Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

[shoo]

To anchor discussion, prior to the rise of intermodal shipping containers in the '60s & '70s, cargo was shipped as breakbulk cargo. Losses from theft and damage were considerably reduced by switching from breakbulk cargo to shipping containers. Not the same as losing stuff over the side, but still a regular and somewhat predictable expense.

One anecdote I remember from Levinson's book is about a scottish whisky distiller exporting to the US being very excited about being able to ship whisky in a giant stainless steel vessel inside a container instead of shipping individual bottles inside wooden crates (imagine the theft during loading/unloading...).

That said, shipping containers were not adopted because they reduced theft and damage (consequently the cost of insuring cargo), they were adopted because they offered much lower costs to shippers (after enough investment in ships and ports and cranes and trucks and changes to transport regulation to provide the infrastructure to move containers around efficiently without double-handling them or unloading and repacking them for technical/labour/regulatory reasons).

Marc Levinson's book _The Box_ about the history of the shipping container is worth a read -- https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691170817/th...

[pchristensen]

The Box is way more fascinating than it has any right to be. It touches on basically every aspect of post-1950 world economy, history, urban planning, social changes, migration, etc.

[goodpoint]

> To anchor discussion

cough

[nradov]

The Scottish distillers should just ship whisky in tankers a few million gallons at a time. Much more cost effective.

[donw]

I've taken an interest in learning more about both the history of logistics, as well as modern practices.

Any more links (books or otherwise) you could share?

[rurounijones]

"The box that changed Britain" is a good BBC documentary on the subject as well if you can find it online.

[chha]

Thanks for suggesting the book, added it to my list of things to read!

[lmilcin]

> More than 3,000 boxes dropped into the sea last year, and more than 1,000 have fallen overboard so far in 2021.

Umm... we have end of April (the article is dated April 29th) or 1/3rd of the year. The last time I checked a third of 3000 is around 1000.

Anyway, nowhere in the article I see any numbers to support that there is a "sudden rise in accidents". Even the graphs themselves seem to show entirely different picture -- that this might just be a fluke.

[jlund-molfese]

But the graph only shows YTD losses, right? If you make the 2021 graph 3 times larger to compensate for the roughly 1/3rd of the year we've seen so far[1], it looks like more than a fluke than just 2020 alone. Both 2020 and 2021 should have more cargo loss than any year since 2013.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/k5hWs8u.jpg

[boomboomsubban]

> Even the graphs themselves seem to show entirely different picture

The graph for 2020 is roughly double what you'd see in every year except 2013, and 2021 has already matched most other years.

I think they're trying to make too much of a trend out of years dominated by one major accident, but the data definitely shows two worse than usual years in a row.

[superfamicom]

Is there a list of what exactly was lost? Does anyone actively seek out and salvage this sunken treasure? I hate to think of another Garfield Phone thing in the future with something more dangerous.

https://time.com/5561165/garfield-phones-france/

[throwaway316943]

Somewhere there is a container full of Amazon Basics Butt Plugs waiting to spill forth its rubbery contents upon unsuspecting American beaches.

[lostlogin]

My grandfather used to go and salvage (loot?) smashed up ships on the Yorkshire coast after storms as a kid in the early 20th century.

They had places they’d go after bad weather, knowing that’s where wrecks ended up.

[8bitsrule]

This ship [0] went down offshore of Cornwall in 1641, with 60 men, 100,000 pounds of gold and 500,000 pieces-of-eight aboard. Cornwall is not known to be friendly to wrecks. And yet, nearly 400 years later, she's not been found. They say.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merchant_Royal

[richkirkpa]

Under rated statement of the day .. “These vessels are designed to carry the boxes, and to have these losses is — dare I say it — unacceptable.”

[CalChris]

... to captains not deviating from a storm to save on fuel and time as they face pressure from charterers ...

Rather than shifting this cost to the shippers, they are essentially shifting it to the insurers and then paying more in premiums as a result.

Slow Steaming is going to cause some of this because ships will be en route longer and therefore more at risk of weather delay. Maybe they should apply the principle of General Average and simply charge for weather delays, shift this cost to the shippers.

[JoeAltmaier]

Intermodal shipping containers are arguable the most significant technology of the 20th century. They did more to improve worldwide standard of living, than any other advancement. Including medical.

[thehappypm]

A surprisingly huge leap forward for the world was air conditioning. Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, said it was essential for his country's development. Without AC a huge swath of the world would still be seen by the West as this uninhabitable, uncivilized jungle.

[timcosta]

Penicillin says hello

[dataflow]

Are there no environmental concerns here? I'm kind of confused why no one seems to mention anything about that.

[wongarsu]

3000 containers/year is a pretty small drop in the ocean. Most dangerous chemicals that you don't want in the ocean are loaded in a way that they are surrounded by other containers, so they are less likely to fall off (and less likely to be shot by pirates and catch fire). It seems reasonable to assume that the vast majority of the sinking containers are filled with pretty harmless stuff

[xiphias2]

I see ships being overloaded a good problem to have. The more countries trade with eachother, the less reason they have to fight wars with eachother.

[dragontamer]

> The more countries trade with eachother, the less reason they have to fight wars with eachother.

WW1 pretty much proved that wrong.

