* Costa Concordia Ready to Roll
If you haven’t seen Costa Concordia lately, you will be surprised. Most TV networks and newspapers have been using photos and footage that was shot more than a year ago. In them, the ship is lying on its side and looks much like it just lay down on its side for a rest.
In reality, if you see the photos taken in the last couple of months, you’d notice the ship is rusting, but the biggest change is that the exposed (port) side of the ship is almost completely obscured by the giant boxes (sponsons) affixed to it, which, once the ship is righted, will be filled with air and refloat the ship.
* This May Make You “Crane” Your Neck
You don’t usually see them in the pictures from the shipyards because they’ve been cropped out, but without them most pictures you see from the yards wouldn’t be possible. They stand on two giant legs straddling the dry docks and lifting the huge blocks of the ship into place.
These cranes are major pieces of the yards’ equipment. Because of their height (they need to stand at least several stories taller than the ships), they can be seen from the locale surrounding the yard and become something of symbols of the shipyard. More
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