Ship devices serve to ensure the necessary operational and navigational qualities of the vessel.

Layout of ship devices

A common feature for the classification of ship devices is that they belong to the external equipment of the ship.

The main ship devices with which almost all ships are equipped, regardless of their type and purpose, include: steering, anchor, mooring, fender, boat, cargo, towing, railing, awning, etc. In addition, on some ships special purpose– timber carriers, container ships, ferries, vessels with horizontal cargo handling, lighter carriers, as well as fishing, hydrographic, research vessels, ships technical fleet– use various additional devices to perform special tasks. These are devices for securing deck timber, containers, vehicles, wagons, ramp and fishing devices, devices for lowering and lifting outboard apparatus (SPU), underwater drilling, cementing wells, laying pipelines and underwater cables, devices for cleaning the sea surface, dredging, bucket devices (for tilting and closing the bottom doors of soil-dumping scows and self-unloading dredgers), etc.

Ship devices operate using mechanisms usually called deck mechanisms, since most of them are located on decks. The drive of these mechanisms can be electric, hydraulic, electro-hydraulic, steam or diesel.

The choice of drive type depends on the operational and design features that determine the feasibility of using one or another type of energy; In this case, the type of main engine adopted on the ship plays a major role.

YAKIRNE OBLADNANYA.

The anchor device is designed to ensure reliable anchorage of a vessel at sea, in a roadstead, or in other places remote from the shore, by attaching it to the ground.

It is also used when mooring to a pier, to dampen inertia in order to prevent a collision, to refloat a vessel on its own by setting the main or auxiliary anchor to depth.

Main components:

Anchor chains (ropes);

Anchor hawse and chain pipes;

Chain boxes;

Anchor mechanisms for releasing and lifting anchors;

Stoppers.

Anchors: deadlift and auxiliary

The number and weight of main anchors for each vessel is regulated by the Rules of the classification society. The auxiliary ones include: a stop anchor (located in the stern, has a mass three times less than the main anchor and is used to position the vessel with the log facing the wind) and a rope anchor (a light anchor that can be carried away from the ship on a boat, its mass is equal to half the mass stop anchor).

Anchor types: A - Admiralty; b– Hall anchor; V- Matrosov's anchor.

1 – spindle; 2 – horn; 3 – paw; 4 – anchor shackle; 5 – stock; 6 – check; 7 – head; 8 – roller; 9 – pins

Main types of anchors:

Admiralteysky - two-legged stock, with fixed legs; has greater holding force than the rodless one (10-12 masses of the anchor itself), but the presence of the rod makes it difficult to remove and release them;

Hall - two-legged rodless with swivel legs, easy to manufacture, easily retracted into fairleads, but has a low holding force coefficient (3-4 anchor masses); used on sea ​​vessels as deadlift and stop anchors;

Gruzona - two-legged rodless with swivel legs;

Matrosova - two-legged with swivel paws and a rod in the form of transverse thickenings on the paws; has increased holding force; used on boats and tugs;

The cat is a multi-legged, stemless cat; used on boats and tugs;

Ice anchor – single-legged, rodless, designed to hold a vessel near an ice field; used on ice-going vessels.

The anchor chain (Fig. 12.2) is used to attach the anchor to the hull of the vessel; it consists of links that form links 25-27 m long. The links are connected to each other using special detachable links and form an anchor chain with a length of 50 to 300 m.

Depending on the location in the anchor chain, there are anchor bows (attached to the anchor), intermediate and root bows.

Attach the anchor to the chain using a bracket; To prevent twisting, turn on the rotating links - swivels. The anchor chain is attached to the butt, rigidly connected to the hull structures, using the cud-tack bracket. The tack bow is short (2-3 links), for emergency release of the anchor chain it has a special device with a folding hook - a verb-hook.

The characteristic of the anchor chain is its caliber - the cross-sectional diameter of the link bar. Links with a caliber of more than 15 mm must have spacers - buttresses.

In the stowed position, the anchor chain is stored in a chain box with wooden lining. To ensure self-laying of the anchor chain, chain boxes usually have a circular cross-section with a diameter of about 30-35 calibers of the anchor chain.

