In all the years my Dad worked in ship salvage, he dealt with a lot of ships, cargo and otherwise. As a salvage engineering consultant, he worked on everything from aircraft carriers, barges, super tankers, passenger ships, and oil rigs and for a wide array of clients including the United States Navy, international salvage contractors, marine underwriters, diving companies, and once, NASA. By my tween years, he’d authored dozens of books, manuals, surveys, and reports on ocean engineering and marine salvage, many still available today on the U.S. Navy Supervisor of Salvage website.
Two articles that lend some insight into the work of a salvage engineer: