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Old 07-04-2007, 07:18 AM   #1
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The attached photograph was sent to me from a friend in the shipping industry. It was taken as the vessel was entering Suez on a voyage from Malaysia. Somewhere during their voyage they added a few more boxes to the pond for us folk in little boats to hit and sink us! Nice thought!

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Old 07-05-2007, 04:57 AM   #2
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Not good. There needs to be a way to track these things once they fall off ships.
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Old 07-05-2007, 06:41 AM   #3
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Not Good. Track Conex Containers? No. You put your junk in our oceans, retrieve it. Recycle what you can, the rest to the landfill. Yes it was an accident. Well where do we draw the line; how many miles from the shore, and to what depth.

In the Northern US, we have a hearty winter. Lake surfaces freeze. Ice fishing season follows. First fishermen walk on the ice, as it gets thicker we drive vehicles on the ice. Some drive to soon. Ice does not support the vehicle weight. Ice breaks. Truck is in the water. Law DEMANDS get it out. Every insurance policy has exclusion. No Coverage. Costs big BUCK$! Just to get truck out of the drink, PLUS environmental fines, PLUS truck electrical system and computer system is shot; truck is totaled, need new truck. Did I mention no insurance? Loan payment on wet truck is still due. It happens every year, in many places, many times. Confucius Says: Fish at Market, Cheap.
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Old 07-05-2007, 07:14 AM   #4
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Cute Photoshopped photo.
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Old 07-05-2007, 09:08 AM   #5
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JeanneP,

It is not a "Photoshopped" photo - if you want to see the rest of the photographs, from different angles, I will post them.

John
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Old 07-05-2007, 09:17 AM   #6
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I just googled 'shipping containers lost at sea' and came up with 1000's of hits. The most conservative estimate of the numbers of containers lost each year is 2000, which represents 0.005% of the total number of containers shipped across oceans in a year. Take a look at the following report and pix http://www.veromarine.co.nz/dirvz/marine/m...hotoFeature0007

Imagine 2,000 containers full of flip flops, lingerie and tellys.....and yachting hardware....'n' other t'riffic stuff.

Cheese

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Old 07-05-2007, 10:01 AM   #7
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Sorry, John, I was a bit hasty there. the photo does look a bit odd to me, I didn't expect the remaining containers to be left in such disarray and liable to further loss overboard.
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Old 07-05-2007, 01:20 PM   #8
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I didn't expect the remaining containers to be left in such disarray and liable to further loss overboard.
At this point the skipper can not do much if anything, to restore a sense of order with his cargo. He needs to get under a crane. Even than the task at hand will be dangerous, and extra time consuming. Moving the wrong container, or in the wrong way, could cause many more to topple.
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Old 07-05-2007, 03:08 PM   #9
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And I just recently read an article about a new "SUPER " container ship that can carry 15,000 containers!!! Imagine that one losing 10 % of it's load.
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Old 07-05-2007, 03:53 PM   #10
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Soon it will be like sailing through a mine field. It seems to me that we have cheap enough technology to enable a container EPIRB system on every container that remains floating. If the container sinks, no worries, however if it remains afloat a signal beacon will transmit it's position...even if it is a couple feet below the surface.

I know there are laws requiring ship wrecks to be recovered from beaches, so why not containers?
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Old 07-05-2007, 05:29 PM   #11
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Trim50,

Good Points.

Yes tracking loose containers will add costs to shipping, paid for by the end user of the products shipped. I think it most worthy. Our earth belongs to all of us, everyone, every human occupant. We need to take care of it in good fashion, for now and for later use; as that is what we live on and from. How we do that is a different topic.

Can you imagine the contents; some environmentally harmless, while others may contain pallets of drums (barrels) full of chemicals. Those containers would have the diamond shaped placards displayed. Eventually those hypothetical drums will corrode, releasing the contents. Not a good thing.