To lift the anchor chain, winches are used: windlasses - with a horizontal axis of the drum; spiers - with a vertical axis of the drum. On the axis of the windlass sprockets, at its ends, turrets are usually installed - drums for winding mooring cables during mooring, which can work with a stationary sprocket and vice versa. The anchor recoil occurs due to its own mass, therefore, in order to avoid excessive acceleration, the anchor chain is slowed down using a band brake on the windlass and a shoe brake on the capstan. Windlass and spiers are electrically, electrohydraulic or steam driven. Small spiers can be manually driven.

Anchor winches: A– windlass ( appearance); b– windlass (diagram); V- spire.

Anchor fairleads - deck and side - serve to guide the anchor when releasing or retracting the anchor. There are ordinary, open and with a niche. Conventional fairleads are installed on most transport, fishing and auxiliary vessels and are made cast or welded. Open ones are used on low-sided vessels. Fairleads with a niche allow the anchor to be stowed flush with the side trim.

Fastening of anchors in a traveling manner is carried out using anchor stoppers:

Screw - jams the chain between two blocks;

Stopper with a mortgage stick;

Chain – consists of a piece of small-caliber chain with a lanyard and a hook.

Ship devices are divided into general and special ones. General ship devices include devices installed on each vessel, regardless of its type and purpose:

  • Steering;
  • Anchor;
  • Rescue;
  • Mooring;
  • Freight.

Special devices are associated with the operational functions for which the ship is intended (fishing equipment, a device for transferring cargo between ships on the high seas). The total volume of work on the manufacture and installation of general ship equipment is about 2% of the total labor intensity of ship construction. Despite significant design differences, the main elements of ship devices are technologically similar and form groups:

  • Supporting structures (foundations and reinforcements) with machined and unprocessed supporting surfaces;
  • Drive mechanisms and machines - centered (steering gear, anchor and mooring capstans) and non-centered (winches, windlasses);
  • Transmission elements - gearboxes, stocks, chains;
  • Executive elements - rudders, anchors, hooks;
  • Conductive elements - fairleads, chain pipes, towing bars.

Installation of ship equipment is carried out element by element at different stages of ship construction. The supporting structures of the devices, bollards, anchor pipes, fairleads and other similar structures are installed when sections or blocks of sections are saturated, and the remaining elements are installed during outfitting work on the slipway and afloat.

The general technological sequence of installation of ship equipment elements includes the following consolidated operations:

  1. Position markings on the vessel;
  2. Installation and welding of supporting structures;
  3. Treatment (if necessary) of supporting surfaces;
  4. Loading drive mechanisms and machinery onto the ship; alignment (if necessary) of drive mechanisms and machines;
  5. Plumbing and assembly of non-welded joints and fastenings of drive mechanisms and machines, transmission and actuator elements;
  6. Rigging of a number of devices (cargo, boat);
  7. Installation of electrical equipment, power cables, control equipment and instruments;
  8. Commissioning tests. Depending on the characteristics of specific ship devices, some of these operations may be missing.

As an example, let's look at the fundamental technology for installing some general ship devices.

Installation of the anchor device shown in Fig. 1, requires:

  • Installation of anchor pipes and fairleads in the ship's hull;
  • Assembling and sewing a chain box;
  • Installation of the drive of the main end of the chain, windlass, anchor chain and anchor, stoppers;
  • General check of device operation.

Due to the complexity of the geometric shapes, the anchor niche, side and deck anchor fairleads, together with a section of the bow end of the ship's hull, as well as the anchor and a fragment of the anchor chain, are modeled on a plaza in wood on a scale of 1:5 or 1:10.

When prototyping, it is necessary to comply with the conditions of mechanical similarity:

  • The indices “m” and “n” mean model and natural values;
  • P- anchor weight;
  • q— weight 1 linear m anchor chain;
  • k— layout scale;
  • v— speed of raising the anchor;
  • ƒ — coefficient of friction about the fairleads of the anchor chain and anchor.
Rice. 1 Anchor device diagram
1 - anchor;
2 - anchor niche;
3 — anchor fairlead pipe;
4 — deck fairlead;
5 - anchor chain;
6 — screw stopper;
7 - windlass;
8 — pipe into the chain box;
9 — chain box;
10 — sewing of the chain box;
11 — recoil drive of the main end of the anchor chain;
12 - verb-hack

Dummy anchors, anchor chains and pipes are made of steel, and the surfaces of the anchor fairleads are covered with tin. This ensures equal friction between the mock-up and full-scale anchors on the fairleads.

