Oh come on. If you don’t follow the link and read the article. At LEAST read the rest of the headline.
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Beat me to it : D
It’s a container ship and not a tanker ship!
Crew? Who cares about the crew? Think of all that merchandise!
Oh the humanity!
Seems to me that putting out a fire on a sinking ship makes rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic seem quite reasonable by comparison.
The upshot was the ship sank and you don’t know a goddamned thing. Get it? Good.
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I’ve shipped personal goods back and forth on container ships a few times during international moves, so every time I see a container ship like this in trouble my first thought is, “I wonder if any families have their old photo albums and important papers in a liftvan on that ship?” my second thought is, “This is why the shipping companies insist that you take insurance on your shipped goods.” and only then do I start to think of all the things that companies ship back and forth on those ships.
I mean, sure, that ship is mostly full of things that are still owned by one company or another that are being shipped for trade purposes, but the few containers with some family’s personal goods are the ones that are going to hurt the most.
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Except that this ship was only 5 years old. That’s WAY too soon for it to have a fault like this, and the fallout of this incident is that other ships made in its line are now being checked over for faults and getting special routing to avoid rougher sees wherever possible until the cause of this accident becomes clear.
(Not that I know anything about shipping, really. It’s just that having family in the merchant marine contributed to this story giving me a curious that I had to follow for a while so I could understand it a bit better.)
The part I find impressive is that even after it broke in half, both halves stayed level (pretty level) and floated perfectly well on their own. Other than the front falling off, their was some nice construction and design in there.
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Or design serendipity. A full hold that pins down hundreds of weatherized containers is, effectively, a Lego ship, and should float almost as well until seepage finally wins. And this is before you consider how much packing material is in international commerce.
It has been suggested that the fire part was not accidental. And now that both halves are at the bottom, we’ll never find out. International shipping is a nasty business…
It’s worth noting the ship was completely full with arms sent from the US to Syrian rebels. This is a story that would have been front page news if it wasn’t for the controversial cargo.
My wife and I in January spent 18 days traveling on a freighter like this one, operated by Hanjin, sailing from Shanghai to Long Beach. We lucked out with great weather, very unusual for that time of year and route. An amazing journey, but the danger was always in the back of our minds. Went 12 days without seeing another vessel or land. No cell or internet service for nearly the entire voyage. Freighter photos plus a short account can be found here:
http://25000milestosf.blogspot.com
Do this once if you ever have the chance…
Actually we know a bit more than that. We know that the first section went down pretty much intact. We know that the last section, the one that sunk on the 11th, was first under tow and stable but later something happened and it sank while ablaze and under tow and almost burned to the waterline.
Happens all the time, right? Right.
It seems they could save a lot of money if they considered the crew as merchandise. They could get people to pay them for transportation and operate the ship.
I’m travelling to the US tomorrow, and I would definitely have done that if they allowed children on board. I have been on a 13 day voyage before, but wasn’t so lucky with the weather. It would have been 11 days if there wasn’t a typhoon in the way.
That was snowden’s boat. It was headed to Moscow. 
I feel for the millions of unfulfilled consumers.
Hey, the cheap crap I ordered from Singapore WAS that ship!
