Arnold Maersk Shipping "Oops"

I was riding back from getting together with a friend of Mine on Saturday morning. I was taking WA-99 north back from West Seattle. Off my left is the bad where there is a lot of shipping traffic. Hell, all of Harbor Island is essentially devoted to shipping. What I saw came as a bit of a surprise to me: a ship with containers canted at a weird angle -- something that you knew could not possibly be intentional.Today, Ennie and I went to take a look.It took a bit of scouting to find the right spot to view it. At first we were on the wrong side of the depot and could barely get a glimpse. A bit of navigating by braille got us to where we could get a clean view of the mess.View Larger MapHere's the problem:Yeah... you can tell that something is definitely amiss with the situation at hand.There was another couple hanging out and taking pictures from the same vantage point. They let us know that they took off a red container before we had arrived.Over the next hour we watched them take off another container.After a while they managed to start the lift with the larger crane. The two folks in the in basket made a quick retreat as it was slowly being lifted.After out was safely on the ground, the "small" crane took over the spreader bar and lifted it onto a truck to take away.A bit more digging revealed a couple of new stories that also have some pictures and more details of the events leading up to this "oops."One from the West Seattle Herald and another from the Seattle Times. It seems that 18 containers were thrown overboard as the Arnold Maersk was near Dutch Harbor, Alaska on a voyage from Korea to Seattle. Another 53 were damaged.You can see pretty clearly the massive damage to some of the containers as they crumpled like paper. The ones being lifted by only two of their four lift points are surely damaged as well since these things aren't designed to hold loads in that direction. Of course this says nothing about the contents of these containers!This has an impact not just for the containers that were damaged, but the rest of the schedule as well. The Arnold Maersk was scheduled to set sail today towards Vancouver. That isn't happening.Here's the schedule as it stood today:11/24/13 Seattle Departs11/26/13 Vancouver Departs12/09/13 Yokohama Arrives12/11/13 Shanghai Arrives12/13/13 Ningbo Arrives12/16/13 Hong Kong (HKHKG) Arrives12/17/13 Yantian ArrivesYou have to wonder what's going to happen to the rest of the cargo on there. Lots of headaches and insurance claims, that's for certain!

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All photos copyright 2013 George Burgyan -- Republication by permission only.