Why does this happen to cargo vessels. Likely rough seas, maybe improper loading (not nested correctly), maybe one, just one container, at the bottom of the stack, crumpled and failed. Who knows. I have been onboard several cargo vessels during loading and unloading. What I do not recall is on a vessel of this type, is if the Conex Containers are secured.

In any case, OUCH!

Jeff
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Old 07-06-2007, 11:06 AM   #12
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For one that is just getting the urge.

Is there any stories out there of cruisers encountering these containers.
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Old 07-06-2007, 12:32 PM   #13
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Cruising yachts colliding with semi submerged shipping containers, is a topic which invokes fear amid the cruising fraternity equal to that generated by piracy and shark attack. It seems every bar has at least one old salt who knew someone, who heard from someone who knew a bloke who drowned, after his yacht hit a shipping container which had fallen from the deck of an ocean going monolith during the big storm of blah blah blah.

Insurance figures would suggest that damage from whale and sunfish strikes is more of a problem than damage caused by clouting containers.**

Almost every year, at least one competitor in the Sydney Hobart yacht race reports hitting a whale or sunfish during the passage, yet there has never been a reported collision with a container. And it is worth noting that Tasmania is an island with a population of 600,000 whose requirements are primarily supplied by shipping.

Most containers do not float for long, will not be lifted by waves, and need only to be a couple of metres down for the danger to small boats to be negated.

There are cases of yachts being damaged or sunk through mid-sea encounters with containers, but details of these cases are surprisingly difficult to find. I would always defer to a genuine expert in the marine insurance business, but it seems to me that the chances of hitting a jettisoned container are somewhat less than the chances of hitting the ship which was carrying it.

David

**I rang a mate of mine who works for Club Marine Insurance in Sydney.....There is no limit to the lengths I will go to get the poop on a nifty yarn.
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Old 07-06-2007, 01:38 PM   #14
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Don't think too much about it...

If you're setting sail, do NOT take a look here.....

http://www.cargolaw.com/

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Old 07-07-2007, 01:20 AM   #15
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Quote:
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Don't think too much about it...

If you're setting sail, do NOT take a look here.....

http://www.cargolaw.com/

Jan
That site is too hard for me to navigate.
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Old 07-07-2007, 06:40 AM   #16
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Are we not trying to cure the symptom rather than the sickness?

The symptom, i.e. the floating containers, should never arrise. They should not be in the sea in the first place. The sickness, i.e. putting to sea with a vessel in an unseaworthy condition, is the root of the problem. The problem arrose essentially in the late 60:s and early 70:s when shipping companies started being run by economists rather than seamen. They probably were able to maximise income but they contributed nothing to good seamanship. What they have achieved has gone against hundreds of years of development and increased safety at sea.

Going back to the period of the Second World War, no one would have considered building ro-ro ships of thousands of tons with only one hold! Big ships used to have to be constructed so that they would remain afloat if two consecutive watertight compartments suffered from total ingress of water. The cariage of deck cargoes was normal practise but seamen accepted that they could be washed overboard. Insurance companies did too so that any cargo carried on deck was carried at shipper's risk.

Now we have huge ro-ro vessels, many of which have been lost as a result of the concept along with many lives (e.g. Estonia, Herald of Free Enterprise). We have also containers stacked skywards on deck. Until these practices are stopped then we will continue to see ferries capsizing and containers lost at sea.

Of course, reversing the trend would cost huge sums and we, the consumer, would end up paying the bill. For my part, I would gladly pay another few cents (or in my case Kronor) for a pair of Vietnamese flip-flops but would people on average?

Of course, the issue of tracking containers is an interesting one too. Here again it is economics that steer. I am sure that it is fully possible today to track a "rogue" container. The technology is there but the willingness to spend the money on it is not. Even if containers were tracked, it would probably not be economical to send a ship out to recover them and their water dammaged contents. I am afraid that containers floating arround at sea will be with us for a long time.

Whilst intended in no way as a slurr on their professionalism, good seamanship and economists are poor bed-fellows.

Aye

Stephen
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