More containers lost off Isle of Wight

[ylop]

I never said I wanted divers and ships actually.

But you are very confident that “every major port” has the means to recover them. Bearing in mind a loaded container can be over 30 tonnes (and still float) and containers rarely fall off in calm conditions I’d love to see how that’s done without being prepared to put people in the water or having specialist lifting equipment. When I said you need more than a RIB you quickly dismissed that as not being what you meant.

Raise costs by adding liability and suddenly solutions will be found. Free market economics.

Or the costs are just passed to the consumer because the curious little market in the North of Europe is insignificant in global shipping terms.

These containers are either dangerously overloaded or the securing methods are inadequate for the conditions.

We absolutely can make better containers

We can bug containers are an international standard evolved through international cooperation not “sovereign states legislating”. The costs of requiring a “UK standard” container for UK voyages would be crazy. So I come back to the “it’s complicated” argument - but feel free to stand for parliament and make this your number one priority!

and we can put fewer containers on each ship. What we need is to make that cheaper than losing them over the side.

Is it environmentally better to lose a very small proportion of containers (not all of which will even be loaded or may be loaded with environmentally inert materials) or to run ships at lower capacity?

And yes, in the short term we should endeavour to clean up the mess and charge back to shipping for doing so. It’s just the responsible thing to do.

Agreed, although that might make ships less inclined to report losses, and thus expose sailors to more unexpected hazards!