9 ms·

General average declared for Ever Forward after unsuccesful attempts to refloat

rossdavidh 5y ago
Do NOT let one of this company's ships into the Panama Canal...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- walrus01 5y ago
  the largest container ships are too big for even the post-expansion-new-panamax anyways.
- hnburnsy 5y ago
  A local pilot was in control of the ship at the time... >The Bay pilot aboard had control of the ship at the time it ran aground. Investigators are still looking at whether it was a mechanical issue or operator error that caused it to leave the channel. https://chesapeakebaymagazine.com/container-ship-aground-outside-patapsco-river/ https://chesapeakebaymagazine.com/container-ship-aground-out...
  - kayodelycaon 5y ago
    By control, they mean giving directions. Pilots have no authority over the ship’s crew and they certainly don’t operate the controls.
    - davidjytang 5y ago
      I read that in Panama Canal pilots assume full responsibility of the ships.
teruakohatu 5y ago
"The law of general average is a principle of maritime law whereby all stakeholders in a sea venture proportionately share any losses resulting from a voluntary sacrifice of part of the ship or cargo to save the whole in an emergency. For instance, should the crew jettison some cargo overboard to lighten the ship in a storm, the loss would be shared pro rata by both the carrier and the cargo-owners." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_average https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_average
- confident_inept 5y ago
  Thank you. That website and article were a train wreck. I had no idea that ship was still stuck. I guess now they have to dismantle it in place? What's process here?
  - wbl 5y ago
    It's a site for people who carry out an ancient profession that has had millennia to accrue jargon and lore.
    - KarlKemp 5y ago
      Yes, like "sockpuppet". Or "RfD".
  - walrus01 5y ago
    gcaptain is not a train wreck, it assumes that the reader is in the maritime industry and uses terminology that is widely known to that specific industry segment. much as a network engineering or software development news site and acronyms might be even more confusing to people who hold 100 ton+ masters licenses. look at all the weird sounding terms that might be used in an infosec/netsec publication...
    - tedivm 5y ago
      It's a visual trainwreck on firefox, with elements being blocked by interstitials in the first load that have their dismissal button shifted into a weird and hard to find place. Once that was cleared up it was pretty readable.
glitchc 5y ago
One I can believe, two is stretching it, but three in a row? Something stinks.
- smitty1e 5y ago
  The local news says: "She missed her turn." Now, anyone who's been in the biz (4.5 years of sea time in the U.S. Navy here) knows that a vessel getting underway has an experienced pilot and a full navigation detail on the bridge while in restricted waters. Looking at the ludicrous funds already spent over the last three weeks (we must be talking hundreds of millions by now, with no end in sight) and the ripple effects of closing the channel (which costs must jump into billions almost immediately), saying "she missed her turn" is almost a middle finger to the audience. Was it a steering casualty? Were the radars operational? Was the crew qualified? Does someone want to craft an unsavory theory? The costs involved were quite literally among the main drivers for creating the idea of insurance[1]. Tell me what caused her to "miss her turn". With stakes that high, such mishaps really need a full-on tsunami behind them for such a simplistic explanation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_insurance
  - rob74 5y ago
    From what I could see (https://www.npr.org/2022/03/31/1089997406/ever-forward-container-ship-stuck-cheasapeake-bay https://www.npr.org/2022/03/31/1089997406/ever-forward-conta..., Wikipedia), the channel is not closed? Maybe operating at reduced capacity because of the need to keep a safety distance to the stranded ship, but they still can get around her. BTW "She missed her turn" made me think of something different, it's "she missed a turn", as in going straight forward when she should have turned right or left.
    - smitty1e 5y ago
      I do not understand the distinction you're making in the second paragraph.
      - 5y ago
Kon-Peki 5y ago
I am really surprised that it is still stuck. The Ever Given was only stuck for 6 days in what appeared to be a more challenging situation. This has now been 2 weeks. I guess that since it's not blocking anything they don't have to move as quickly.
- a2tech 5y ago
