They say the best way to destroy a ship is by creating a hole in it. Since ships can only stay afloat as long as they are leak free and they have less density than the water, as the water enters the ship’s body, it starts increasing the ship’s density and it starts sinking. Hence it becomes impossible to ignore the Hatch cover maintenance and watertight integrity testing because this testing allows the crew to learn about the location of the holes in the ship’s hatch covers and the body. As the holes are discovered they can be treated and the metal around the holes can be patched with a new sheet to make it watertight once again.

The transport ships have to endure a lot of rough treatment during the loading and unloading of the goods in the cargo holds. The heavy chains scrape the metal body; the forklifts working on the loading and unloading of the goods exert a lot of pressure on the ship’s deck. This pressure can rip off the paint and as the paint gets ripped off, the bare metal is exposed to the humid air which wastes no time to make the metal rusted. Rust is like cancer to the metal. Once it is formed there is no way of stopping it except a few methods and number one is to find the location of the rust.

When the deck becomes rusted and a hole is created, the water finds a way to enter the ship on the inside and the level of damage becomes greater. The damage shifts from one place to another and soon the walls become rusted and the rust starts expanding there is no stopping to it. One hole is found on the deck the other is found in some other compartment. Hence there is no guarantee or no one can pinpoint an area that the rust wouldn’t expand from it. The fight against rust in the shipping industry was incepted when the first ship was made and it still continues till date.

Therefore it is important to keep the tests not confined to just the hatch covers, but it is also important to run the watertight compartment doors testing because it will ensure that the other areas of the ship are also safe and free from rust. Doors are always made watertight because if the water has entered one compartment, it does not gain access to another one because if the water starts expanding within the compartments the ship would soon become heavy and would initially start sinking and then there is no stopping to the damages.