Container Ship Breaks In Two, Sinks

Cliff Stoll writes "Along with 7000 containers, ship MOL Comfort broke in half in high seas in the Indian Ocean. The aft section floated for a week, then sank on June 27th. The forward section was towed most of the way to port, but burned and sank on July 10th. This post-panamax ship was 316 meters long and only 5 years old. With a typical value of $40,000 per container (PDF), this amounts to a quarter billion dollar loss. The cause is unknown, but may be structural or perhaps due to overfilled containers that are declared as underweight. Of course, the software used to calculate ship stability relies upon these incorrect physical parameters."

Comments

Declared underweight?

[Spy Handler]

so they operate on an honor system?

One would think they'd weigh the container themselves and charge accordingly. But then I'm not in the shipping business so I dunno...

Re:Declared underweight?

[Rockoon]

The *rational* thing to do is make sure your ships are safe so that you don't waste a quarter billion dollars.

It is almost certainly the case that the insurance companies already factor in the risk of overloading, because they've been insuring these ships and their cargo for a long time. I don't see anyone suggesting that overloading (or incorrectly loading) ships is something new. The insurance companies are armed with actual numbers that go back literally centuries to the East India Company and so forth.

The ship sank. Its not an indicator of a failure of free market, nor is it an indicator that the insurance company isnt assessing the risks correctly. Its just an indicator that that particular ship at that particular time experienced a structural failure leading to its sinking.

In all likelihood, the amount of oversight, construction rules, and so forth on the shipping industry is already very near optimal from a cost/benefit viewpoint.