OVER THE SIDE: LOST SHIPPING CONTAINERS.

The story so far: ships occasionally lose containers at sea – there are explanations although we could make comparisons to a ‘runaway train’ situation, ie., it’s out of control and it happens very quickly.

In 2020 the Japanese-flagged ONE Apus lost approximately 1,816 containers in heavy seas north-west of Hawaii. Theories over the loss range from a rogue wave snapping the securing pins to the fact that these containers were stacked eight high – or maybe a combination of both.

Oceanographers amongst us probably know that a rogue wave is up to twice the height of any other significant wave and can smash into a ship at 100t/m2.

In all honesty I had to look this fact up, but can clearly recall very scary monster waves deep in the Southern Ocean, thousands of miles from Africa and thousands of miles from Western Australia.

A line from the disaster movie Perfect Storm sums it up, and George Clooney’s classic quote similarly applies to the Southern Ocean: ‘you could be a meteorologist all your life – and still not see something like this.’ 

But in Hollywood isn’t real life, and the following account from the esteemed publication Science Frontiers reads:

….. on the Pacific, sighted right ahead, looming out of the darkness, it was awesome and looked as though the ship was heading for the white cliffs of Dover instead of a massive wave of white water. (1)

For the mariner narrating this, a heart-stopping moment would be a useful description .

But rogue waves or not it appears that heavy weather is the most common factor resulting in stack collapse during otherwise routine voyages.

Other causes are failure to comply with limits from the ship’s CSM (cargo securing manual); negligence by stevedores to handle lashing equipment, or in the case of the MSC Napoli a later enquiry ascertained a third of its loaded containers were at least 3 tonnes overweight.

The MSC Napoli beached on the Dorset coast in January and containers floated ashore although the ensuing wreck caused as much of a media storm thereafter.

The Daily Mail and the Sun, for example, thundered on about ‘looters’ and ‘scavengers’ as cargo floated in with the tide to be swiftly transported away in vehicles.

Of course, such lost cargo is supposed to be reported to the Receiver of Wreck under the 1995 Merchant Shipping Act, but could anyone blame local people given such beachcomber opportunities on their own doorstep.

Branscombe beach, Dorset , January 2007, as split containers from MSC Napoli float ashore to be met by an army of modern-day ‘wreckers.’  Flotsam included car engines, perfume, shampoo, chocolate, coffee, wine barrels – and latterly, eleven BMW motorbikes.

Initially, local police ignored the activities until the participants jemmied open whole containers. This spread the contents further along the shoreline making a clean-up more difficult and prompting the police to accuse wreckers of ‘despicable behaviour.’

One might argue that had the ‘wreckers’ – a UK tabloid word from their usual inflammatory lexicon -been a little more responsible then clearing the beaches of debris might have been of benefit.

Still, the cops did have a point insofar as the weather endangered life and put rescue services such as RNLI at great risk – similar high winds and tides which capsized the Napoli in the first place.

Anyway, two years later the enquiry following the lossconcluded that the ship’s design, speed and loading when sailing into the storm caused its demise. Two containers broke loose before a huge split appeared in the hull.

The captain’s intention to beach was to minimise loss of life (ultimately all crew members were rescued), but also to prevent large scale pollution – especially fuel oil – this latter consideration only partly successful as we shall see.

Nonetheless, 117 containers were lost on the Channel’s English side. Eighty washed ashore so it’s obvious that the remaining 37 either sunk or are still floating around – all containers not sinking are known as ‘steel icebergs’, their presence a danger to navigation.

A lone ‘steel iceberg’ washed up on a British Columbia forested shoreline hundreds of miles from anywhere. It could be from the One Apus – there again it could be another statistic from any container ship worldwide.

So although there should be a search and recovery for such containers, it seems annual losses averaging 13,000 are in deep, international waters so no search orders are made.

On the other hand, and in coastal waters, French authorities undertook a search for 50 containers drifting in the Bay of Biscay whilst in a busy shipping area off China, the coastguard demanded a sonar sweep of 1000 kms at a cost of US$4 mn.

But asking shipowners to advance legislation is a slow business and it’s taken the World Shipping Council ten yearsto bring in amendments to the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) in establishing container weight verification – overweight containers being suspect in the 2007 Napoli loss.

Of the ONE Apus losses off Hawaii, there is scant information as to where their 1,816 boxes were found – if they ever were – so one can conclude that asking shipowners to verify where their overboard containers have disappeared to is like asking airlines where passengers’ lost baggage has gone.

They’re in denial – after all it wouldn’t be good for the shipping business, would it?

