In
navies
A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral, or ocean-borne combat operation ...
and the maritime industry, damage control is the emergency control of situations that may cause the sinking of a
watercraft
A watercraft or waterborne vessel is any vehicle designed for travel across or through water bodies, such as a boat, ship, hovercraft, submersible or submarine.
Types
Historically, watercraft have been divided into two main categories.
*Raf ...
.
Examples are:
* rupture of a pipe or
hull especially below the waterline and
* damage from grounding (running aground) or hard berthing against a
wharf
A wharf ( or wharfs), quay ( , also ), staith, or staithe is a structure on the shore of a harbour or on the bank of a river or canal where ships may dock to load and unload cargo or passengers. Such a structure includes one or more Berth (mo ...
.
* temporary fixing of bomb or explosive damage.
Measures used
Simple measures may stop flooding, such as:
* locking off the damaged area from other ship's compartments;
* blocking the damaged area by wedging a box around a tear in the ship's hull,
* putting a band of thin sheet steel around a tear in a pipe, bound on by clamps.
More complicated measures may be needed if a repair must take the pressure of the ship moving through the water. For example:
*
Thermal lance
A thermal lance, thermic lance, oxygen lance, or burning bar is a tool that heats and melts steel in the presence of pressurized oxygen to create very high temperatures for cutting. It consists of a long steel tube packed with alloy steel rods, w ...
cutting around the rupture.
*
Oxyacetylene welding
Principle of burn cutting
Oxy-fuel welding (commonly called oxyacetylene welding, oxy welding, or gas welding in the United States) and oxy-fuel cutting are processes that use fuel gases (or liquid fuels such as gasoline or petrol, diesel, bio ...
or electric
arc welding
Arc welding is a welding process that is used to join metal to metal by using electricity to create enough heat to melt metal, and the melted metals, when cool, result in a joining of the metals. It is a type of welding that uses a welding power ...
of plates over the rupture.
* Quick-drying
cement
A cement is a binder, a chemical substance used for construction that sets, hardens, and adheres to other materials to bind them together. Cement is seldom used on its own, but rather to bind sand and gravel ( aggregate) together. Cement mi ...
is applied underwater over the rupture.
Damage control training is undertaken by most seafarers, but the engineering staff are most experienced in making lasting repairs.
Damage control is distinct from
firefighting
Firefighting is a profession aimed at controlling and extinguishing fire. A person who engages in firefighting is known as a firefighter or fireman. Firefighters typically undergo a high degree of technical training. This involves structural fir ...
. Damage control methods of fighting fire are based on the class of ship and cater to ship specific equipment on board.
Notable contemporary examples
Particular examples:
*
USS ''Samuel B. Roberts'': After an
Iran
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...
ian
mine holed the
frigate
A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied.
The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and maneuvera ...
beneath the waterline in 1988, the crew fought fire and flooding that threatened to sink it.
*
USS ''Princeton: After an Iraqi naval mine damaged the
cruiser
A cruiser is a type of warship. Modern cruisers are generally the largest ships in a fleet after aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and can usually perform several operational roles from search-and-destroy to ocean escort to sea ...
during the 1991
Gulf War
, combatant2 =
, commander1 =
, commander2 =
, strength1 = Over 950,000 soldiers3,113 tanks1,800 aircraft2,200 artillery systems
, page = https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-PEMD-96- ...
, her crew fought fires and sealed cracks in the hull, then repaired electronic systems, bringing the
Aegis Combat System back on line within 2 hours.
*
USS ''Cole'': immediate measures to stop sinking after the ship was
bombed in 2000.
*
HMS ''Nottingham'': measures to keep the ship afloat after, on 7 July 2002, the ''Nottingham'' ran aground on the submerged but well-charted
Wolf Rock near
Lord Howe Island
Lord Howe Island (; formerly Lord Howe's Island) is an irregularly crescent-shaped volcanic remnant in the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand, part of the Australian state of New South Wales. It lies directly east of mainland Port ...
.
See also
*
*
Notes
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Damage Control
Nautical terminology
Navies
Ship management