Ships husbandry
maintenance and upkeep of ships
Ships husbandry or ship husbandry is all aspects of maintenance, cleaning, and general upkeep of the hull, rigging, and equipment of a ship. It may also be used to refer to aspects of maintenance which are not specifically covered by the technical departments. The term is used in both naval and merchant shipping, but naval vessel husbandry may also be used for specific reference to naval vessels.
Ships husbandry diving
Underwater ships husbandry can be financially advantageous when it eliminates the need for dry-dock repairs or extends the interval between dry-dockings, and reduces the time a ship is required to stay in dry-dock.
Underwater ship husbandry includes the following operations, usually done by commercial divers, though some can be done by ROVs or robotic machinery:
Underwater hull cleaning to remove fouling organisms which increase drag, and therefore reduce top speed and increase fuel consumption. Such cleaning may be of the entire hull or parts thereof, particularly propellers, shafts and thrusters. The underwater hull may be inspected prior to cleaning, and the amount of cleaning done may depend on the inspection results. Hull cleaning may be done by divers using hand held or self-propelled mechanical brushing equipment, water jets or scrapers.
Non-destructive testing and inspection including fouling surveys, inspection of known or suspected damage to structure, equipment or coatings, and inspection of repairs. Several methods may be used, including visual inspection, video recording and magnetic particle testing.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Ships husbandry” as maintenance and upkeep of ships. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ships husbandry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.