Mankind has made a habit of building machines to deal with things and forces which are too strong for our comparatively feeble bodies. Ships are one of the machines that we have crafted as a civilization to get work done on the water. They are massive machines but even the systems on the ships themselves are crazy powerful and as you are about to see, when things go wrong with one of them it is spectacular as hell.

Basically you are going to see three anchor windlass failure videos. The windlass is the winch device that both raises and lowers the anchors. On ships the size of the ones featured in this video, you are talking 100+ tons and letting it run off into the blackness. That’s not a good career move and it is damned dangerous to be anywhere near it. On all three of these films it comes down to the brakes either being overpowered, under operated, and flat out screwed up. In every video the guys operating the anchor did not freak out, they worked in harms way.

There’s a US Navy ship and a pair off cargo ships and all three of them are having a really bad day. The massive chains sound like a locomotive running as they pass through the feeder on their way to Davy Jones’ Locker. You can imagine the brake operator watching this chain literally fly by and giving us the look that simply says, “RUN”

These videos are awesome, watch all three!

Here’s three videos featuring anchor deployment failures -they are all nuts!