

High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace (2008) - incision
http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys?currentPage=all

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mikecb
Wired used to have fantastic long forms like this, I wonder what happened.
Some of my favorites:

Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street
[http://archive.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?...](http://archive.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all)

The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist
[http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diam...](http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diamonds)

Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine
[http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf...](http://archive.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/17-10/mf_deadhand)

Art of the Steal: On the Trail of World’s Most Ingenious Thief
[http://www.wired.com/2010/03/ff_masterthief_blanchard/all/1](http://www.wired.com/2010/03/ff_masterthief_blanchard/all/1)

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incision
I thoroughly enjoyed this article in the Wired years ago. I see that it was
submitted way back when, but never gained traction.

Beyond the general drama and unique work described the inclusion of a laptop
wielding naval architect as part of the team was just fascinating to me.

 _' They're a motley mix: American, British, Swedish, Panamanian. Each has a
specialty — deep-sea diving, computer modeling, underwater welding, big-engine
repair. And then there's Habib, the guy who regularly helicopters onto the
deck of a sinking ship, greets whatever crew is left, and takes command of the
stricken vessel.'_

 _' Again, the Dutch called for cranes, but Titan won the contract by
proposing a novel approach: It hired a naval architect to create a computer
model of the ship. The model indicated that the vessel would float again if
water was pumped out of the holds in a specific sequence.'_

~~~
na85
The idea of creating the model more or less in real-time as they walk through
the ship is what I find most compelling.

I want to know what laptops they're using. No way your standard sissy macbook
pro is being taken out there where it can get wet and batteries might not be
charged for a while.

Toughbook maybe?

~~~
danelectro
I was not a salvage guy but in cargo measurement it turns out I had one of the
first "laptops" on the Gulf Coast.

We used "regular" 16-digit hand calculators for regular calculations from
ships' calibration tables, but when a vessel (especially heavy oil tankers)
was far enough from even keel then the tables would not apply, and hand
modeling was very tedious, so I developed a more realistic model on the "PC".

Radio Shack PC-2 (Pocket Computer) with accessories and case was about the
size of a small laptop, including a 4-color printer-plotter, and RS-232
interface:

[http://www.trs-80.com/images/hw-
pocket2-carrying.jpg](http://www.trs-80.com/images/hw-pocket2-carrying.jpg)

This was way before IBM-compatible laptop PC's were developed.

You have to board the vessel for access to its dimensional drawings, and if
they were inadequate then you would take hand measurements.

My application was fundamentally way more advanced than the few oil companies
doing it on a TRS-80 themselves, and that was just the calculations and
conversions.

I can look back without embarrassment at my UI/UX, computer-experienced marine
gagers did not yet exist, home computers still very uncommon, and most offices
not yet having a computer either. Gagers still have a fairly challenging job
but most are not very academically oriented, even more true decades ago.

So I made it where you just hand the portable to the gager, he hits the "ON"
button, it asks the questions on the one-line LED screen, then prints the
questions & his answers on the little printer and the ticket advances as the
calculations proceed for each compartment.

You finished hours before the company gager, and could go back over all data &
results just by looking through the ticket.

The real excitement was boarding an offshore platform in the Bahamas one time
with 20' waves and the crew boat was only about 30' long. They had multiple
wooden landings to accomodate the tides, one was virtually submerged, the next
was slightly below the waves' crest and the third was out-of-reach at the
time. A knotted rope descended from the main metal platform at the top of the
ladder, draping all 3 landings. Each worker waited for the pilot to sync a
wave properly, then he would quickly reverse the boat to within inches of the
target landing, you step off the back of the boat grabbing the wet rope, hang
& swing onto the landing as the boat drops a dozen feet the next second and he
powers away to a safe distance to repeat it for the next person. Climb the
ladder quick before the next wave submerges the landing you are on.

Here's the rest of the page about the TRS-80 portables:

[http://www.trs-80.com/wordpress/trs-80-computer-
line/pocket/](http://www.trs-80.com/wordpress/trs-80-computer-line/pocket/)

I never had to worry about recharging my portable, it ran on AA batteries.

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pchristensen
One of my favorite early long-form web journalism, along with Mother Earth,
Motherboard
([http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html](http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffglass.html))
and The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist
([http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diam...](http://archive.wired.com/politics/law/magazine/17-04/ff_diamonds?currentPage=all))

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js2
This is an amazing story. I'd totally forgotten I'd read it years ago until I
clicked through. The pictures brought the whole story back to mind.

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oldmanjay
i feel like this would make an amazing movie. it has everything, manly men,
fast cars, technology, huge machinery, massive risks for massive rewards,
officials ineffectually trying to stop the heroes, drama, pathos, a dude with
a funny accent who curses in a not-quite-correct manner...

on the other hand, very few giant robots destroying exquisite cartoon cities

~~~
emgee3
I'm not sure what the current status is, but it was being developed by
Dreamworks. I'm sure they can Bayify it if it moves forward.

~~~
voltagex_
[http://www.joshuadavis.net/salvagemovie.html](http://www.joshuadavis.net/salvagemovie.html)
\- can't find any better info than that, other than it'd been optioned in
2008.

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EddieLomax
This was a great article-- I originally read it on Epic magazine, which in my
opinion has amazing graphics and a very interesting format:

[http://epicmagazine.com/2013/08/deep-sea-
cowboys/](http://epicmagazine.com/2013/08/deep-sea-cowboys/)

------
blunte
I remember when this article came out. I found it fascinating and engaging,
although the ending was very disappointing (what happened in reality).

~~~
Luyt
You mean the shredding of the cars? Those were mere pieces of recycleable
metal. The good part is that the salvagers were able to prevent the leakage of
176,366 gallons of fuel into the sea.

~~~
blunte
True, there was still value in their operation. It was just a sad thing that
someone died in the recovery process (only for the whole batch of cars to be
written off).

~~~
Luyt
Yeah, the death ofJohnson shocked me too, since it was so preventable and
unnecessary. The story mentioned that every crew member had two carabiners, to
be able to stay connected to a safety rope at all times. Apparently there was
some moment that both Johnson's carabiners were loose the moment he slipped.
It shows that in mountaineering, there is no margin for error.

