January 26, 2017

The SS Palo Alto , a concrete ship, was smashed and broken against the pier by storms this week. But concrete ships have been around since the late 19th century, and there are and were many others.
posted by dilettante 7 years ago
  • Your second link is the same as your first. I do believe you intended that to be a link to a story about the breakup of the ship (which I did find from the Wikipedia page!).
  • Ah, dammit. It was originally meant to go to the Washington Post article about the ship breaking.
  • I love that link just for the first photo alone. It reminds me of the shot of the giant ship (Star Destroyer) on that desert planet at the beginning of The Force Awakens. Awesome.
  • Stuff I should have included in the first place: drone video of the ship before it broke up, and two videos of the ship breaking up (second one is long, I haven't bothered to watch it all).
  • Those drone videos are so amazing to me. Whenever I see a shot like that in a movie, I always assume that they flew some helicopter in the area to to get the shot. I am guessing that they typically use drones for that now? Or are the cameras used in movies too heavy to be carried by drones?
    I just can't imagine why we have not seen drones used in terrorism efforts yet. I mean, can't they carry some small explosive device that could be delivered someplace that would otherwise be unreachable? And if not, won't that be possible very soon?
  • Aw what a shame. I remember that ship well.
    We used to have friends in NZ that lived in a small concrete ship in Picton. It hadn't left the marina in years but it was a cosy home for a family with two kids and a potbellied stove.
    I did hear years later that they sailed it to Australia, so clearly it still floated fine. Then.
  • There used to be a floating restaurant on the river downtown where I live. The decided to put the USS North Carolina downtown in 1962. They dragged the battleship up the river to bring it to its resting place (where it still is to this day). When they swung the big battle ship around to park it in the dugout section, the back end of it took out that floating restaurant. Whoops.