  It’s well and truly buried. Something like it plowed into the mud at 14 knots, and pushed over a full ship length into it. It’s draft is typically 40ish feet and it’s in 20ft of water at the bow. So that means it’s buried 20ft in mud up front. The strength of the suction alone is staggering. I’m starting to think it might be there for a very long time. Maybe even salvaged in place.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    I think it’s impossible to refloat it without damaging the hull at this point, and you’ll know salvage is the route they’re taking when the containment booms (for fuel loss prevention) are deployed around the vessel.
    - Victerius 5y ago
      The ship is dead. The owners need to write it off their books. It shall never move again. The cargo will have to be removed one container at a time. The fuel tanks will be drained. And then the hull will need to be cut into pieces in place.
    - Animats 5y ago
      It's not impossible, just expensive. It's just in mud. Expect the arrival of large suction dredges. Like these.[1] Large cranes may be brought in to remove containers and lighten the load. This is a big job, but not that bad. It's in a harbor near shore facilities, with good weather, and it's not urgent. [1] https://boskalis.com/about-us/fleet-and-equipment/dredgers.html https://boskalis.com/about-us/fleet-and-equipment/dredgers.h...
blamazon 5y ago
If I am understanding this correctly -- if I ship cargo across oceans via container, I am potentially accepting some piece of liability for fixing any accident that occurs? Is this true? Or are they just saying, oopsie, your costs are your own costs due to this lost cargo, we will not recompensate.
- Digory 5y ago
  You bear the risk that you’ll have to pay your pro-rata share of any cargo sacrificed to save the ship. You can (and probably should) have your own insurance that will pay you in case this happens. The insurer can pay cash to the cargo owners ASAP, and then sort out the equitable sale of the actual cargo and distribution of the proceeds. Kind of like a bankruptcy for a ship’s voyage. If they have to wreck some stuff to save everybody else, and that works, everybody else has to pay something. Fair-ish, but I suspect Insurers start to call foul on Evergreen’s repeated groundings.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    It is surprising how even "professionals" (read: companies shipping loads of containers every month) don't get that insurance part. And that insurance is dirt cheap, I used to have one as a basis for my now closed company. It covered all losses, globally, for all modes of transportation for solar modules (and some other electronics falling into the same class of products), covered warehousing. For a projected transported value of appr. 100k € per months I paid roughly 1k per year. And still people for go that, relying on the suppliers "insurance" based on Incoterms... Well, those insurance is usually very limited and leaves some holes, especially if people don't get what incoterms to use and what they mean...
    - dmurray 5y ago
      If you're shipping "loads of containers every month" but you don't send them all on the same ship, perhaps you can afford to self-insure. Insurance is so cheap because only a tiny fraction of freight is lost.
cphoover 5y ago
Evergreen Marine? Isn't this the same company that ran aground in the suez canal? What gives? How would they not prevent this from happening so close to that last huge nightmare, and bottleneck in global shipping?
- labster 5y ago
  The very same, and this one is a few thousand miles away from the other nightmare, and is not blocking anyone else.
  - cphoover 5y ago
    Yea it's just sitting in the shallows of the Chesapeake near where I live likely destroying the ecosystem
- joe_the_user 5y ago
  Yeah, same company and same class of ships. The ship that got stuck in the Suez had gotten stuck other places previous and might have gotten stuck afterwards too faik. Huge ships played a part in the bottlenecking of LA/Long Beach also. In the last time years, all of the largest shipping companies have built ships that are essentially way too big, just to save some marginal amount. A big part of this is that these shipping lines mostly don't have to pay the downside of this absurdity.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Uehreka 5y ago
  Knowing absolutely nothing about this industry, I wonder if it’s just a matter of there being only a few big players, such that any accident would always be one of a couple companies.
- tedunangst 5y ago
  How much control do you think they had over these incidents?
vwarner1411 5y ago
