Hatch cover failure leads to flooding of the forward cargo compartment and occasionally results in fatal casualty. The foremost hatch cover and the next one within 25% length of the vessel are prone to the impact by shipping of green water. The loss of hundreds of bulk carriers with the precious lives is a nightmare to both designers and insurers. The tail of Rayleigh distribution of showing the extreme rare wave heights is a matter needed great attraction of designers and analysts. Though rare, the extreme wave heights are responsible for the failure of bulk carrier ships. Deficiency in the scantling of bulk carrier covers is brought out in this paper and suggestions for betterment are proposed. Suggestions to use better material having higher strength to weight ratio is made. The tricky point is that the more we increase the strength of the hatch cover the more is its self weight. The position of vertical centre of gravity of vessel goes up and that is not desirable for commercial ships in many aspects. Unlike tanker ships decks the decks of bulk carrier ships are weakened by the presence of the hatch covers.
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