SHIPPING
Cargo ships make hundreds of thousands of trips annually.
As these vessels carry thousands of containers this results in hundreds of millions of container trips per year.
There are estimated to be between 5 & 6 million containers on the water at any one time.
With this volume of traffic, it is inevitable that there is going to be some losses.
A trawl through the archives has bought a few instances bobbing to the surface!
On Thursday the 13th February in 1997, the cargo ship Tokio Express was navigating off the coast of Cornwall when it was hit by a rogue wave. This caused the vessel to list more than 45 degrees.
Sixty-Two containers were swept overboard!
By Murgatroyd49 - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=113545942
One of those containers was filled with 4.8 million Lego pieces (mainly, ironically, sea creatures and related nautical-themed objects).
Those pieces are STILL being washed up on the Cornish shore today- 25 years later!
(Image: Cornish Plastic Pollution Coalition)
On November 5th, 2016 The vessel Hanjin Seattle encountered rough seas near the south end of Vancouver Island. 35 empty containers were lost overboard, and while some doubtless sank, it is likely that some are still floating aimlessly in the waters around the Strait of Juan de Fuca, posing a threat to other shipping.
In February 2014 the Svendborg Maersk reportedly lost 517 containers in the Bay of Biscay!!
And in one of the worst incidents on record, on November 30th, 2020 ONE Apus, en route from China to Los Angeles was buffeted by towering waves and over 18,000 containers were hurled into the lonely waters some 1,600 miles north of Hawaii.
The World Shipping Council estimates that some 1,679 containers are lost annually, although The Relevator reports that 3,000 containers fell into the Pacific Ocean alone in 2020!.
This is a tiny percentage of the overall volume but still pretty significant in terms of potential ecological harm.
And one very obvious consequence of these deepwater catastrophes is plain to see for any beachcomber as he or she enjoys a sandy stroll.
Below is a brief list of some of the bizarre and unusual items that have been washed up on the shores of this planet, clearly from shipments as they appeared in volume, not just one-offs!
Banana’s (fit to eat), briefcases, burgers-part cooked, camcorders, car parts, cases of tea, cigarettes (£3m worth) cosmetics, Doritos (bagged and safe to eat) face masks (of course) golf clubs, hockey gloves and shin guards (34,000 of them), McVities biscuits, milk powder in bags, motorbikes, Nike trainers (60,000), onions (tons) phones (Garfield Shaped), rice cakes (32 pallets of) rubber ducks (inevitably), shoes (half a million), sweaters, timber (2,000 tonnes on one beach), tennis shoes, toothbrushes (used!?), toy eggs and wine barrels (empty, unfortunately)
Picture: Getty Images
THE RISE OF THE CARGO SHIP
The development of the Cargo vessel has been spectacular.
Early container ships (after the Second World War) were composed of modified tankers or bulk vessels that could carry up to 1000 TEU’s. (Twenty Equipment Unit-or 20-foot container)
By contrast the largest container vessel today is the Ever Ace (length equivalent to 4 Wembley pitches) which can transport 23,992 TEU’s.
The Ever Ace
The largest cargo vessel today!
Hence the huge increase in sea-borne shipments which make the shipping lanes so busy today.
Taking everything into account, these massive container vessels do a remarkably efficient job.
The oceans are awfully dangerous, even for the massive and majestic container ships of today.
WALLS OF WATER
As long as man has gone to sea, there have always been terrifying tales of great and terrible walls of water that rear up without warning to drag ships to their doom!
Freak or Monster waves can rear up unexpectedly and crash down with a fearsome force on these vessels which suddenly seem tiny in comparison with the great maelstrom round about them.
Of course, modern navigation methods mean that vessels try to avoid dangerous areas of the sea when plotting their routes, but out on the ocean things can happen suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere.
John Lund/Getty
And of course, every effort is being made by the stakeholders in the industry to increase safety measures and minimise any negative impact ecologically and environmentally, including the actual future designing and building of the new super ships themselves.
Nevertheless, man’s attempt to tame the sea has been in progress for thousands of years and we don’t seem to have quite got a definitive handle on it yet!
Here at STS, as importers of some key lines of our range, we take a very keen interest and keep a very close eye on all the developments happening in the shipping world.
We are constantly exploring avenues that will result in us being able to ship larger quantities shorter distances, thus cutting down on the actual sea miles per annum.
Our long-range view includes looking at the possibility of not importing at all, although the remarkable quality and versatility of our products may well lend themselves to export deals in the future!
In the meantime, we will enjoy taking in the sea air from time to time and keep a weather eye out for any alien items in the surf!
