Major new artwork unveiled on Sheffield & Tinsley Canal
The first artwork on water by Alex Chinneck, the sculpture celebrates Sheffield’s historic waterways and industrial heritage. It takes the form of a full-size canal boat, whose body behaves in an extraordinary way, performing a six metre-high, gravity-defying, loop-the-loop.
An artist renowned for the ambition and scale of his public artworks, Chinneck has previously made multi-storey buildings bend, melt, hover and unzip. However, this has been his most challenging project by far.
Chinneck said: “I’ve tried to create an uplifting and endearing landmark that belongs to this historic location while honouring the city’s industrial history by pushing steel to its material limit. This project has been a massive chapter in my career. It concludes 8 years of creating sculptures for Tinsley in Sheffield and I’m proud to finish with the looping boat.
A sub built to fail
This is rather a downbeat story, but worth sharing with you, mainly because it highlights a trail of events that were just unacceptable, resulting in a catalogue of disaster and loss of life.
You will recall the tragic demise of OceanGate’s Titan submersible last year as it undertook its ill-fated voyage to view the Titanic wreck last year. The mission ended in catastrophe. It made media headlines the world over. At the time my friends and I all thought it rather bizarre and now the formal hearing is underway, it seems we were right to think that way.
During the hearing, it was revealed that the company was desperate for cash to stay afloat according to director of engineering Phil Brooks when he spoke. It transpires he was even asked to work without pay, so bad was the company’s financial position.
He testified that the company’s decisions were being driven by their dire financial situation and fear of bankruptcy, without any concern given to compromising safety.
David Lochridge, director of marine operations for OceanGate, called the Titan “an abomination” and its carbon fibre hull “disgusting.”
Rather than scanning the first hull for defects or establishing a finite lifespan for dives, OceanGate opted for an untested acoustic monitoring system to detect potential failures. Lochridge said he would not have risked diving in it.
The amazing adventure that OceanGate’s Titan was offering would seem to have been something of a marketing triumph, not an engineering one. The experimental carbon-fibre design was not approved by any classification society.
The hearing still has more to unearth, and it is certainly fascinating, but for all the wrong reasons! All in all, just a desperately sad story with a shocking and needless ending.
Combat support ship to get onboard vegetable farm
Yet another peculiar story is this one to share with you and it tickled me, partly because of my interest in AI. Apparently, AI is going to create fully autonomous onboard vegetable growers. You see, there really is more to this technology than you first thought!
To ensure the availability of fresh produce during extended deployments at sea, CSS Asterix, the Canadian Navy combat support ship created by converting and transforming a containership, is to get an onboard vegetable farm. Ottawa-headquartered Inocea Group member Federal Fleet Services (FSS), which owns and operates the vessel, has acquired four AI-based Virtual Agronomist systems from Israel-based hydroponics specialist Agwa to grow and harvest fresh vegetables onboard Asterix.
With three primary data branches—Image Analyzer, Sensory Data, and Consumer Behavior—the system’s Virtual Agronomist continuously adjusts growth plans in real-time to ensure optimal conditions for vegetable cultivation.
“We are continuously striving to provide the best working and living conditions for our combined Federal Fleet and Royal Canadian Navy team onboard,” said John Schmidt, CEO of Federal Fleet Services. “Fresh leafy greens have a shelf life of around seven days, and our deployments offshore can be several weeks, so being able to grow our own onboard, available at any time, is a real game-changer. Who knows, maybe we will grow enough to be able to replenish other ships with fresh produce grown onboard Asterix.”
Is there no end to what AI can do? Seemingly not!
Departing cruise ship is hauled back because of the paperwork!
Frankly, this is a wonderfully silly story that I have followed for several months, and one might think it would have tested the very patience of the passengers caught up in the drama. But seemingly not. The unusual nature of the story meant it has been rarely out of the UK news headlines over recent months too.
After months of delays, the Villa Vie Residences’ Odyssey cruise ship, which has been stranded in Belfast since May, finally set sail a few weeks ago, only to return to port at Belfast the following day due to missing paperwork! You really can’t make this stuff up.
The Odyssey is billed as a perpetual, year-round cruise ship. She faced numerous mechanical issues, including problems with rudders and gearbox, which kept her in the repair yard at Harland and Wolff for 17 weeks and prevented departure. Due to sail in May on a three-and-a-half-year journey, her departure was repeatedly postponed. Many of the 125 passengers had spent the summer getting to know Belfast more intimately than they had anticipated. So, the ship left Belfast Harbour just after 11.30pm on 30 September. But, after anchoring overnight off the coast of Ireland, passengers were informed that they would need to return to port for final paperwork to be completed.
Please draw your own conclusions. Mind you, if you were planning to spend the next 10 years on the ship cruising the world, perhaps a 3-month delay is nothing!
Scuba gear required to reach your loved ones in the Neptune Memorial Reef underwater cemetery
There is something rather delightful and endearing about this story, if perhaps a little macabre. I will let you decide.
It seems that some of the good folk from Florida have chosen a unique final resting place that is also helping form a new marine ecosystem. It is called the Neptune Memorial Reef, and it is an underwater cemetery unlike any you might have seen before.
Situated off the coast of Miami, Neptune Memorial Reef elevates the concept of burials at sea to a rather different level, to say the least. The cemetery covers more than 600,000 sq ft of seabed and is 45 feet underwater. It even has gates, statues, pathways and benches, in fact just what you would expect to find in a land-based cemetery. But here’s the rub. Visitors need to wear scuba gear to get to the graves of their families and loved ones!
The informative article tells me that lion monuments are the most expensive memorials on the reef. However, if you are of more modest means and want something simpler and less expensive – no problem. The ashes of the dead are mixed into special underwater cement and cast into a shape decided by the deceased’s loved ones. Divers then place the memorial in the designated spot in the cemetery, along with a copper and bronze plaque that has the name, birth date, and a short inscription about the dead person.
So, what would I have my ashes turned into if I chose to have a plot in this weird and unique underwater cemetery? A sea horse perhaps!
Until next time.
Mike Schwarz
