Oil spill recovery and storage ship

A liquid cargo carrier ship adapted to be temporarily convertible to a seagoing oil recovery and storage ship for recovering relatively large quantities of oil or a similar pollutant disposed on the surface of the sea, said ship comprising a first set of tanks arranged seriatim fore and aft and disposed along both port and starboard sides of said ship and comprising at least one of liquid cargo tanks and ballast tanks, respectively, said first set of tanks being delimited by outer opposed longitudinal sides of said ship, respectively, longitudinal bulkheads extending at least partly the length of said ship and defining a second set of tanks comprising at least one of liquid cargo and ballast tanks disposed between said first set of tanks;

• respective openings formed in each of said opposed longitudinal sides of said ship at predetermined points between the bow and the stern of said ship;
• movable outer doors arranged for closing said openings during operation of said ship as a liquid cargo carrier;
• oil and water receiving compartments disposed adjacent each of said openings in each of said opposed longitudinal sides for receiving oil and water on or near the surface of the sea through said openings, respectively;
• each of said compartments having an inner wall and defining an opening into at least one tank, respectively, of said first set of tanks, said first set of tanks defining primary separation tanks;
• first movable weirs operable for selectively closing said openings in said inner walls to isolate said primary separation tanks from said compartments, respectively, and operable during oil recovery operations to be moved to a position for controlling the flow of oil and water from said compartments, respectively, into said primary separation tanks;
• openings formed in said longitudinal bulkheads, respectively, between said primary separation tanks and one tank of said second set of tanks, said one tank of said second set of tanks comprising a secondary separation tank;
• second movable weirs operable to close said secondary separation tank from said primary separation tanks, respectively, and operable during oil recovery operations to be moved to a position for controlling the flow of oil from said primary separation tanks to said secondary separation tank;
• and
• conduits interconnecting said primary and secondary separation tanks with selected ones of said at least one of liquid cargo tanks and ballast tanks for transferring at least one of oil and an oil/water mixture from said primary and secondary separation tanks to said selected ones of said at least one of liquid cargo tanks and ballast tanks to further separate oil from water and to store oil therein which has been recovered from the sea.