MISSING: 1816 Cargo Containers; REWARD If Found

The containership ONE Apus has a problem. Well, HAD a problem. A week and a half ago after proudly setting sail from the port of Long Beach, CA, things got kind of nutty about 1600 nautical miles northwest of Hawaii. Gale force winds coupled with 48 foot seas transformed the 1 year old cargo ship into a horizonal martini shaker. Naturally, in the dark of night. Beyond terrifying, the twisting, the torqueing, the heaving, the lurching, the corkscrewing; the sum of it all could have spelled disaster. Luckily for the captain and crew, only minor injuries were reported with no loss of life. The ONE Apus hails from a modern class of 1000-foot long mega-containerships (this one ferrying 14,000 rig-sized containers) that shipping companies thirst for to satiate their ever-expanding economies of scale appetites. Building at such sheer scale has ruthlessly pushed naval designers and engineers to the outer limits of feasibility. And thusly, the ONE Apus was conceived. But engineering and building a marine cargo vessel are one thing. Real life Operations quite another. And that’s where ONE Line (ONE Apus owner) ran into trouble. NO amount of computerized algorithm-based payload planning, cargo latching or ballast water management can overcome physics and the real world’s chief architect in Mother Nature. Because when you test the limits, the results can be devastating. Industry experts estimate the cargo ship’s weather-related loss of 1816 containers to be the largest EVER in maritime history at a cost of more than $200M. And then there’s the not trivial matter of the contents of the containers: 54 with fireworks, 8 filled to the brim with batteries and two with pure liquid ethanol. So there’s that. To make matters worse, a lot of these containers have exhibited stubborn buoyancy, bobbing just below the Pacific’s surface, posing grave danger to other oceangoing vessels in this well-travelled shipping route. As you can imagine, a massive recover operation is underway. The ONE Apus survived the ordeal unscathed and remained nonchalantly seaworthy as she finished her journey to Japan. The aftermath, though, is unquestionably UGLY.