Captain MSC Zoe not guilty of losing North Sea containers

Professional Mariner Forum
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The captain of the container ship MSC Zoe will not be prosecuted, the Public Prosecution Service said. During the night of 1 to 2 January 2019, the container ship lost an enormous load of containers in the sea, north of the Wadden Islands, in bad weather. The captain cannot be accused by criminal law, there is no question of guilt or intent, the Public Prosecution Service concluded after investigation.

"Research by an expert at TU Delft has not established exactly what caused the jettisoning of so many containers. It is plausible that the ship hit the seabed. That is insufficient to blame the criminal consequences for behavior of the captain. Furthermore, an investigation has shown that the containers on board were secured in accordance with regulations ", the OM said. In retrospect, there are doubts about the captain’s choice for the route along the Wadden Islands, despite the bad weather, the OM said. However, the judiciary concludes: “The captain was able and allowed to make the chosen short sailing route”.

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Personally I think the ship - at too high speed - collided with a solid wave and that container securing arrangements failed due to the impact.

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This seems like a reasonable conclusion on the face of it. If the experts can’t figure it out after the fact it would be difficult for the captain to judge beforehand.

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I am not sure about this for the following reasons:

  • Hitting the sea floor is a violent event and must have been noticed by the crew. As far as I know there are no such reports.

  • Divers who searched for (bottom) damage in Bremerhaven reported that no damage was found.

  • If the VDR was able to detect and record such events there was no mention of such an occurrence.

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The way I read that is that the master might be to blame if the Zoe did in fact touch bottom and it is plausible that it did. However that alone is insufficient to be able to blame the captain.

"Research by an expert at TU Delft has not established exactly what caused the jettisoning of so many containers. It is plausible that the ship hit the seabed. The fact that it is only plausible is not sufficient to blame the criminal consequences for behavior of the captain.

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It is quite easy to verify if a ship has ‘hit the seabed’ - I call it grounded - i.e. put her in a dry dock and have a look. It seems the owner arranged for a dive survey in port but it is not sufficient. Anyway, it seems all agree the ship impacted something causing a shock that damaged the container lashings and I think it was a steep wave.

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MSC pays €3.4 million compensation for overboard containers:

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That small amount cannot be true seen the havoc that took place at sea and on land. and the damage will still be going on for the years to come. That’s a real bargain for MSC. They obviously have better negotiators and lawyers than our ministry…