The arrangement of the hawse in the body is worked out so that the anchor falls out unhindered and is pulled into the hawse at any position of the anchor legs. Based on the completed layout, working drawings of anchor fairlead castings are produced, and the dimensions and coordinates of the location of anchor pipes and hawsees are adjusted. Anchor fairleads are installed when assembling the volumetric section of the bow.

The anchor chain is assembled from bows, connecting them together. To apply depth marks, the chain is marked into sections 20 m long, starting from the end of the chain attached to the anchor. The chain is then dyed. The running end of the anchor chain 5 (see Fig. 1) is connected to the anchor 1 , and the root end is passed through the side 2 and deck hawse 4 in a chain box 9 and introduced into the verb-hack 12 anchor chain recoil drive. After this, the operation of the drive is checked. The chain is wound onto the windlass chain sprockets 7 or spire. The final step is to install chain or screw stoppers 6 . Upon completion of installation of the elements of the anchor device, its operation is checked by releasing and retracting the anchors.

Before installing the steering gear outside the vessel, the rudder blade is assembled and its alignment with the stock is checked. Then the stock and the feather are separated in order to ensure the possibility of their installation on the vessel during installation. Before installation, the supporting surface of the steering gear foundation is processed using a portable milling machine, and the holes of the helmport pipe, hinges and heels of the sternpost are processed using a boring device.


Rice. 2 Loading device
a - general view;
b - hatch closure diagram;
c - general view of the hatch cover

Targets are installed at the outer ends of the helmport pipe and heel and a string is pulled between them, along which the intermediate targets are centered and the theoretical axis of the steering wheel is pierced, working and control circles are drawn on the upper and lower ends of the pipe and heel. The holes of the helmport pipe are bored, and secondly, the heel of the sternpost. Bronze sternpost bushings are processed in the workshop according to the actual diameter of the bored holes for press-fitting into the sternpost hinges, for which purpose they are cooled in liquid nitrogen before installation.

The steering gear is mounted on push-out bolts, and the lower thrust bearing in the heel of the sternpost is temporarily secured to studs. The rudder is brought under the stern of the vessel, the stock is inserted through the lower and upper bearings using a crane, and it is held on the support ring at the end of the lower bearing. The rudder blade is turned on with a tap and hoists are used to put it in place. The steering wheel is adjusted in height by adjusting the compensating ring 3 , and fixed with a yoke 5 , on which the steering wheel is suspended.

Rice. 3 Steering device diagram
1, 2 — stock bushings;
3 - compensating ring;
4 — thrust bearing of the stock;
5 - yoke;
6 — oiler;
7 — heliport tube;
8 — rubber ring;
9 — stock seal;
10 — sternpost heel;
11 — emphasis;
12 - pin;
13 — pin facing;
14 — bronze bushing;
15 — stock;
16 — rudder blade;
17 — steering gear

Bolt the flange connection to the stock and finally secure both bearings of the stock. A tiller is mounted on the stock head with dowels, along which the steering gear is centered. After installing the rudder, check the gaps between the pins and bushings of the sternpost hinges, which should not exceed the permissible values. At the end of the installation of the steering device, hoists are used to check the smoothness of the rudder shift, the rudder turn indicator is calibrated, and the rudder shift limiters are welded to the vessel hull. In parallel with the steering device, an oil-hydraulic or other steering system is installed and all electrical installation is carried out. After the vessel is launched, the steering gear is tested in action during mooring and sea trials.

Installation of a mooring and towing device consists of installing and fastening mooring capstans or winches and views. Mooring fairleads, bale strips, bollards, bitings and rollers are installed when assembling hull sections in the SSC.

The most common useful things include:

  • Portholes;
  • Doors and doors;
  • Manhole covers and necks;
  • Gangways;
  • Railing fencing.