Europe was trading a lot with each other. That didn't stop all the rivalries from starting up and causing the general "Great Game" feeling between powers.

For now, it seems like DEMOCRACY is the best thing to prevent wars. Democracies don't like fighting against other democracies: it seems like in most cases, convincing the other country through communication yields actual results.

[dmitrygr]

My sister wrote & defended her PhD thesis disproving this intuitive but wrong connection. Plenty of states happily trade with their enemies during wars. So war does not necessarily stop trade. And thus trade is no prophylactic to war. States are most likely to cut off trade during war in very long wars - which are no longer possible between nuclear powers.

http://mariya.gr/research.htm

If you have counter-arguments other than "But, but, but that FEELS wrong", i am sure she'd like to hear them, her email is on the site"

[chrisco255]

Really? The U.S. was founded on a war with its primary trading partner.

[brobinson]

Unfortunately, this has never been true to my knowledge.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion

[dariusj18]

The basis of the modern liberal world order.

[betwixthewires]

You don't have conflict with people you don't need anything from, usually. It might seem counterintuitive but there's weight to the idea that interdependence increases risk of conflict.

[danielovichdk]

There are very big differences in captain papers around the world.

It's a very know fact that e.g Mærsk has changed their top tier crew from being Danish to chineese, indian, phillipine etc.

I am only implying that education might be part of it.

[Tabular-Iceberg]

Forged certificates is indeed a problem in the latter countries, but whether Danish, Chinese, Indian or Filipino, they're all told by a computer where to put each container.

Some blame may lie with those who tell the computer how tall it should stack the containers, but another big problem in shipping is that stevedores in many ports simply can't be bothered to secure the cargo according to the instructions. Deck officers (even western ones) don't take the problem seriously, leave port in an unseaworthy state, and leave the able-bodied seamen with the dangerous task of re-lashing everything under way. That is if they can even reach the cargo, which is less likely on a container ship.

[helsinkiandrew]

Some background on problems of containers to other ships and yachts:

https://www.yachtingworld.com/news/could-a-floating-shipping...

[JKCalhoun]

> More than 3,000 boxes dropped into the sea last year, and more than 1,000 have fallen overboard so far in 2021.

A fascinating record we leave the next explorers.

[Sebb767]

If they can find them. We've lost whole planes in the ocean ; finding something as small as a shipping container will require a big stroke of luck.

[JoeAltmaier]

At 200 million shipping container trips per year, whether losses are 1000, 4000 or 10,000 seems pretty insignificant. Even 200,000 would be around 1-in-1000 or a tenth of a percent chance of your laptop being lost overboard.

[cabernal]

It'll be interesting when these container are found thousands of years into the future, assuming humans (or transhumans) still being around.

[cbozeman]

I would love for a shipment of dildos to be found, along with a shipment of books with at least one titled Teledildonics Programming in Python for the Professional Programmer, 3rd Edition: Updated with a new chapter on TCP/IP latency reduction.

[guynamedloren]

No mention of recovery. I wonder.. are the containers ever recovered, or is it prohibitively expensive, or, logistically near impossible?

[kingvash]

They have a valve that scuttles them after a few hours otherwise they are a big hazard for other boats

[bellyfullofbac]

I wonder if someone can make a living recovering these containers and selling their contents on eBay (considering it seems everyone treats the fallen off container as litter..).

[Ichthypresbyter]

For interest, here are the UK Maritime Accident Investigation Branch reports into two incidents of loss of containers overboard in the Pacific from ships that happened to be UK-flagged at the time:

https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/loss-of-cargo-containers-ove...

The Ever Smart (yes, owned by Evergreen's UK subsidiary)- 44 containers lost.

https://www.gov.uk/maib-reports/loss-of-cargo-containers-ove...

The CMA CGM G. Washington- 137 containers lost.

[gumby]

This has always worried me when I’ve moved across the ocean (three times). Books, photos, personal items heading over the side of a ship. I know the odds are low but it’s different from a container ipod identical, brand new Phones.

[learningwebdev]

When you move overseas, wouldn't you take anything with sentimental value onboard with you as luggage? I can't imagine being too devastated to lose books or whatever other larger items people take when they relocate overseas (assuming that you would be compensated for the monetary value of lost items and be able to replace them). In my experience, most sentimental items are small enough to easily fit in a suitcase.

However, on second thought, I suppose some people would have more and larger sentimental items than I do, like large vases or antique pieces of furniture and so forth.

Is it possible to pay extra to have a very large flotation device attached to your shipping container? :P

[buster]

I am wondering, why it's talking about the absolute number of 3000 containers, but not mentioning if or how the shipping logistics evolved in that time. It could as well be, that shipping simply increased over years, could it not?

edit: According to https://stats.unctad.org/handbook/MaritimeTransport/Indicato... container shipments increased steadily over years.

[Retric]

The data is far to noisy for such small changes to be particularly relevant. The 2013 peak looks about 15x as high as 2017.

[Borrible]

To get numbers to publish, just ask the right people and make an educated guess?

https://www.ship-technology.com/features/featurecargo-overbo...

[mensetmanusman]

This is amazing, who would’ve thought that clicking on a ‘delivery now’ button might topple a container for people in 1000 years to find.