So for anyone curious, the article mentions very briefly that there was a pilot onboard. A pilot is someone who comes onboard to help the ship navigate, and is usually required in areas like this (areas with shallow waters, etc). Transiting the Suez also requires a pilot come onboard. They come on to prevent these issues.
- eru 5y ago
  Historical anecdote: Mark Twain used to be a pilot, too. His literary pseudonym pays homage to that profession.
55873445216111 5y ago
Battleship USS Missouri also ran aground in Chesapeake Bay in 1950. the battleship remained stuck for over two weeks before being freed from the sand. The ship was so damaged that she had to return to port and enter dry dock for repairs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_USS_Missouri_grounding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_USS_Missouri_grounding
RandomBK 5y ago
Does anyone have a reputable resource for how General Average actually works under today's international law? Some questions I'm curious about are: (1) What constitutes an "emergency"? If the ship is stuck but not otherwise in imminent danger, would GA apply? It would appear to me that Evergreen could safely transport the cargo off the ship, but would rather just throw it overboard to save time and effort. Doesn't that just unnecessarily pass the costs on to cargo-owners? (2) Many places refer to the idea that GA only applies if jettisoning cargo actually saves the ship. It sounds like the ship is really stuck - if they jettison cargo but the ship still doesn't budge, would that nullify GA? (3) Is the GA liability limited by the declared value of your own cargo on that ship? What happens if the total declared value of the "saved" cargo is less than the value of the "discarded" cargo? (4) Do cargo-owners have an option to say "you know what, I don't really want my cargo anymore" and avoid paying GA? (5) What country would have jurisdiction over any litigation in this instance? Would it be the country whose territorial waters this happened in, the flag country of the ship, the country of ownership of the ship, contract-defined, etc?
- dmurray 5y ago
  I'm not an expert but 3 and 4 seem to have been answered: the point of GA is everyone gets X% of their cargo value back, and we decide what X is. Either you get X in cash, or you pay 100-X into the fund. So yes, your liability is limited to 100% of your cargo, and you wouldn't generally want to exercise any option to walk away from it. (Maybe you would in some edge cases around fraud, or financing difficulties, or where the market value of your cargo has suddenly declined).
paxys 5y ago
Remember folks these ships approach the size of the tallest skyscrapers in the country. Inertia is a bitch.
throw0101a 5y ago
The Odd Lots podcast did an episode on this ship—partly motivated by the fact that one of the co-host's (Tracy Alloway) recently moved from Hong Kong to New York and all her stuff is on it: > It's happened again. Another container ship owned by the Evergreen Maritime Corp. has gotten stuck a year after the Ever Given became lodged in the Suez Canal and briefly halted the flow of global trade. This time the grounding happened in the Chesapeake Bay and involves the Ever Forward -- a 1000-foot container ship which happens to be carrying the contents of Tracy's entire Hong Kong apartment. On this episode of Odd Lots, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with maritime historian Sal Mercogliano about why another ship has gotten stuck, what it says about shipping and infrastructure, and how long Tracy might have to wait to get her stuff. * https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/5abecebe-aa98-11ec-9133-1f4d26396eb5 https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/5abecebe-aa98-11ec-9133-1f4... * https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-tracys-furniture-is-stuck-on-a-grounded-ship/id1056200096?i=1000554971002 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-tracys-furniture-i... Odd Lots has done a number of episode on logistics over the last little while (ports (multiple times), rail, trucking, the Suez Canal and Ever Given, shipping pallets, shipping containers, etc), so this is just continuing the 'series' in a way.
londons_explore 5y ago
I would like to see General Average be used for more than just shipping. For example, I would happily insure my house with a 'General Average' based insurance. I would pay no premium upfront for said insurance, but I would be committing to pay a proportional share of anyone's house that is part of the scheme that gets damaged. Sadly nothing like this seems to exist. Instead we're stuck with regular insurance which on average spends more on admin and overheads than it actually pays out!

Do NOT let one of this company's ships into the Panama Canal...

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
walrus01 5y ago
the largest container ships are too big for even the post-expansion-new-panamax anyways.
hnburnsy 5y ago
A local pilot was in control of the ship at the time... >The Bay pilot aboard had control of the ship at the time it ran aground. Investigators are still looking at whether it was a mechanical issue or operator error that caused it to leave the channel. https://chesapeakebaymagazine.com/container-ship-aground-outside-patapsco-river/ https://chesapeakebaymagazine.com/container-ship-aground-out...
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  By control, they mean giving directions. Pilots have no authority over the ship’s crew and they certainly don’t operate the controls.
  - davidjytang 5y ago
    I read that in Panama Canal pilots assume full responsibility of the ships.

"The law of general average is a principle of maritime law whereby all stakeholders in a sea venture proportionately share any losses resulting from a voluntary sacrifice of part of the ship or cargo to save the whole in an emergency. For instance, should the crew jettison some cargo overboard to lighten the ship in a storm, the loss would be shared pro rata by both the carrier and the cargo-owners." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_average https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_average

confident_inept 5y ago
Thank you. That website and article were a train wreck. I had no idea that ship was still stuck. I guess now they have to dismantle it in place? What's process here?
- wbl 5y ago
  It's a site for people who carry out an ancient profession that has had millennia to accrue jargon and lore.
  - KarlKemp 5y ago
    Yes, like "sockpuppet". Or "RfD".
- walrus01 5y ago
  gcaptain is not a train wreck, it assumes that the reader is in the maritime industry and uses terminology that is widely known to that specific industry segment. much as a network engineering or software development news site and acronyms might be even more confusing to people who hold 100 ton+ masters licenses. look at all the weird sounding terms that might be used in an infosec/netsec publication...
  - tedivm 5y ago
    It's a visual trainwreck on firefox, with elements being blocked by interstitials in the first load that have their dismissal button shifted into a weird and hard to find place. Once that was cleared up it was pretty readable.

glitchc 5y ago

One I can believe, two is stretching it, but three in a row? Something stinks.

smitty1e 5y ago
The local news says: "She missed her turn." Now, anyone who's been in the biz (4.5 years of sea time in the U.S. Navy here) knows that a vessel getting underway has an experienced pilot and a full navigation detail on the bridge while in restricted waters. Looking at the ludicrous funds already spent over the last three weeks (we must be talking hundreds of millions by now, with no end in sight) and the ripple effects of closing the channel (which costs must jump into billions almost immediately), saying "she missed her turn" is almost a middle finger to the audience. Was it a steering casualty? Were the radars operational? Was the crew qualified? Does someone want to craft an unsavory theory? The costs involved were quite literally among the main drivers for creating the idea of insurance[1]. Tell me what caused her to "miss her turn". With stakes that high, such mishaps really need a full-on tsunami behind them for such a simplistic explanation. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_insurance
- rob74 5y ago
  From what I could see (https://www.npr.org/2022/03/31/1089997406/ever-forward-container-ship-stuck-cheasapeake-bay https://www.npr.org/2022/03/31/1089997406/ever-forward-conta..., Wikipedia), the channel is not closed? Maybe operating at reduced capacity because of the need to keep a safety distance to the stranded ship, but they still can get around her. BTW "She missed her turn" made me think of something different, it's "she missed a turn", as in going straight forward when she should have turned right or left.
  - smitty1e 5y ago
    I do not understand the distinction you're making in the second paragraph.
    - 5y ago

Kon-Peki 5y ago

I am really surprised that it is still stuck. The Ever Given was only stuck for 6 days in what appeared to be a more challenging situation. This has now been 2 weeks. I guess that since it's not blocking anything they don't have to move as quickly.

a2tech 5y ago
It’s well and truly buried. Something like it plowed into the mud at 14 knots, and pushed over a full ship length into it. It’s draft is typically 40ish feet and it’s in 20ft of water at the bow. So that means it’s buried 20ft in mud up front. The strength of the suction alone is staggering. I’m starting to think it might be there for a very long time. Maybe even salvaged in place.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  I think it’s impossible to refloat it without damaging the hull at this point, and you’ll know salvage is the route they’re taking when the containment booms (for fuel loss prevention) are deployed around the vessel.
  - Victerius 5y ago
    The ship is dead. The owners need to write it off their books. It shall never move again. The cargo will have to be removed one container at a time. The fuel tanks will be drained. And then the hull will need to be cut into pieces in place.
  - Animats 5y ago
    It's not impossible, just expensive. It's just in mud. Expect the arrival of large suction dredges. Like these.[1] Large cranes may be brought in to remove containers and lighten the load. This is a big job, but not that bad. It's in a harbor near shore facilities, with good weather, and it's not urgent. [1] https://boskalis.com/about-us/fleet-and-equipment/dredgers.html https://boskalis.com/about-us/fleet-and-equipment/dredgers.h...

blamazon 5y ago

If I am understanding this correctly -- if I ship cargo across oceans via container, I am potentially accepting some piece of liability for fixing any accident that occurs? Is this true? Or are they just saying, oopsie, your costs are your own costs due to this lost cargo, we will not recompensate.

Digory 5y ago
You bear the risk that you’ll have to pay your pro-rata share of any cargo sacrificed to save the ship. You can (and probably should) have your own insurance that will pay you in case this happens. The insurer can pay cash to the cargo owners ASAP, and then sort out the equitable sale of the actual cargo and distribution of the proceeds. Kind of like a bankruptcy for a ship’s voyage. If they have to wreck some stuff to save everybody else, and that works, everybody else has to pay something. Fair-ish, but I suspect Insurers start to call foul on Evergreen’s repeated groundings.
- hef19898 5y ago
  It is surprising how even "professionals" (read: companies shipping loads of containers every month) don't get that insurance part. And that insurance is dirt cheap, I used to have one as a basis for my now closed company. It covered all losses, globally, for all modes of transportation for solar modules (and some other electronics falling into the same class of products), covered warehousing. For a projected transported value of appr. 100k € per months I paid roughly 1k per year. And still people for go that, relying on the suppliers "insurance" based on Incoterms... Well, those insurance is usually very limited and leaves some holes, especially if people don't get what incoterms to use and what they mean...
  - dmurray 5y ago
    If you're shipping "loads of containers every month" but you don't send them all on the same ship, perhaps you can afford to self-insure. Insurance is so cheap because only a tiny fraction of freight is lost.

cphoover 5y ago

Evergreen Marine? Isn't this the same company that ran aground in the suez canal? What gives? How would they not prevent this from happening so close to that last huge nightmare, and bottleneck in global shipping?

labster 5y ago
The very same, and this one is a few thousand miles away from the other nightmare, and is not blocking anyone else.
- cphoover 5y ago
  Yea it's just sitting in the shallows of the Chesapeake near where I live likely destroying the ecosystem
joe_the_user 5y ago
Yeah, same company and same class of ships. The ship that got stuck in the Suez had gotten stuck other places previous and might have gotten stuck afterwards too faik. Huge ships played a part in the bottlenecking of LA/Long Beach also. In the last time years, all of the largest shipping companies have built ships that are essentially way too big, just to save some marginal amount. A big part of this is that these shipping lines mostly don't have to pay the downside of this absurdity.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Uehreka 5y ago
Knowing absolutely nothing about this industry, I wonder if it’s just a matter of there being only a few big players, such that any accident would always be one of a couple companies.
tedunangst 5y ago
How much control do you think they had over these incidents?

vwarner1411 5y ago

So for anyone curious, the article mentions very briefly that there was a pilot onboard. A pilot is someone who comes onboard to help the ship navigate, and is usually required in areas like this (areas with shallow waters, etc). Transiting the Suez also requires a pilot come onboard. They come on to prevent these issues.

eru 5y ago
Historical anecdote: Mark Twain used to be a pilot, too. His literary pseudonym pays homage to that profession.

55873445216111 5y ago

Battleship USS Missouri also ran aground in Chesapeake Bay in 1950. the battleship remained stuck for over two weeks before being freed from the sand. The ship was so damaged that she had to return to port and enter dry dock for repairs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_USS_Missouri_grounding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1950_USS_Missouri_grounding

RandomBK 5y ago

Does anyone have a reputable resource for how General Average actually works under today's international law? Some questions I'm curious about are: (1) What constitutes an "emergency"? If the ship is stuck but not otherwise in imminent danger, would GA apply? It would appear to me that Evergreen could safely transport the cargo off the ship, but would rather just throw it overboard to save time and effort. Doesn't that just unnecessarily pass the costs on to cargo-owners? (2) Many places refer to the idea that GA only applies if jettisoning cargo actually saves the ship. It sounds like the ship is really stuck - if they jettison cargo but the ship still doesn't budge, would that nullify GA? (3) Is the GA liability limited by the declared value of your own cargo on that ship? What happens if the total declared value of the "saved" cargo is less than the value of the "discarded" cargo? (4) Do cargo-owners have an option to say "you know what, I don't really want my cargo anymore" and avoid paying GA? (5) What country would have jurisdiction over any litigation in this instance? Would it be the country whose territorial waters this happened in, the flag country of the ship, the country of ownership of the ship, contract-defined, etc?

dmurray 5y ago
I'm not an expert but 3 and 4 seem to have been answered: the point of GA is everyone gets X% of their cargo value back, and we decide what X is. Either you get X in cash, or you pay 100-X into the fund. So yes, your liability is limited to 100% of your cargo, and you wouldn't generally want to exercise any option to walk away from it. (Maybe you would in some edge cases around fraud, or financing difficulties, or where the market value of your cargo has suddenly declined).

paxys 5y ago

Remember folks these ships approach the size of the tallest skyscrapers in the country. Inertia is a bitch.

throw0101a 5y ago

The Odd Lots podcast did an episode on this ship—partly motivated by the fact that one of the co-host's (Tracy Alloway) recently moved from Hong Kong to New York and all her stuff is on it: > It's happened again. Another container ship owned by the Evergreen Maritime Corp. has gotten stuck a year after the Ever Given became lodged in the Suez Canal and briefly halted the flow of global trade. This time the grounding happened in the Chesapeake Bay and involves the Ever Forward -- a 1000-foot container ship which happens to be carrying the contents of Tracy's entire Hong Kong apartment. On this episode of Odd Lots, Tracy Alloway and Joe Weisenthal speak with maritime historian Sal Mercogliano about why another ship has gotten stuck, what it says about shipping and infrastructure, and how long Tracy might have to wait to get her stuff. * https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/5abecebe-aa98-11ec-9133-1f4d26396eb5 https://play.acast.com/s/oddlots/5abecebe-aa98-11ec-9133-1f4... * https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-tracys-furniture-is-stuck-on-a-grounded-ship/id1056200096?i=1000554971002 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/why-tracys-furniture-i... Odd Lots has done a number of episode on logistics over the last little while (ports (multiple times), rail, trucking, the Suez Canal and Ever Given, shipping pallets, shipping containers, etc), so this is just continuing the 'series' in a way.

londons_explore 5y ago

I would like to see General Average be used for more than just shipping. For example, I would happily insure my house with a 'General Average' based insurance. I would pay no premium upfront for said insurance, but I would be committing to pay a proportional share of anyone's house that is part of the scheme that gets damaged. Sadly nothing like this seems to exist. Instead we're stuck with regular insurance which on average spends more on admin and overheads than it actually pays out!