The labor intensity of work associated with the manufacture and installation of practical items is 1.5-2.0% of the total labor intensity of ship construction.

Effective things are installed at various stages of ship construction. In sections, for example, the housings of the windows, their visors, covers of similar hatches, and necks are installed. On the ship, during the installation of pre-insulation saturation, door coamings, ladders are installed, and railings are welded.

In the post-isolation period they set:

  • Porthole frames;
  • Door leaves;
  • Chain and cable handrails.

Installation of practical items consists of the operations of marking their location, pre-installation on tacks or secured with bolts or studs, and ordinary plumbing operations. Installation of a water-gas-tight door, for example, involves fitting its leaf to the coaming. The tightness of the door seal is checked “for chalk”, the seal is coated around the perimeter with an aqueous chalk solution and after it has dried, the door is battened down and then peeled off. In places where there is a loose fit, the chalk coating remains undisturbed. A tight fit of the door leaf to the coaming is achieved by local welding of the coaming, followed by grinding of the welded areas or local thickening of the rubber seal with gaskets, as well as by adjusting the sealing wedges.

After installation, the door is tested for water resistance by spraying it with a stream of water from a fire nozzle.
If the door is insulated, then it is removed from the hinges and, after insulating and lining it with galvanized sheet steel, it is again installed on the hinges, again checking for water tightness.

Covers of similar hatches and window frames are mounted in the same way.

The inclined ladder is installed so that its steps are in a horizontal position (checked with a level) and the ladder is bolted to the supports, which are installed according to the markings and welded to the body.

According to the dimensions taken on site, handrails are bent and made, the lower ends of which are bolted to the ladder string, and the upper ends are welded to the railing post or hull structure.

On a ship, as you know, there are many items designed mainly to close various openings in the hull and its bulkheads. They provide, first of all, normal living conditions for people, and also perform a number of other functions. All these products are called useful things.

Large cutouts in the sides, rectangular in shape with rounded corners and located above the load waterline, are called lapel ports. They are used for loading and unloading wheeled vehicles and a wide variety of cargo. Passengers are also boarded and disembarked through them. The porticoes have single or double leaf waterproof steel doors. When going to sea, they are battened down and left in this position until returning to port.

The same shape as the lapports, there are also cutouts on the deck - cargo hatches. During the voyage they are also battened down. With their long sides, these cutouts are located along the vessel. When they are arranged in a single row, the middle of the cutouts coincides with the vessel's DP. In a two-row arrangement - the middle of the hatches on both sides of the DP. This happens on large-tonnage wide dry cargo ships.

The perimeter of the cutout is surrounded by a coaming, its height from the deck is not less than 600 mm. Hatches on elevated decks have a lower coaming height.

Reliable water resistance and acceleration of the opening and closing process itself are provided by mechanical hatch covers, one of the options of which is shown in Figure 46.

Purpose portholes- ship windows - everyone knows. According to the location of installation, portholes are divided into side, deck and deckhouse, and according to their shape - round, with a clear diameter of 200-400 mm, and rectangular, with a clear diameter of 600-400 mm and other sizes, depending on the architecture. Portholes are also distinguished by design: heavy, normal, casement and blind. And finally, according to the material of manufacture - steel and light alloys.

To prevent accidental flooding of any compartment, all portholes located at the waterline, instead of one wing nut, have a special shaped nut, for unscrewing which there is a special key. Fixed windows do not open at all. In some cases, deckhouse rectangular portholes can be emergency exits.

There are also skylights. They are installed above rooms for natural lighting and ventilation. The covers of such hatches have blind round portholes with bar fencing. Their glasses are made with wire mesh.

The shapes of hatches are round, square and rectangular.

There are also ship doors. So, at the place of installation they can be external or internal; by purpose - water-gas-tight, water-tight and splash-tight; by materials of manufacture - steel, wood, light alloys and plastic.

You can see one of the doors - water-gas-tight - in Figure 47. It is installed on watertight bulkheads, walls of superstructures and deckhouses, engine room shafts, etc. This door consists of steel sheets 3-6 mm thick, which are reinforced with stiffeners. There are also canvases with stamped protrusions - corrugations. The closing of these doors is done with separate wing bolts. By the way, such a door has fewer latches than a water-gas-tight one.

