Paint !

[MattB]

Hi Forum,

Apologies up front, possibly for my lack of understanding and for my continuous questionings. I know I fly in the face of convention when it comes to the older generation on here.

When it comes to paint on ships hulls I wonder why they choose that particular colour? Reefers for example predominantly seem to be white or cream (someone once told me why that was and I forget who it was). Apart from the usual black & reds, green for the BW gas tankers, is there any relationship between cargo and paint colour selection?

Regards,

(Thanks in advance)

[John Grace]

Reefers generally speaking  white, or light colour in order to reflect heat which reduces the load on refrigerant plant. One general cargo ship I heard about was having trouble with it's own store fridges in tropical waters. The second engineer eventually got desperate and painted the deck above the fridge spaces silver, which resulted in greatly improved fridge temperatures and reduced  load on plant.
Dark colours on hulls are very good at reducing the visual effects of rust. Bright colours are often used to assist visibility of LNG carriers, making them more obvious to other vessels. No doubt there is a great deal of discussion to be had here.

[em777]

I always liked the story of the Hellespont Fairfax and sisters (now TI Europe, TI Oceania etc) that when built, all had white decks. Due to operating in the gulf and Middle East, the crew reported symptoms of snow blindness caused by the sun glare on the deck so they were repainted grey!

From my point of view as a tug skipper, brighter coloured ships feel "stickier" when the rubber fenders of the tug heat up. However this may just be coincidence, but I wonder if it has something to do with the pigmentation of the paint. My vessel has a fender lubrication system which helps with this and also keeps the ships hull from being covered in dirty scuffs!

[captbjoern]

Hey,
in my previous company, we had some containerships painted in completely (from waterline til mast top) in pink, yellow or green.

The reason for this strange paintwork was given with "causing attraction in ports". Given the fact that a standard containership like the pink-coloured CONTI GERMANY is still very famous, it was sucessful!