Containers lost overboard

[Kukri]

Since this topic comes up from time to time I thought I might usefully post an article from an industry journal here,

The article covers the biggest ever loss of containers overboard from a ship under way, but there are some handy statistics for bar side banter when we are allowed back into bars:

ONE Apus stack collapse could be the largest container loss since the MOL Comfort - The Loadstar

 

[GHA]

don't need to follow industry journals any more, on a facebook page straight away

Massive Cargo Loss: Estimated 1,900 Containers Lost or Damaged on ONE Apus – gCaptain

That's a lot of lumps of metal drifting round for a while!

 

[Wansworth]

What about more ships and less deck cargo,equals more employment and risk to navigation and more expensive goods so probably less trash from asia?

 

[Kukri]

 

[mainsail1]

Surely the answer is simple? Every container that falls overboard has to be found and recovered within one month or the registered owner of the ship is fined 1million dollars by the home state for every container not found. If so, I bet containers would be better secured and have tracking devices fitted pretty quick.

 

[Tomahawk]

That tells me she was doing some pretty drastic rolling..

BTW where was she when they went overboard? Anywhere near the Vendee or JV lot?

 

[Wansworth]

As mentioned a better means of securing containers,just accepting the seas can be littered with insured steel boxes is not very responsible,just because they are out of sight they are still there contaminating,it’s quite a while now since society realized the sea is not a waste bin

 

[Lucy52]

That tells me she was doing some pretty drastic rolling..

BTW where was she when they went overboard? Anywhere near the Vendee or JV lot?

A long, long, way away.

“The vessel was on passage from Yantian to Long Beach, approximately 1,600NM north-west of Hawaii, when it encountered a violent storm cell, producing gale-force winds and large swells which caused the ONE Apus to roll heavily, resulting in the dislodging of the lost containers.

 

[Kukri]

Surely the answer is simple? Every container that falls overboard has to be found and recovered within one month or the registered owner of the ship is fined 1million dollars by the home state for every container not found. If so, I bet containers would be better secured and have tracking devices fitted pretty quick.

Who are “the home state”?

 

[Biggles Wader]

Who are “the home state”?

Japan in this case who are are having no luck at all just now.
Having seen the pic I cant work out where the figure of 1900 containers comes from. Maybe 1900 TEU which could be 800 actual boxes and most of them appear to be still on board, just a bit bent.
The big problem will be to get the ship back to a port where they can offload all that rubble given that it is in the middle of the Pacific and subject to serious damage in the event of more bad weather.

 

[Kukri]

As mentioned a better means of securing containers,just accepting the seas can be littered with insured steel boxes is not very responsible,just because they are out of sight they are still there contaminating,it’s quite a while now since society realized the sea is not a waste bin

Let’s take a look at the WSC figures. There’s no good reason to think that they are wrong:

Actual Number of Containers Lost at Sea Falling, Study Shows – gCaptain

Call that 1,500 a year. The average weight of cargo is 14 tons per TEU, so let’s call that 15 tons and assume that all the boxes lost were forty footers, so 30 tons x 1,500 = 45,000 tons of cargo plus the weight of the boxes themselves
3.75 x 1500 = 5,625 tons so let’s round up again and call the total weight of cargo and containers lost overboard in an average year 55,000 tons.

The NOAA, a US Government Agency with a solid track record, estimated that eight million tons of plastics entered the oceans in 2011:

A Guide to Plastic in the Ocean

As an American might say, “do the math!”

 

[Deleted member 36384]

Is the hold of these vessels loaded with containers as well, curious?

 

[Juan Twothree]

This one also lost one or two boxes

 

[Kukri]

Japan in this case who are are having no luck at all just now.
Having seen the pic I cant work out where the figure of 1900 containers comes from. Maybe 1900 TEU which could be 800 actual boxes and most of them appear to be still on board, just a bit bent.
The big problem will be to get the ship back to a port where they can offload all that rubble given that it is in the middle of the Pacific and subject to serious damage in the event of more bad weather.

Just so.The Loadstar and the less reliable GCaptain both give a figure of “approximately 1,900 units lost or damaged”

Is the hold of these vessels loaded with containers as well, curious?

Yes. In cell guides under pontoon hatch covers. Other things being equal, the stowage planners will try to get the heavier containers under the hatches, apart from any reefer (refrigerated) containers which are usually heavy (food is heavy) and which must go on deck as they need to exhaust to atmosphere.

 

[Kukri]

This one also lost one or two boxes


View attachment 104225View attachment 104226View attachment 104227

Russian driver! Didn’t know when to slow down - he was racing to make a Suez Canal convoy. The biggest loss of containers to date.

OK not only Russian driving. She was designed by Mitsubishi Heavy, but was built by a less well regarded shipyard, who didn’t fully understand the double bottom tank stiffening. The sister ships had quite a lot of welding done...

 

[Wansworth]

Let’s take a look at the WSC figures. There’s no good reason to think that they are wrong:

Actual Number of Containers Lost at Sea Falling, Study Shows – gCaptain

Call that 1,500 a year. The average weight of cargo is 14 tons per TEU, so let’s call that 15 tons and assume that all the boxes lost were forty footers, so 30 tons x 1,500 = 45,000 tons of cargo plus the weight of the boxes themselves
3.75 x 1500 = 5,625 tons so let’s round up again and call the total weight of cargo and containers lost overboard in an average year 55,000 tons.

The NOAA, a US Government Agency with a solid track record, estimated that eight million tons of plastics entered the oceans in 2011:

A Guide to Plastic in the Ocean

As an American might say, “do the math!”

Even so,could work be done on lashing down containers better,two wrongs don’t make a right?

 

[rogerthebodger]

We had some containers lost around the cape coast. It was not the containers that was the issue but the content that was plastic hurdles that then ended spread all along the beaches

3 years ago we some containers go over the side while the ship in Durban Harbour. These also contained plastic hurdles which ended up on local beaches.

Nurdles wash up on Cape Town beaches

 

[mainsail1]

Who are “the home state”?

The home state is the country in which the vessel is registered.
Yes, I know some are very lax.

 

[Kukri]

The home state is the country in which the vessel is registered.
Yes, I know some are very lax.

It’s not the laxity of some; it’s the fact that ship owners choose their “flag state”.

 

[newtothis]

Japan in this case who are are having no luck at all just now.
Having seen the pic I cant work out where the figure of 1900 containers comes from. Maybe 1900 TEU which could be 800 actual boxes and most of them appear to be still on board, just a bit bent.
The big problem will be to get the ship back to a port where they can offload all that rubble given that it is in the middle of the Pacific and subject to serious damage in the event of more bad weather.

The release from the shipmanager and owner say 1,900 containers, not teu, so that's potentially 3,800 teu.
WSC figures show on average 779 containers per year lost overboard in the three years to end-2019.
In this case, the 1,900 figure is 'lost or damaged'. Suspect that is going to end up being more on the damaged side than lost.
But, man, what sort of weather bomb is capable of throwing around a 14,000 teu boxship enough to do that much damage? I wouldn't want to have been on the bridge while it was rolling that much.
As for punishing the shipowner, in this case the ship was chartered. Where I work, we have a whole research team whose job is trying to ascertain the real owner of ships, which given the use of single ship shelf companies is harder than you would think.
You could charge the charterer, but in this case the charterer is also in an alliance with three other carriers so would also be carrying their containers. Most things in shipping are more complicated than they look on the surface.