In the so-called wet rooms - baths, latrines (toilets), laundries - splash-proof doors are installed. The thickness of the steel sheet on them is 2-4 mm; for rigidity, corrugations are stamped. The doors in the wheelhouses and upper decks are the same.

There are flat doors on ships, consisting of a steel sheet without any seals. Doors made of wood or light alloys are found in the crew and passenger areas.

Necks(Fig. 48) - structures that serve for access to the double-bottom space, as well as to tanks and other closed compartments. They have an oval shape with dimensions from 450X420 to 600x450 mm. The weld neck is welded (hence its name) to the deck, bulkhead, tank wall, and sockets are drilled into it and threads are cut for the studs. They put the neck cap on them.

Gangways(Fig. 49) are divided into external and internal according to the installation location. The first are ordinary and outboard, and the second are normal, vestibule and engine-boiler rooms.

Typically, all ladders are located along the ship, since it is in this position that they are convenient to use, especially during rocking. To avoid fires, all ladders are made of non-flammable materials: external ones, as a rule, are steel, and internal ones are made of both steel and light alloys.

There are inclined, vertical and staple ladders. The first ones are installed at an angle of 55°, which ensures both convenience and safety of use. The width of the ladders ranges from 0.6 to 3 m. Wide ladders have additional handrails in the middle.

Effective things (from deel “part”) - maritime term, common name for some auxiliary parts of ship hull equipment, which serve mainly for fastening and wiring rigging, as well as parts of ship equipment, interior equipment and open decks.
Useful items include staples, cleats, eyes, turnbuckles, snares, fairleads, bollards, bales, bitings, eyelets, necks, companion hatch covers, ladders, doors, portholes, railings and awning posts.
The main dimensions of practical items and the requirements for their fastening (installation) on a ship are regulated by classification societies. Most of the good stuff is standard.
A bracket is a curved rod with eyes at the ends into which a pin is threaded (Fig. 1). Most often, the pin is secured with a screw thread, which is located at its end and in one of the eyes. In this case, the head of the pin has a small butt, into which a pile is placed when screwing and unscrewing. In heavy-duty brackets, the pin is not threaded and is secured with a cotter pin.
The shape of the rigging shackles can be straight or round. Straight ones are used for straight and plant cables. In the latter case, with the same diameter of the rod, the bracket has a larger width. Round brackets are used only for plant cables.
To fasten various parts using a hook or brackets, round or oblong eyes - butts - are welded to the ship's hull. Rings - eyelets - are often passed through the butts, which simplifies the installation of a hook or staple.

Rice. 1 Lifting shackles.
A cleat is a practical thing on a ship, which is a two-horned metal part mounted on the deck or other part of the ship to secure running rigging to it (Fig. 2).
On small sailing ships, such as a yacht, the cleat is installed with a rigid attachment to the hull and can be used for mooring, anchor, towing and other ropes and cables.

Rice. 2 Duck.
Eye - a metal ring of a round elliptical or other shape, threaded into the butt and used for placing cables, chains, guy wires, blocks, hoists, rosin - blocks, connecting brackets and other fasteners into it.

Rice. 3 Fastening the mooring ropes with a bracket behind the eye.
Varieties of the classic eye are the eye bolt and the eye nut.
An eye bolt is a metal ring rigidly connected to a cylindrical rod that has a thread at the end for fastening to various structures, mechanisms, units, etc. The cut part of the rod is screwed into the machine cover, engine housing or embedded elements of ship structures.
An eye nut has a design similar to an eye bolt, but instead of a cylindrical threaded rod at the base of the eye nut, there is a through cylindrical hole with a thread for screwing the product onto a mounting bolt.
Lanyards are devices for tightly wrapping various gear, as well as for securely fastening various objects and loads while traveling (Fig. 4). The most common is a screw lanyard, which consists of a coupling that connects two screws: one with a right-hand thread and the other with a right-hand thread.

