« Reply #31 on: Nov 09, 2020, 07:58 PM »
The "Sides" pumps were also fitted with a suction valve and chest actually inside the engine room. Whilst this might seem a bit daft at first glance, it was intended to allow the pump to be used to pump water out of the engine room in the event of a serious flooding incident! They were actually used for this purpose once to my knowledge - after the ship suffered a potentially catastrophic failure of the sea water cooling system in the T/A room on the North Atlantic. (This is, of course, another story - which I believe has references elsewhere in the postings).
Would this have been in May 2002, when a valve to the sea failed and her engineer's had to "Apollo 13" a fix or face the space they were in (what had become the aft engine room in her powerplant conversion) flooding and then flooding the electric motor compartment due to only a firewall being inbetween and not a bulkhead which would've left her dead in the water, mid Atlantic, but not necessarily sunk her by any means. The bilge pump system (perhaps what the side pumps had become part of in the conversion?) then lowered the water levels after the "Apollo 13" fix.
The MAIB report:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c70ee40f0b602440000df/qe2.pdf
« Last Edit: Nov 09, 2020, 08:11 PM by Thomas Hypher »
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First sailed on QE2 in August 2003 aged 6 years old. Last sailed on QE2 in July 2008. Last saw the seagoing QE2 in person from the decks of QM2, on QE2's last Transatlantic crossing (Eastbound tandem) in October 2008. Visited QE2 in her new life, in Dubai, in January 2020 and August 2022.
