Cargo ship full of cars & trucks sinks in Bahamas

As car bombs.

 

My dad was a merchant marine captain for ~30 years up until the mid-90s. One of his captain buddies had some Caddilacs (I am 90% sure it was Caddies) break free in rough seas and they bounced around and thrashed a whole bunch of others. Another had some Volvos or VWs (can't remember which), go over the side. I have seen video of crazy seas with 75 ft of freeboard and waves crashing over the bow, so stuff definitely happens from time to time. Sad these guys didn't make it.

Also, longshoremen are pretty heavily protected by their union, so a few bad apples have been known to rally on occasion and steal stuff out of cars. Maybe times have changed.

 

I looked up the ship's documentation. Its registered as a cargo ship/ro-ro. So it probably had both containers and cars.

It also possibly had my co-workers house hold goods...

 

Well then yep its perfectly possible it had new Tacomas going to Puerto Rico. Thanks for the info

 

If the container ship was delivering trucks to American islands, Puerto Rico or the American Virgin islands, then the trucks could be Tacomas if they were delivering Toyota mid size trucks. The other islands would be getting the Hilux instead of the Tacoma. When we have cruised out of Ft. Lauderdale, we have seen small freighters carrying: cars, trucks, buses, and construction equipment to the islands.

 

A few years ago Mazda had to destroy over 4000 vehicles that were on a ship that nearly sank in the Pacific.

http://www.neatorama.com/2008/05/07/mazda-destroyed-4703-brand-new-cars-after-cargo-ship-accident/

 

That's just silly talk....Where would they stop for gas?

 

LMAO!

On a serious note, hope more survivors are found.. Horrible decision to take off under those circumstances..

 

I read that the ship developed mechanical trouble and became dead in the water and couldn't move to escape the hurricane.

 

very rare for new ones, especially something of the price of a Toyota (not hating, I've had like 5 of them). Containers are sometimes used because not all ports will accept RORO cargo and it is easy to get one car to some off place this way. Containerizing a car isint a cost effective thing. There is usually a stuffing fee and all that shit. Makes it generally not worth it for companies.

Yes, like others have said. I've worked with shipping companies (I personally have imported a car and used the RORO system, it worked out for me (light fender bump is all the damage I had, may have been there when I bought the car and not noted, company could have missed it, I didn't know I had a moon roof because the company who graded my car missed it , best surprise ever) but there were some damaged cars that wernt mine when I picked it up) and studied shipping, I get my degree in Geography and Maritime Transportation and Logistics in January.

A silver lining for your coworker is that if the contents were insured, he will likely get alot more than they are worth from them. My car's insurance when I shipped it would have given me over 5000 if total loss was claimed, however I payed only 600 for the car itself

I would bet my bank account that there is not a single new car going to a dealership on that boat. It is very rare that a car company would use a ship like that for cars. Mostly something that is specific to the transport of cars would be used, (more cars on the ship, the cheaper the price, the greater the economies of scale), not a smaller multi use vessel. Something like the MV Tonsberg would move new cars.

For real, life is more important than things.

 

Must be true if you saw it on TV and I read it on the internet ...

LAMO - of course it is done both way but the primary is specialized transports ships.

 

I thought SOP was for ships to get out of port as soon as a hurricane gets near since the damage to the ship from being smashed about in port is pretty bad. usually they just run it out like you say. The Navy routinely gets all their ships out of port when weather like this hits. Presumably they know a thing or two about mitigating the risk to ships in crappy weather?

 

Yes you're right but the idea of getting the ships out of port is to get them away from the storm. In this case it left port and went right in the middle of it on it's scheduled route.

 

True. Point is, they should not have been in the hurricane, or it's path to begin with. The port they left was not going to be directly impacted.

 

one of the dumbest posts on tacomaworld

 

I intended the original post to be in jest, but as others have pointed out there is a real tragedy here in the number of crew lost at sea. Hopefully survivors are found but the last report I saw on this looks bleak. May those who have passed rest in peace.

 

Well, 'cept for the ones going to Hawaii. Or Alaska.

Actually, a RORO that had the upper deck converted to containers. The ship was previously on a run between Washington and Alaska where it was strictly RORO. The upper deck was converted for container use when the service route was changed to the mainland/PR run.

False. When I was on the run, every new Toyota going to Alaska was in a container. There are only two shipping companies delivering vehicles to Alaska, TOTE and Matson (formerly Horizon Lines). TOTE is RORO but the only Toyotas I ever saw in the hold were POVs (privately owned vehicles) and one masked up Scion iQ (not uncommon, we carried lots of winter test vehicles for manufacturers). It was common to see Tacomas, Siennas and Tundras in car rack containers straight off of the Horizon container ships. Chevy, GM, Ford and VW were the most common in the holds at TOTE.

It happens. Sometimes things just happen so that the ship is in the wrong place at the wrong time (not my picture, but from a RORO that got caught smack dab between two major low pressure systems)

You'd probably lose your bank account. I can't guarantee it, but I'd be shocked if there weren't new cars going to a dealer. The upper deck is for containers, the lower holds are RORO. The run to PR is a Jones Act run, meaning that if the vehicles are being shipped from the US, it's gotta be on a US hull and there just aren't that many US flagged RORO's kicking around. I've worked on four out of the four currently running between west coast ports, including the ships that replaced the El Faro and her sisters before they went to the PR run. My wife and I have friends who have worked this ship but it'll be a while before I'll be bugging them with questions. One of her friends was on board. From what I can tell, all of mine were ashore.

 

Well I stand corrected! I did not know about US vehicles needed to be in US flagged ships. And as you stated, not many US RORO units around. I know that theres 2 ships like this that run our port in Halifax (Atlantic Conveyor and its sister) and I've never seen or heard of anything new being rolled off for road vehicles. Lots of construction equipment though

 

Just to clarify... it's not necessarily US vehicles. It's products between US ports. For example, if I wanted to ship my truck between Los Angeles and Hawaii it would need to be on a Jone's Act vessel. Canada has similar rules, the Canadian Coasting Trade Act. Basically, if it's going by ship between two Canadian ports it needs to be a Canadian flagged ship crewed by Canadians. The Jone's Act is a little more strict in that the ship itself has to be built in the US as well. There are a couple of loopholes to get around the US built, but they're not common (a foreign built ship that was seized smuggling drugs or a ship that sank in US waters but was salvaged can become Jone's Act vessels).

There has been some quiet speculation that the Jone's Act contributed to the sinking of the El Faro. Shipbuilding in the US is expensive, which encourages owners to run their ships far longer than they normally would be in other parts of the world. El Faro was right around 40 years old. The lifeboats that were on board were the industry standard for the time that the ship was built but there are no rules saying that they need to be upgraded to the latest and greatest, nor is there even any guarantee that the latest and greatest would have worked in those conditions. AT this time we just don't have enough information to do anything more than speculate as to why the ship was lost so quickly. It appears that the NTSB is going to try to find the VDR (voyage data recorder), which is similar to the black box used in aircraft. Hopefully this will shed some light on things.

 

Louis with the Mic Drop