Shipping containers are falling overboard at a rapid rate

It reminds me of a quote about warfare: "Amateurs talk about strategy and tactics. Professionals talk about logistics"

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/reefer-madness/

With the completion of the Erie Canal, buffalo, cattle and wheat from the Great Plains could arrive in Chicago, be butchered, kept in giant ice warehouses then shipped in box cars and boats lined with ice across the lakes, down the canal, out NY harbour and across to a Europe that was experiencing a massive population growth (1848 revolutions).

This first wave of globalisation dropped food prices globally causing (by the 1870s) massive economic collapses and shifts away from failing farmlands. British landed gentry never recovered, and the links to WWI are clear.

The US civil war would have been very different without the Erie canal if the worlds food supply went south down the Missiippi to get out to the Atlantic

All because someone liked Christoph in Frozen and want to sell ice.

Bryson is a brilliant author and this one of his best.

Oceanographers were able to collaborate with beachcombers in the western US (and eventually as far away as the UK) to validate their models of how the currents would move the ducks.

Sometimes local traditon encuraged potential salvage, by setting up false lights.

edit:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrecking_(shipwreck)

but wikipedia actually says, this might be a urban legend, as there is no clear evidence this ever happened

cough

Exactly. Single ship holding 30k loosing 10 means just 0.03%... It's nothing.

"So war does not necessarily stop trade. And thus trade is no prophylactic to war." Seatbelts do not stop people dying in car accidents. But seatbelts do reduce the chances of dying in a car accident. I know I'm being pedantic, but it doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. Even a prophylactic that works 1% of the time is better than nothing.

The leading global purveyor of DEMOCRACY is deeply embedded in the dangerous game you describe

Computers do NOT make the stowage layout. The stowage layout is the responsibility of stowage planners. The captain of the ship has final say. There are various computer programs that assist with the stowage layout. However, they are _not_ sufficient. If you'd take out the stowage planner the shipping company would have a lot of additional costs. These programs do help to check for loads of problems, plus the initial inefficient stowage plan.

How tall something is stacked is too simplistic. What matters is that it isn't stacked as a box. Further, certain twist locks cannot handle too much wind.

Source: used to sit next to a stowage planner, who'd be in the office around 1x/month. The planner mostly talked during these visits.

I'm sure that that's how we've found lots of really old stuff and continue to do so. Just imagine all the stuff that we haven't found yet.

And hopefully somebody figures out how to find my glasses.

"Depending on whether they are full or empty, and on the nature of the cargo inside, containers may float at the surface for several days or weeks prior to sinking. Containers are not generally entirely watertight; while an empty container is likely to sink due to water ingress, a full container will likely float until air trapped in the cargo has escaped.’"

They are, indeed, a hazard for other boats, though they generally won't "lurk below the surface." Either they're floating from buoyancy of what's in them, or they sink. The increasing water pressure as you descend makes "floating below the surface" a particularly unstable place.

I'm assuming that if it sinks in deep water it's gone, but even there maybe there's an opportunity to salvage containers off the sea floor with the right equipment. Probably not worthwhile economically, but who knows?

Maybe the best case for this could be made for ships that normally at sea doing other things to be ready to divert from their ordinary tasks to collect containers if they don't have anything more pressing. (Coast Guard ships or Navy support vessels perhaps?)