Rice. 4 Turnbuckles: a - open, b - closed, c - swivel.
1 – hook, 2 – bracket, 3 – screws, 4 – coupling, 5 – butt.
a - straight for a steel cable, b - straight for a plant cable, c - round.

Fairlead is a round, oval or rectangular hole in the bulwark, deck or side, edged with a cast frame or metal rod, used to pass through and reduce chafing of the anchor chain, mooring lines or towing rope.
On sailing ships, a hawse was a name given to through oblong or round holes that were used for wiring cables or anchor chains. According to their purpose and location, hawsees were called: in the bow - rope hawse, in the middle of the ship - towing, in the stern - stern or spring hawse.
Mooring hawse - a hawse used to pass a cable, installed on board a ship, for example in a bulwark. The mooring fairlead can have a more complex design: the cable only touches the rotating rollers (universal fairlead (Fig. 5)) or pulleys mounted in a rotating cage, which is oriented under the action of the cable tension in in the right direction(automatic fairlead).

Rice. 5 Universal mooring hawse.
Deck fairlead - an opening in the deck with a cast iron or steel frame for passing the anchor chain from the upper deck or from the forecastle deck into the chain box. The openings of the deck fairleads are closed with a special metal cover called a fairlead cover.
An anchor fairlead is a special cast steel or cast iron pipe passed through the deck through the side of the vessel (bow or stern in the center plane).
The trawl fairlead is a steel or cast iron structure fixed to upper deck aft section and serves for passing and directing tugs' trawling parts beyond the aft section when setting or retrieving the trawl.
A fairlead is a special device instead of an anchor fairlead, consisting of deck and side flanges and a gutter. The anchor chain passes into the fairlead in the same way as into the fairlead.
A bollard is a paired pedestal with a common base on the deck of a ship, used for fastening cables (Fig. 6).
On wooden ships, wooden pedestals were also installed, but on metal ships, bollards were paired round metal pedestals cast together with a base - a slab firmly attached to the deck. Metal bollards are usually hollow, steel or cast iron, rarely copper. Part of the design of the bollards are caps and bosses that prevent the cable from sliding upward. By design, a distinction is made between straight bollards and cross bollards, which have a horizontal rigid connection between the bollards.
On deck, bollards are installed near the fairleads in the bow, stern and along the sides of the vessel. Bollards are used to secure cables laid in figure eights during mooring (mooring bollard) or towing (towing bollard), and historically anchor torsos were also attached to them. On sailing ships, bollards were equipped with pulleys for tensioning and fastening some running rigging gear.
Bollards are also called bollards on a pier or pier.

Rice. 6 Bollards: a – cross, b – ordinary.
Biteng is a strong hollow pedestal that rises above the deck of a vessel or ship. It is part of the towing and mooring device of the vessel.
The biteng has a reinforced attachment to the ship's hull. To strengthen the biteng in a vertical position, use a special knit - biteng - standers.
Beaters can also be made of wood (they were originally wooden stands), but most often they are made of metal (steel or cast iron).
Biteng can be single or double. A paired biteng may have a crossbar, which is called a biteng - a spreader.
Biteng serves the following purposes:
— Reducing the speed of etching of the anchor chain.
— Fastening tow ropes or anchor rope.
— Giving uniform motion during rope traction.
— Fastening moorings of small ships and boats moored alongside.
— Fastening the moorings of ships towed by a log (side to side).
A ladder is a ship's staircase for communication between rooms or open areas on the decks of the hull, superstructures and deckhouses.
The ladders differ:
1) by location on the ship: internal and external ladders,
2) according to the width of the working opening - single-flow and double-flow ladders,
3) according to the method of fastening - stationary, removable and portable ladders,
4) in orientation relative to the deck of the ship - inclined and vertical ladders.
Internal stairs to passenger ships They are artistically designed, have a large width and a small slope.
Vertical brackets - ladders that do not have handrails and strings, are installed in places rarely visited by people (outside and inside chimneys, in mines, holds, towers, as well as on masts). Staples - ladders consist of steel rods (staples), welded one above the other at a certain interval.
An outboard ladder, installed on ships when moored in a roadstead or at a berth, serves to enter or exit the ship onto a boat (boat) or directly onto the pier. Outboard ladders are raised and lowered using ladders - beams, lifting mechanisms equipped with hoists and designed for lowering, lifting and holding the lower platforms of outboard ladders at a given level.
Flexible storm - a ladder made of vegetable or synthetic cable with round or flat wooden balusters (steps) is suspended from the shot or lowered along the side of the vessel. Storm - the gangway is used for communication between ships of different sizes during intense seas, when using the outboard ladder is difficult.

