Inside the RRS James Clark Ross Jennifer Clarke , January 22 , 2013
The Chief Engineer was kind enough to take us on a tour around the engine rooms ( somewhere us scientists don ’ t normally get to see !) and explain why and how the JCR is different from other ships . I thought I would share with you some of the things I learnt !
The ship has been specifically designed for science work- that doesn ’ t just mean that there are labs on board ( although there are ), but runs all through the design of the ship down to the hull-shape around the propellers to make the ship less noisy with fewer vibrations , extra pumps to run all the fridges and cold rooms for our samples , and having small thrusters at the front and back of the boat to help us stay in the same place while we are sampling ( otherwise the ocean currents would move us off position while we are measuring !).
Duncan , Chief Engineer , starting off the tour in the control room . @ Jerremy Young
The ship ’ s diesel engines generate a high-voltage AC current which is then is converted to DC to power the main drive motors . As a result of this conversion the primary AC supply is uneven with glitches and imperfections . So , it cannot be directly converted to a low-voltage AC supply to run all the scientific instruments . Instead it is used to drive motors ( which don ’ t mind the glitches ) and these in turn drive generators that give a very pure signal to keep our instruments happily running . I work in the carbonate group and we have a lot of instruments that depend on this clean electricity to run .
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