to be curved like sailing yacht hulls etc…. Laurie. NZ. 😊
The SS PaloAlto never saw service and was towed, anchored in Santa Cruz California, it was made into a dance, bar, music boat, Tommy Dorset, Benny Goodman and others played there, it was damaged in a storm and yet continued to be used for fishing and playing on until 2001. It is closed to the public now but it still remains there today, yet broken in half and only the cement remains.
Ferrocement is the correct spelling for the technology
thank you for the information
The wreckage of one ship is located a few yards off the shore of sunset beach in Cape May, New Jersey.
There's also a wreckage in Galveston Bay
Whats the up beat swing song while you were explaining the use of concrete ships in world war I but the war was over?
good video. short and fast but informative on important parts of the practical details and history
This is how the Graycastle army build their ships.
Brazil had a sailing yacht design that used concrete, I havent sailed one but apparently they are very good blue ocean vessels.
And almost impossible to insure, which means they're BARRED from Marinas and Yacht Clubs and unacceptable by financial institutions as collateral.
Concrete ships had one more attribute which should not go unmentioned: During WWII a submarine commander would identify one and stand down... nobody would waste a torpedo on a concrete ship.
Torpedoes don't sink concrete ships? I call bs
@@josephmccord4511 Sorry bud, but thats the way it goes.
Oh, by the way. Mind reading is a comic book super power. You just cant sound like a rational, healthy, well adjusted adult by simply refusing to contact reality and spew your fantasies. Try looking some of this crap up. The entire web at your fingers and the best you can do is simply regurgitate your need to protect your presumptions?
@@josephmccord4511
Here... I know of no test. I know of no record either. I know ONLY that I never said they wont sink. You fabricated a straw man. I do know there are problems with the attempt. I can see it maybe cracking, but punching through like a sheet of steel and peeling it back to a ten foot hole? No way. Is a moot issue though. I do know the quotes from several Nazi Captains who themselves made that very claim. They would not waste a torpedo on a concrete ship. That is what I said, that is what the captains said. You of course, with no clue at all, no involvement and no history say differently. Heh, is funny. We're talking a minimum of foot thick or greater of steel reinforced concrete. Even today with our modern toys we can find multiton missiles coming down on bridges built similarly and at best they put in a three foot hole but usually much much smaller if at all. Much of the torpedo's effective efforts went into creating an air bubble under the ship... and area there was no water to support the ship at so as the explosion pushed in, the lack of support folded it as the center goes down due to the bubble. The best torpedo 'hit' was when the torpedo passed UNDER the ship and exploded underneath... and cracked its back, breaking the ship in two because of the air bubble created. Go ahead and do that to a ship make of steel reinforced concrete and what do you have? A reinforced concrete bridge. Duh. They dont make bridges out of sheet steel, and if your concerned about torpedoes you dont sail in a steel hull ship. You choose a fortress. Made of reinforced concrete like they use on the bunkers that need armor penetrating warheads to deal with. If your going to argue, then do so rationally, and bring up some evidence so we can know that history has recorded a concrete ship going down to a torpedo, cause I couldn't find one. I would actually like to know, see direct evidence. I looked... did you? They cost less to produce. They produced them faster, cheaper, easier with less effort and less skilled labor, but they cost a mint in fuel to run because of their weight and because of the thickness of the concrete they had less cargo space so it was even more expensive. Come on, we be talkin mobile fortress.
Really though, if you find a record of one going down to a torpedo slap that thing up here. I would love to see.
Fantastic information package. Thanks 👍
I would like to see concrete evidence.
There have been developments in *Basalt* reinforcement. I think there are possible advantages for basalt in concrete ships.
Nice song.
I never knew about concrete ships.
It is said that if you are crossing an ocean, the best ride you can get is in a ferro boat. The worst is in an aluminium or fibreglass one. This is because of the weight of the vessel. I believe the worlds largest barge is made of concrete. It was made in France and is used in conjunction with an oil platform off Africa.
I have sailed in heavier GRP boats than Ferro ones of the same length so that theory doesn't really hold water. I don't think you will get an ultra light displacement ferro boat built, but they did build ferro race boats at one stage.
Soon on your screens, the ancient concrete airplanes and ice ships from wwII.😅
but u didnt say why the dont make these anymore
Nice you got the further reinforced gag in at the start. Made me smile after crappy day at work 😃
ship: *smokes, leans back* "I have a loooooooong story to tell, bucko!"
