APL England Master Charged Over Loss of Containers Off Sydney

I had a major shipyard in Singapore blast and paint an entire ship once and it was the worst paint job imaginable.

Story told to me by my brother-in-law, former officer on a Canadian warship. A sailor came to him inquiring about a small square protrusion on deck, up against a bulkhead. He couldn’t figure out what it was so he instructed the sailor to strip the paint off. Under all that paint was a pack of cigarettes. It had been painted over so many times it had become a solid permanent fixture.

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A German company I worked for used to engage a representative from the paint manufacturer to supervise all coatings applied by the shipyard. I learned a lot from them.

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I did a ship riding job some years ago on a medium sized Chevron black product tanker for Class Close up Survey. The had a paint company rep along to assess the condition of the coatings at the time. I learned a lot that trip.

The last company I worked with used International Paint during shipyard… The rep was there during the process, but did not ride afterwards… I did ask questions, got some interesting answers about in his opinion what I was doing right, and what I could be better at. Using his own words, corrected a problem during our session at the yard. He took me to lunch more than once after that.

Why does container stacks collapse and what is the legal implications?
P&I Club Guard has tried to enlighten and advice on that for it’s members.
(Long and detailed article):

http://www.gard.no/web/updates/content/29869691/why-do-containership-stacks-collapse-and-who-is-liable-#:~:text=Container%20shells%20are%20exposed%20to,be%20declared%20by%20the%20shippers.

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Interesting read. Thx Bug

This captain was a bit unlucky to lose 50 containers off Sydney and be jailed for that. Not so much for the captain of the MSC Zoe who lost 270 containers only a few miles from a nature reserve in the Netherlands that is on the UNESCO world heritage list. The Wadden Sea is now recognized worldwide as a unique nature reserve of which it is considered of great importance to preserve it. So far more than 2 million kilos of debris have been fished out of the water and there is at least the same amount that is not yet been found.

The captain in this case just walked away from the disaster and was probably sailing again on another ship soon afterwards. The incident happened in January 2019, there was the compulsory interim report published in December 2019 but we are still waiting for the final report. For some reason I have the idea that we are taken for a ride and that nothing will come out of this final report. So far we haven’t received any compensation from the company or insurers who fight each claim or even donot react on claims brought in. I am sure we will get the short end of the stick…

It would seem a lifetime ago that my nights and weekends were crammed with study for the masters legal knowledge and ship’s business exam. The thing was you went back to sea as second mate and advanced slowly through mate and then master and then had to reacquaint yourself with all that stuff that numbed the brain back then.

If it was oil, APL would have to clean it up.

PS Actually it is oil, only it’s highly refined. Just as harmful to wildlife as the pure stuff as it will never disintegrate. It’s not right for the polluters to just walk away.

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Maybe it’s time to stop differentiating between spill types and just call all of them spills and apply the same laws.

Yea, it takes a long time for a cheap, oil based tennis shoe to break down. It’s polluting any way you look at it.

The question is will throwing captains in jail solve this problem? What’s it to the company if the master is made the scapegoat, has his licensed pulled, is jailed and loses everything?

Seems like it works out for the company, they can replace the captain and continue business as usual.

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I pointed out the difference in treatment between both cases. Normally you jail a person after he has been sentenced to such a punishment. In my opinion in the APL’s case it would have sufficed, if they had wanted him around for the investigation, to collect his passport. The last thing you want to do is to put somebody in jail unnecessarily, unless it is about a heavy crime of course.

Funny/sad how that works out.

What if the captain can produce evidence that he has continually requested attention be paid to the structural integrity of the lashing system? Repair requests left incomplete. Does the fault now fall back on the company?

what if this captain had only recently taken over command of this ship In the last month? Should he be held responsible for a detailed inspection of the lashing system in such a short period of time?

The whole thing is ludicrous and you’re right. It sets a precedent that makes the captain dispensable for the company. A patsy in waiting. Not a good thing for any of us who do the job.

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Could be wrong, but logging and meticulous recording of conditions/repair requests turned the tide against the company in the Marine Electric case.

That may be, but that was a total loss casualty with tremendous loss of life.

I’m referring to what have historically been considered force majeur cases of rough and boisterous Weather causing cargo loss or damage to the vessel leading to the arrest of a Captain. These are far more common and being thrown in jail for such things seems like a shitty reaction from nation states when companies are not paying their fair share of the cleanup costs.

Yeah, there is a lot here. The ship no doubt has a system of some kind for finding and documenting problems but it doesn’t always work the way it should for one reason or other.

IDK about container ships but I would think that something like lashing points would be something the port engineer or someone shoreside would want to eyeball from time to time. Stuff like that is easy to have slip between the cracks. It’s not like it was OK one day and not the next.

Agree, total loss, but immediately the powers that be go after the mariners. This was one of the few cases then when the owners were proven at fault. This arresting thing lately is disturbing and and not sensibly, equally applied. Too early in the APL case to determine if Master/Officers took the time or effort to be as meticulous as the mate on the Marine Electrician. Some arrests are obviously correct (Concordia), many are not. The two box ships in heavy weather and suffered loss of cargo, a head scratcher why either both walked ,or both arrested.