THE Stellar Daisy wasn’t quite halfway across the southern Atlantic when her crew heard a loud bang and the ship suddenly began listing badly. Jose Cabrahan grabbed a life jacket and an immersion suit designed to keep him alive in cold water and headed from the deck to the bridge. There he found the third officer sending a mayday transmission. Before he could do anything else, water began to pour in and Cabrahan jumped into the ocean.
By the time he resurfaced, alone, the ship had disappeared. He found a life raft and eventually another member of the crew, and after 24 hours they were picked up by a ship. Despite a wide-ranging search, the other 22 men on board weren’t found.
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The Stellar Daisy had been carrying 260,000 tonnes of iron ore from Brazil to China. At 320 metres long, it was classified as a very large ore carrier (VLOC), the largest type of ship that transports metal ore. Ships like this aren’t supposed to sink – certainly not in reasonably calm seas like the ones the Stellar Daisy was traversing on 31 March 2017. At the moment, there is no certainty, just tantalising clues, as to what did for the Stellar Daisy. But posing the question takes us to the heart of one of the planet’s most important industries – one that, it turns out, is in the middle of the roughest squall it has seen in decades.
If you leave out passenger ships and tugboats, there are about 51,000 commercial ships on the ocean, mostly cargo vessels transporting everything from fish fingers and fridges to cars and crude oil. We all depend on this industry. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), about .
This dominance is because ships move goods around cheaply, if slowly. Ships also emit less carbon dioxide than other modes of transport (see Clean waters). But shipping isn’t without its dangers. Huge storms, mutinies, pirates and collisions can endanger ships, and those episodes end in disaster more often than you might think. Just a few weeks ago, the Sanchi oil tanker collided with another ship 300 kilometres off Shanghai and burst into flames, spilling toxic oil condensate into the water. The , with the loss of all its 32-strong crew.
An average of 119 ships have been lost on the high seas each year over the past decade for a variety of reasons, according to insurance firm Allianz (see Lost at sea).
The Stellar Daisy went down in deep waters where traffic is sparse and pirates are almost unheard of. The Elpida, the first responder, was so far away that it didn’t arrive at the scene for 24 hours. The Stellar Daisy also sank extraordinarily quickly. As the ship began tilting, the captain called all crew to the bridge, but Renato Daymiel, the other survivor, told reporters that he never made it there. Instead, he found himself underwater “rolling like I was in a washing machine”. A strong gush pushed him out into the ocean where he fortunately found a floating life raft with Cabrahan inside.
Jupiter descending
So what happened? Investigations of shipping accidents are commercially sensitive, so information isn’t usually released until one has been concluded. The investigation into the Stellar Daisy’s sinking is being conducted by the Republic of the Marshall Islands, where the ship was flagged. , which acts as an administrator for the Marshall Islands, told New Scientist that the investigation was its “top priority”. Investigators are currently “conducting an in-depth marine safety investigation”, says a spokesperson, and the Marshall Islands is committed to “the sharing of lessons learned” to improve safety and prevent pollution.
Yet it is possible to get an idea of what might have happened by looking at similar incidents. The Stellar Daisy is hardly the only large ore-carrying ship to have sunk in recent years. Between 2007 and 2017, 98 were lost. That includes four in one 36-day period leading up to Christmas 2010.
An interesting case was that of the Bulk Jupiter, which sank on 2 January 2015 about 300 kilometres south-west of Vietnam, with the loss of all but one of the crew. It was carrying 46,000 tonnes of bauxite, an aluminium ore. And an investigation by the Bahamas Maritime Authority, where the ship was registered, .
We have known since at least the 1970s that several types of metal ore can be problematic. Even when they appear dry, they can contain a lot of moisture in the gaps between particles. Now the technology used to process ores has improved, it is possible to process lower-quality ores containing more impurities such as dirt and water. That in turns means more such ores are shipped. As a cargo ship makes its way across the ocean, the buffeting of the waves causes vibrations that can gradually coax any water from the ore, a process known as liquefaction. It is an issue for bauxite and iron ore, among other dry cargoes. If a powerful wave then unbalances the ship, tonnes of water can slosh to one side of the hold and capsize the vessel in minutes.
In the case of the Bulk Jupiter, a declaration compiled by the firm exporting the bauxite, Oxy Pte Ltd, stated that it had a moisture content of below 10 per cent. That is within international safety guidelines. But the departure of the ship was then delayed because of heavy rain. Some 370 millimetres fell over six days before the cargo was loaded, and the ore was exposed to the elements. During that interval, an intermediary called SGS Mineral Services tested the ore and reported an average moisture content of about 21 per cent. That led the investigators to conclude that liquefaction or a similar effect was the most probable cause of the sinking of the Bulk Jupiter.
Confirming that for certain is tricky, but computer modelling of a ship and its contents can help in principle, says Richard North at the UK . Armed with details of the ship and sea conditions, modelling can, for example, show the amount of water that would have had to be present in the hold for it to capsize the vessel.
“The fatal accident rate for crews is 20 times that of the average British worker”
At any rate, in the aftermath of the Bulk Jupiter incident, the UN International Maritime Organization, which has overall responsibility for rules and regulations on the high seas, sent a circular to ship masters warning them of in addition to the known risk with other ores. , it alerted seafarers to research suggesting that a similar phenomenon called could also release large quantities of a water-ore slurry from bauxite.