I don't know if that silly seasteading movement is still going, but this might be a viable tech for such projects. The greater mass and fuel consumption doesn't matter if you're not moving. Also, concrete hulls don't care about barnacles.
Really good video, thanks for sharing, subscribed! 👍
Why was there a single frame of a poster from the movie Ghost Ship? lol 6:42
I really appreciate this useful info. Thankyou
Ships built with common, cheap materials and labour which didn't need the specialised skills of conventional construction. The maritime de Havilland Mosquito
Seems like it could be viable for a houseboat that doesn't go very far.
Bluffer's Park Marina in Toronto has an entire row of floating houses built on ferrocement boxes, permanently moored to shore. They've been there for decades but are the only examples in the region.
My father built a sailing ferrocement one in 76' we still sail with it, nearly 50 years later. It's pretty and quirky. He told me he pushed to thickness enveloppe to the limit to make a reasonably lightweight hull. It does not look to have affeceted durability. I believe he was very cautious with cement composition. Other builder took less car and some hull were lost due to corrosion of the steel reinforcement shattering the structure. Maybe industrial could have get better displacement performance by using less thick hulls.
The thinner the hull, the easier it is for the seawater to reach the steel.
@@UguysRnuts Seawater entry is a problem for GRP too. The answer is a good watertight primer paint coating, just as used on GRP hulls (under the antifouling, if any).
@@NiklasHolsti GRP hulls don't suffer the catastrophic failure common to ferrocement. Longterm moisture penetration in fibreglass results in osmotic blistering that can be dealt with quite simply by opening them up, resaturating the sub-strat with epoxy resin, fairing the surface and applying an epoxy barrier coat like Interprotect2000. Fibreglass is infinitely repairable. With "ferro", the moisture does irreparable damage whether it gets in through microscopic porosity, fastener holes, hull damage or bilge water and is virtually undetectable until the bottom falls out.
When I lived on the island of Guam I used to go scuba diving on a wreck called the American tanker it was a concrete barge with a ship shaped hall the carried fresh water to the small islands in Micronesia
nice. i expected that such boats would be way more than twice the weight of steel ships
Never would have thought this was possible
Nanocarbon is going to replace reinforced concrete.
It also won't have the disadvantages of reinforced concrete.
Its crazy, how with a little work, these old concrete ships can be used again.
Why aren't we switching to concrete for our ships, seems a no brainer.
I grew up playing on the SS Palo Alto Cement Ship at Sea Cliff Beach near Santa Cruz, California, from early days until it was breaking up and access prohibited.
I spent years wanting to see that ship in person, and finally got the chance to a couple of years ago. As luck would have it, we visited on January 4th 2023, which was one day before the pier got destroyed in a storm.
We were able to walk most of the way down the pier and get some great photos of the ship.
Very interesting - Thank you!
My first thought was it'll over time soak water in.
I mean if neighbor flooded his floor, person living beneath him will get wet ceiling and walls.
So I don't understand how concrete is water-tight.
you learn something amazing everyday on the ship engineering side of the algorithm.
Dang so I was never wrong that some ships are made of concrete. Here in India while touring the islands, I remember seeing a ship which seemed to be made of concrete because of the finishing.
1:57 flat bottom barges, you make the world go round!
Is that "queen".
My father was on a YF covered barge storing engine parts in the USN in the Pacific in 1945.
In Vancouver Canada, there was a few very successful concrete sailboats made not that long ago
I'm not sure if any current manufacturers are mentioned in this video, but a Scottish company, Gael Force Marine, still makes concrete barges.
Crazy these ships are still afloat
That bed being made in one of those ships. I have those exact same covers 😄
I like your videos a lot, thank you
I passed many times near that concrete 🚢 in Belgrade but I didn't realized that's concrete 🚢 😂
There is a barge near where I live. Its on the isle of Scalpay in the Outer Hebrides. It is named Cretetree, it's a 180-foot-long concrete barge built by the Aberdeen Concrete Shipbuilding Company in 1919 for hauling iron ore. (The first five letters of her name come from her con-crete construction.)
The picture of the Breakwater I think it's from Powell River if not it looks very similar. Some of them have been turned into artificial reefs but there are still some there
Now, if they had left it with the wood clading it was casted in, could they have got that weight down and maybe even cut steel?