‘Epic’ container loss in the Pacific
A cargo loss ‘of epic proportions’ is how one shipping news website described an incident in late November 2020 when 1,800 containers were lost mid-Pacific from a cargo ship en route from China to California.
The 364m Japanese cargo ship, had left Yantian in China and was around 1,600 miles north-west of Hawaii when it encountered severe weather and waves reported to be up to 16m. Container stacks collapsed and around a quarter of the ship’s cargo of containers were lost overboard, including 54 containing fireworks. The ship was diverted to return to its home port in Japan, where an investigation is under way. The operation to remove collapsed container stacks from the ship was expected to take a month.