Liquefaction isn’t the only danger to large ore-carrying ships like the Stellar Daisy – there are also hints of structural problems. Some such ships weren’t originally built to carry metal ores. As the 2000s wore on, a huge demand for metal ore developed in China and some shipping lines began to convert crude oil tankers into solid ore carriers. These conversions, which are legitimate practice, proved an attractive option for many firms. Records from VesselsValue, a maritime intelligence service, show that of the 162 very large ore carriers on the ocean, 49 were converted from tankers. Among them is the Stellar Daisy. Its owner, Polaris Shipping, decided in 2007 to begin converting the then 14-year-old oil tanker into an ore carrier.
That entailed an engineering overhaul that changed the ship’s structure. Liquid oil can be pumped into tankers through narrow inlets, but loading ore requires large hatches to be cut into the deck. Plus, the main supporting steelwork in tankers runs front to back, but in ore carriers it must run side to side. The conversion of the Stellar Daisy therefore involved a lot of new welding.
About a week after the ship sank, owned by Polaris, the Stellar Unicorn. Shortly afterwards, it was decommissioned. Then the master of the Stellar Queen, another Polaris vessel, found cracking on its deck and had to stop for repairs. Both ships were ore carriers that had been converted from tankers. Add to this Cabrahan’s report of a bang before the Stellar Daisy went down, and another explanation for the accident begins to look plausible: could the ship have split along a re-engineered join? “I don’t think any sentient being thinks the Stellar Daisy capsized for any other reason than a structural failure,” one master mariner told New Scientist.
But the Stellar Daisy was inspected by the port authority in Tianjin, China, about two months before it sank. Two problems with watertight doors were identified, but no faults with the hull.
Polaris did not respond to New Scientist’s requests for comment, but in an April 2017 statement it said it was “fully committed to ensuring the safety of its VLOC converted fleet and their crews”. It also announced a systematic structural survey of its fleet.
It is not just Polaris that has been facing difficult waters. The shipping industry has been feeling the pinch for years.
The mid-2000s were boom years, when demand for shipping and the cost of transporting all manner of goods by sea reached historic highs. Shipping firms put in orders for many new ships. But just as those ships began to arrive, the financial crisis of 2008 hit and demand plummeted, sending firms’ profits sinking. In 2016, a large firm called Hanjin Shipping went bankrupt, the first cargo shipping line to do so since 1986. In the same year, Maersk Line, the world’s largest shipping firm, made a loss of $376 million.
It has since moved back into the black and there are signs that the industry might bounce back too (see Choke points). For one thing, 12 of the biggest shipping firms recently changed the way they cooperate, forming three giant alliances. Each alliance has an agreement to carry other members’ cargo, meaning firms can avoid the cost of dispatching ships across the globe only partly full. Then there is the massive network of roads and railways that China is planning to build. According to UNCTAD, the One Belt, One Road initiative may bring more cargo to ports in South Asia, increasing the demand for shipping.
Even if shipping does navigate its way into more profitable waters, other issues will remain. Take the long-standing controversy over so-called flags of convenience. Shipping firms often register or flag their vessels in nations other than the one in which they are based. According to trade unions such as Nautilus International, these flag states may have lower regulation and inspection standards, which enables the firms . As of March 2017, the Marshall Islands – where the Stellar Daisy was flagged – is the second largest ship registry, after Panama.
There is little sign of this trend abating. Yet we all depend on the goods that ships carry and so we share a stake in what happens on the high seas. “Our global shipping industry has a fatal accident rate 20 times that of the average British worker,” said Grahaeme Henderson, president of the trade association UK Chamber of Shipping, in 2017. “That is simply not good enough.”
Sea change
Over the past decades, ever more and bigger ships have entered the oceans, powering global trade. We have gone to great lengths to accommodate them…
Choke points
The ocean’s busiest routes have had to expand to cope with increasing freight traffic and the size of ships.
1 Suez Canal
Opened in 1869, the Suez Canal is narrow and shallow, so only about 50 ships could pass through it each day. In 2015, Egypt launched the New Suez Canal project, a bypass lane to run alongside one section. This will roughly double the number of ships that can traverse the canal daily. It should also shorten the transit time from 18 to 11 hours.
2 Panama Canal
This 77-kilometre-long waterway needs three locks at each end to raise ships the 26 metres between sea level and the canal’s main elevation. However, the original locks were too small for the biggest freight ships. So a new lane with much larger locks opened to traffic in 2016.
3 Nicaragua Canal
Chinese businessman Wang Jing
has proposed a competitor to the Panama Canal. Its route through Nicaragua would be three times as long but it could accommodate the biggest ships. It would also slice through environmentally sensitive Lake Nicaragua and the lands of indigenous people. Little building work has started.
4 Arctic routes
Soon other routes might open up. At the moment, the North-West Passage is often blocked with ice, with the North-East Passage a little less so. But within a few decades, climate change is expected to melt enough ice to open up even the Transpolar Sea Route, which runs through the middle of the Arctic.
…but now the industry is in flux, with its huge expansion butting up against lower demand
Financial squeeze
A large increase in seaborne trade in the early 2000s encouraged ship owners to order more ships. But when the 2008 financial crisis hit, demand for shipping dropped as capacity soared, causing profits to plummet
Future prospects
There is some hope of a turnaround. Shipping firms have arranged themselves into three alliances to decrease competition…
… and the creation of a massive network of roads and railways by China called the One Belt, One Road initiative could boost the amount of freight reaching ports in South Asia and increase demand for shipping.
This article appeared in print under the headline “Peril on the sea”
