ONE Apus Arrives in Kobe, Revealing Cargo Loss of Epic Proportions – gCaptain
▻https://gcaptain.com/one-apus-arrives-in-kobe-revealing-cargo-loss-of-epic-proportions
A photo shows the ONE Apus as it arrived into view in Kobe, Japan, December 8, 2020.
Photo: Twitter @mrnkA4srnrA
The containership ONE Apus arrived at the Port of Kobe, Japan on Tuesday after its eight-day trek from the middle of Pacific Ocean where it lost nearly 2,000 containers during a storm.
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According to initial figures published the owners and manager, some 1,816 containers were lost overboard as a result of severe weather conditions when the ship was approximately 1,600 nautical miles northwest of Hawaii. Among those lost were 64 Dangerous Goods containers, including 54 with fireworks, eight containing batteries and two with liquid ethanol.
According to the owners and managers, weather at the time of the cargo loss was reported as wind force 4 on the Beaufort Wind Scale, corresponding to 13-18 mph winds, with north-westerly seas of 5 to 6 meters and a “long high swell”. Weather maps however show significant wave heights of up to 16 meters associated with the weather system encountered by the vessel.
A map shows 16-meter significant wave heights associated with the November 30, 2020 weather system.Based on the estimated number of containers lost, the ONE Apus incident is thought to be the liner shipping industry’s worst cargo loss since the MOL Comfort sank in the Indian Ocean in 2013. Many online have also been asking how something like this can happen. While cargo loss of this magnitude is unprecedented, similar past incidents may hold some clues. For example, the Svendborg Maersk lost 517 units in the Bay of Biscay in 2014 and the MSC ZOE lost 342 units in the North Sea in 2019. Those incident are previously believed to be two of the worst cargo losses on record.
Regarding the MSC Zoe, a Dutch Safety Board investigation revealed route-specific risks and extreme hydrodynamic forces acting on the ship, the containers, and lashing systems, as the primary cause. In the Svendborg Maersk incident, the Danish Maritime Accident Investigation Board identified heavy rolling when conditions became more severe than forecasted as the probable cause. In both cases, human factors combined with adverse weather conditions resulted in extreme ship motions that ultimately led to cargo loss.
As bigger and bigger containerships continue to enter into service (the biggest today are about 23,000 TEU capacity), so do questions related to their safety, especially with incidents related to extreme cargo loss or fire, as was the case in the Maersk Honam incident.
