A container ship suffered serious structural damage in her fore body due to slamming in heavy seas in the North Pacific Ocean in January, 1977. She was in the fully laden condition and voyaged to Kobe from Oakland, California, U. S. A. A long brittle crack propagated in the fore and aft direction in shell plating of the flare part on the starbord side. The inner structures, such as longitudinals, web frames and side stringers, on the side shell of the same side were collapsed, and deck and shell plating on the port side was buckled. Furthermore, No. 2 Hatch was distorted in a parallelepiped. In the present paper, the damages are investigated from the view point of ship hydroelasticity with the aid of fracture mechanics. The results obtained suggest the importance of ship handling as well as structural design for preventing serious damages in large container ships.
