I thought this was interesting.

A cargo ship operated by A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S lost several hundred containers in the Pacific Ocean while sailing through heavy seas from China to Los Angeles, the latest in a spate of incidents in which boxes carrying millions of dollars’ worth of goods have gone overboard.

The company said the Maersk Essen, which has capacity for more than 13,000 containers, lost an estimated 750 of them on January 16 about halfway through its trans-Pacific sailing from China’s Port of Xiamen.

“All crew members are safe and a detailed cargo assessment is ongoing while the vessel continues on her journey,” Maersk said in a statement on Thursday. “The U.S. Coast Guard, flag state and relevant authorities have been notified. We view this as a very serious situation which will be investigated promptly and thoroughly.” A.P. Moller-Maersk is based in Copenhagen and the ship carries a Danish flag.



Several container ships have lost large numbers of boxes overboard in recent months in a spurt of accidents that maritime industry officials say had been declining.

The One Apus container vessel, operated by Singapore-based Ocean Network Express, lost around 2,000 boxes in November when it hit a storm off Hawaii on its way to Long Beach, Calif., from Yantian, China. The ship eventually sailed to Kobe, Japan, with hundreds of tipped-over containers sitting precariously onboard and remains there for repairs and an investigation into the cause of the incident.

People involved in the investigations said insurance claims from the One Apus could reach more than $220 million.


Dislodged containers on the One Apus, berthed at Kobe after losing some 2,000 containers in November.
PHOTO: BUDDHIKA WEERASINGHE/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Losing boxes in harsh weather is relatively rare, but incidents this winter have been on the rise, especially in the Pacific.

Earlier this month, 76 containers fell off a vessel operated by Israel’s ZIM Integrated Shipping Services Ltd. en route from South Korea to North America. On Dec. 31, a boxship managed by Taiwan’s Evergreen Marine Corp. Ltd. lost around 40 containers off the coast of Japan while heading across the Pacific.

Engineers involved in the probes say they are looking into typical causes like failures in lashing systems that hold containers together. But as ships become bigger and containers are stacked high as multistory buildings, a vessel’s stability may come under greater pressure from pitching and rolling.

“It’s called parametric rolling and can happen when waves don’t hit the bow head-on, but at an angle. The ship goes into a rolling motion in sync with the waves which, combined with the ship’s normal pitching as it steams ahead, can displace cargo,” said Fotis Pagoulatos, an Athens-based naval architect.

Maritime officials say ship operators are looking at installing sensors that could issue warnings on sea conditions to avoid parametric rolling.

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“The higher you stack the boxes on deck, the larger the forces they are subjected to when the vessel moves in waves, and this could be a contributing factor, especially as the recent demand boom has meant filling all ships to the brim,” said Lars Jensen, chief executive of Denmark-based SeaIntelligence Consulting.

Yiannis Sgouras, a veteran Greek captain, said the threat can come without warning, even when waves aren’t very high. “If you don’t catch it early on and change course, the ship can roll from side to side as it steams forward and things fall over,” he said.

Maritime insurance executives said roughly 3,000 containers have been lost at sea over the past two months.

The World Shipping Council, a Washington-based trade body representing liner companies, said in a report last July that between 2008 and 2019 on average 1,382 containers were lost at sea each year.

Write to Costas Paris at costas.paris@wsj.com

link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/m...3?mod=hp_minor_pos13

Will these containers be floating around in the oceans, or sink ?

What a danger if they are floating.

I don't know much about ocean going vessels, but I would think those things could be a major threat to some vessels.

quote:

Originally posted by Sunset_Va:
Will these containers be floating around in the oceans, or sink ?

What a danger if they are floating.

Sink.

You know those big ass metal containers on the back of semis? One of those. Unless that thing is filled up with ping-pong balls, balloons, styrofoam... It's going to be resting on the bottom of Davy Jones' locker.

Seems we have some goods "back ordered", install date delayed, the dealer told us the goods were on a container ship that lost some of the containers in a storm.

quote:

Originally posted by Sunset_Va:
Will these containers be floating around in the oceans, or sink ?

What a danger if they are floating.

Depends.
There are lots of pictures of them floating. Depends on what's inside and their volume. They normally have pretty good seals on the doors to keep them watertight to protect the goods inside.
If they stay sealed and the weight of the steel container and the goods inside are less than the water they displace, it floats. Just like what makes a ship float.
I would think they could put some inexpensive tracking device inside high value cargo and someone would make a business to pick them up.

Lots of the answers here:
https://www.quora.com/How-long...dropped-in-the-ocean

I would need a change of drawers if I was onboard for that kind of pitch snd roll.

All lost because the ship's captain didn't want to be a few days late.

I'm not going to shed a tear over the loss of junk Chinese products.

Great - I am waiting for a package that shipped from China a couple of weeks ago...

Some quick math (may be wrong) tells me a container would need to be over twice the it's designed loaded weight to sink.... Unless seawater got in through a vent or door seals.

We've moved overseas a few times, and usually the moves involve freight by ocean for furniture, cars, etc. I always worry about this being the fate of our stuff someday.

I suspect they will sink eventually but they can float for quite awhile. In my Navy days our radar operator called out a surface contact. We flew directly to it and didn’t see anything. He insisted something was painting right there. We made a couple more passes and sure enough the corner of a shipping container was bobbing around.

I’m sure it sank eventually but I certainly wouldn’t want to bang into it before it did. Btw, there was no shipping anywhere nearby so that thing was floating for awhile at least.

quote:

Originally posted by HuskySig:
I'm not going to shed a tear over the loss of junk Chinese products.

Wouldn't be an issue if we produced more goods here.

Stuff like this and the virus are proof that China is not our friend. We need to stop acting like they aren't the enemy of the world right now.

quote:

Originally posted by HuskySig:
I'm not going to shed a tear over the loss of junk Chinese products.

You've got to wonder if some of them contain humans being trafficked though.

That's a lot of iPads, iPhones, and accessories.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
I thought this was interesting.

A cargo ship operated by A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S lost several hundred containers in the Pacific Ocean while sailing through heavy seas from China to Los Angeles, the latest in a spate of incidents in which boxes carrying millions of dollars’ worth of goods have gone overboard.

Yeah, it happens.

quote:

Originally posted by CPD SIG:

quote:

Originally posted by Sunset_Va:
Will these containers be floating around in the oceans, or sink ?

What a danger if they are floating.

Sink.

Not necessarily.

quote:

Originally posted by LS1 GTO:
All lost because the ship's captain didn't want to be a few days late.

Well, it's not that simple. This isn't a cruise ship. If the Captain diverted every single time there was bad weather, he wouldn't be Captain for long. And furthermore, if the company simply allowed these diversions on every voyage, they wouldn't be getting these contracts for very long either.

Is there a market for recovering these containers? Just curious.

quote:

Originally posted by ZSMICHAEL:
Is there a market for recovering these containers? Just curious.

Only insofar as them posing a shipping hazard if they happen to be floating around in a common shipping lane. But I'm sure you mean to salvage goods within the containers? I actually don't know for certain, but I'm guessing most shipping companies just collect the insurance and move on. After firing the Captain of course for going through bad weather and losing cargo.

Just thinking of a new Reality Show that would be more exciting than Oak Island.