Rice. 7 Pilot ladder.

As well as parts of ship equipment, equipment for interior spaces and open decks.

Useful items include staples, cleats, eyes, turnbuckles, snores, fairleads, bollards, bales, bitings, eyelets, necks, companion hatch covers, ladders, doors, portholes, railings and awning posts and others.

The main dimensions of practical items and the requirements for their fastening (installation) on a ship are regulated by classification societies. Most of the good stuff is standard.

Sources

  • (with illustrations)
  • meanings of the word deel from Dutch to various languages.

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An excerpt characterizing sensible things

Russian troops, having retreated from Borodino, stood at Fili. Ermolov, who had gone to inspect the position, drove up to the field marshal.
“There is no way to fight in this position,” he said. Kutuzov looked at him in surprise and forced him to repeat the words he had said. When he spoke, Kutuzov extended his hand to him.
“Give me your hand,” he said, and, turning it so as to feel his pulse, he said: “You’re not well, my dear.” Think about what you are saying.
Kutuzov on Poklonnaya Hill, six miles from the Dorogomilovskaya outpost, got out of the carriage and sat down on a bench on the edge of the road. A huge crowd of generals gathered around him. Count Rastopchin, having arrived from Moscow, joined them. This whole brilliant society, divided into several circles, talked among themselves about the advantages and disadvantages of the position, about the position of the troops, about the proposed plans, about the state of Moscow, and about military issues in general. Everyone felt that although they had not been called to this, although it was not called that, it was a council of war. The conversations were all kept in the area of ​​general issues. If anyone reported or learned personal news, it was said in a whisper, and they immediately went back to general questions: no jokes, no laughter, no smiles were even noticeable between all these people. Everyone, obviously with effort, tried to stay at the height of the situation. And all the groups, talking among themselves, tried to stay close to the commander-in-chief (whose shop was the center in these circles) and spoke so that he could hear them. The commander-in-chief listened and sometimes asked questions about what was being said around him, but he himself did not enter into the conversation and did not express any opinion. For the most part, after listening to the conversation of some circle, he turned away with a look of disappointment - as if they were not talking about what he wanted to know. Some spoke about the chosen position, criticizing not so much the position itself as the mental abilities of those who chose it; others argued that a mistake had been made earlier, that the battle should have been fought on the third day; still others talked about the Battle of Salamanca, which the Frenchman Crosard, who had just arrived in a Spanish uniform, told about. (This Frenchman, together with one of the German princes who served in the Russian army, dealt with the siege of Saragossa, foreseeing the opportunity to also defend Moscow.) In the fourth circle, Count Rastopchin said that he and the Moscow squad were ready to die under the walls of the capital, but that everything yet he cannot help but regret the uncertainty in which he was left, and that if he had known this before, things would have been different... The fifth, showing the depth of their strategic considerations, talked about the direction that the troops would have to take. The sixth spoke complete nonsense. Kutuzov's face became more and more concerned and sadder. From all the conversations of these Kutuzov saw one thing: there was no physical possibility to defend Moscow in the full meaning of these words, that is, it was not possible to such an extent that if some crazy commander-in-chief had given the order to give battle, then confusion would have occurred and the battles would have all it wouldn't have happened; it would not have been because all the top leaders not only recognized this position as impossible, but in their conversations they discussed only what would happen after the undoubted abandonment of this position. How could commanders lead their troops on a battlefield they considered impossible? The lower commanders, even the soldiers (who also reason), also recognized the position as impossible and therefore could not go to fight with the certainty of defeat. If Bennigsen insisted on defending this position and others were still discussing it, then this question no longer mattered in itself, but mattered only as a pretext for dispute and intrigue. Kutuzov understood this.