Shipbucket

SS LASH Pacifico

LASH barge carrier Originally Built in 1973 for Prudential Grace Lines at Avondale Shipyard
Design: C8-S-81b
Length 820 feet
Beam 100 feet
Draft 40 feet, 8 inches
Displacement 55,840 long tons
Machinery: Steam Turbine, 1 shaft
Cost: $21.3 Million

Sold to Pacific Gulf Marine in 1988 and renamed AMERICAN KESTREL

Scrapped 1995

This was one of five LASH-type barge carriers built for Prudential Lines during the early 1970s, which I sailed on as Second Mate in 1988. The others were LASH Espana, LASH Atlantico, LASH Turkiye, and LASH Italia.

The two huge cargo gantry cranes moved on rails running fore and aft. Note the two funnels, one on either side, outboard of the cranes rails. The container gantry crane (forward), which had a working load of 35 tons, discharged to the side. The LASH crane (midships), which had a working load of 485 tons, discharged over the stern. The forward three holds accommodated cargo containers stowed athwartships, either three 20-footers or one twenty and one forty footer.

An unusual design feature of these ships was the four small cargo tanks, which were stainless-steel lined, located forward, below the deck house. They could be used for transporting such cargoes as tallow, olive oil or wine.

What an unusual ship. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. Which route did it sail?
Btw, our server space is rather small, so if you could use an external hosting site in the future we'd be grateful.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

Thanks for the interesting stuff! I hope you have more

Prudential had this ship on a commercial run run between the US East Coast to the Med. Later, as American Kestrel, she served as an ammunition ship, pre-positioned at Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean.

All the 24 crew members lived in the deck-house, at the bow. The engine room was accessed by means of tunnels on either side, below the main deck, and then by ladders below the funnels. Our First Engineer once carried out an experiment to see how fast he could get to the engine room in an emergency from the deck-house. The best he manage was about 90 seconds.

That's one of the few issues I have with the next generation of container ships. How on earth do you reach an alarm before whatever damage happens? On M/V Torm Vita we had 1min to acknowledge the alarm in our cabin and 3min after that to do it in the ECR before the the system sounded the bridge alarm.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

For the benefit of those who might be unfamiliar with these type of ships, "LASH" was an acronym for "Lighter Aboard SHip", the word "Lighter" meaning a barge. In other words, these were barge carriers. The barges measured 40 x 60 feet, and could weigh as much as 480 tons. They were loaded and discharged between the two "cantilevers" projecting over stern. Once in the water, the barges were maneuvered by tug boats. When these ships were operated on charter to the military they had to be able to discharge their cargo in forward areas, where tugs might not be available. For that reason they were required to carry two tug boats of their own in cradles mounted just forward of the stern.

I did the Sevmorput LASH and I would like to do it...

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Lazer_One


Lazer_One's Worlist - Updated 2021

Documentation is always welcome here

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It is one of the American MARAD designs (being C8-S-81b), and MARAD designs are part of my worklist

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Thank you Kim for the crest

"Never fear to try on something new. Remember that the Titanic was built by professionals, and the Ark by an amateur"

Ok

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Lazer_One


Lazer_One's Worlist - Updated 2021

Documentation is always welcome here

Lazer_One's Blog