Never heard of this practice, however, on some cargoes it was common
practice to start loading by gravity only (slow) until the suction bells
were covered to avoid splashing, for much the same reason.
On todays ships, most use inert gas in the tanks to keep the oxygen level
too low for combustion.



Vic Smith wrote in
:


When I was watertending on Great Lake tankers deck hands would toss
some hundreds of pounds of dry ice in the empty tanks before we
refilled. Supposedly suppressed the generation of static electricity.
I preferred to be ashore. Do they still do that?

--Vic