OneGuyFromBarlick

See THIS Reuter's report on shipping rates to the US. I'll bet the seamen's wages don't go up!

Stanley,
Whenever there is a world disaster, there is always an opportunity to gouge out something from it.
The song "Blame it on the Kellys" springs to mind.

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpspr ... lspark.jpg

The original Vital Spark. Puffer.

I once saw a compound engine in a field at a sawmill north of Prestwick and when I enquired it was the engine from Vital Spark, the man had bought it when she was converted to diesel.

Stanley.
What, was it a small triple expansion engine. I know they didn't have condensers, and they exhausted directly up the funnel, which made a puffing sound. Hence puffers.

If I remember rightly Robert it was a simple compound, a triple would have been too complicated.
The same man made pallets at his sawmill and his air compressor for running all the pneumatic equipment was an engine off a Sentinel steam wagon driven by an electric motor.

Stanley,
Needs must when the Devil drives. Necessity is the mother of invention.

Whatever next?...
`Can onboard rollercoasters save the cruise industry?' BBC

I saw that today.
I don't think anything they come up with would entice me. A nice relaxing cruise with no worries, that's me.

Perhaps instead of scrapping the old cruise ships we should convert them into hospital ships - not just for the covid outbreak but to make up for the shortage of hospital space we already had.

But remember that Covid on a cruise ship was almost like an incubation cell!

Stanley,
I had exactly the same thought when I read the post.