On a personal level when I was based in nearby Falmouth dry dock, the Tokio Express, a 58,000 tonne container ship was hit by a rogue wave off Lands End in 1997.

Evidently, the ship rolled 60 degrees, then 40 degrees back losing 62 containers in total. One of the stricken containers was loaded at Billund, Denmark with 5 million Lego pieces bound for New York.

Loved by generations of youngsters, these Lego pieces were curiously of a nautical theme including plastic pirate ships, octopus, dragons and similar. Anyway, the whole consignment spilled out into the ocean and pieces reappear at any time, but especially during winter gales.

A quarter of a century later, tiny Lego pieces still wash up on Cornish beaches.

(Acknowledgements to http://www.greatbritishlife.co.uk)

Of course, in 1997 beachcombers were finding countless pieces whilst fishermen pulled them from their nets.

Anecdotally, I heard that Lego sets – presumably rinsed of salt – were available for sale along the Cornish coast in pubs, cafes and elsewhere.

Local people there are usually reticent in discussing community events to ‘outsiders’ but excitement was everywhere, a general feeling repeated a few months later as another vessel, the MV Cita foundered off the Scilly Isles.

The Cita’s containers landed onto the rocks to split open from where the Scillonians soon realised they had expensive flotsam around.

For example, there was £3mn of tobacco alone as well as tyres, sports equipment, shoes, shorts, trainers, Ben Sherman shirts, parquet flooring, plywood, house doors and Toyota car spares.

Again a police presence enforced reports of flotsam to the Receiver of Wrecks, but happily no-one was prosecuted. Islanders were wearing trainers and hoodies for years, and in the age-old tradition of Scillonian beach-combing, it explained why thousands of plastic carrier bags bound for Irish supermarket chain Quinnsworth were put to everyday use.

The ship’s crew were saved by the RNLI St Mary’s’ lifeboat, but it appears that the loss of the Cita was due to the watch-keeping officer falling asleep with the watch-keepers’ alarm switched off – an unforgivable tragedy. (2)

In the light of this officer’s criminal negligence, cautioning local people for helping themselves to flotsam would seem absurd, but just as absurd is the wide potential for shippers to escape prosecution. Shipowners are very clever at avoiding responsibilities ranging from fair pay to taxation and general adherence to law.

In compounding such perceived indifference a House of Parliament debate was chaired by the Rt Hon Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Cons) in 2009.

Available for perusal under UK Parliament Hansard, to its credit the the debate examined the usefulness of the 1854 Wreck & Salvage Act in modern times rightly noting that 18th century sailing ships did not inflict massive environmental destruction as modern liners, but nonetheless, accusations of ‘looting and ransacking’ and ‘delays in police action’ (4) strayed far from the real issue of reforming the act.

In other words, the debate skirted around the issue of ‘polluter-pays’ – one would suspect the UK government is siding up with the shipowners.

We’d hope that the total cost of £120mn would have been paid by insurers under the Civil Liability Convention (1992) which puts the onus upon shipowners to compensate under the self-explanatory ‘polluter-pays’ principle.

Maybe they did pay, albeit only after – according to Hansard – that the UK taxpayer stumped up £10 million.

But for the shipowner, it’s time to reflect upon green issues too.

For example, no level of compensation would replace the 1000-2000 seabird losses including the Manx shearwater, gannet, guillemot and especially the critically endangered Balearic shearwater. 

‘Fingerprinting’ of samples taken from most birds confirmed the oil was from the Napoli’s fuel tanks, as also were the samples taken from fishermen’s nets as the fish catch declined, whilst the sub-aqua environment impacted negatively.

A true and accurate figure of oiled seabird deaths will probably never be quantified as most scientists believe the majority suffer out at sea.

So that was the aftermath of just one ship involved in container loss. By contrast, the ONE Apus and the Tokio Express were fortunate to return to port for repairs, whilst the MV Cita’s fuel was removed immediately before salvage.

Of course, there are other MV Napoli-type disasters, but given the slowness of amending legislation (amendments are not being ratified until 2026), it seems there could be more.

If so, perhaps lost containers with dangerous contents, ie, oil, corrosives, etc, washing up a shipowner’s palm-fringed beachfront in Bermuda, for example, it might possibly jolt the shipping world into action.

REFERENCES:

1) Science Frontiers, Nov-Dec 1989, number 66 (accessed 10/10/2023)

2) http:http://www.uk.Parliament.Hansard, MV Cita, 25/06/2002, vol 387, (accessed 11/10/2023)

3) http://www.uk.Parliament.Hansard, MV Napoli, 01.02.2007, vol 456, (accessed 11/10/2023)