Proposals expected from three years of lashing research

Four years ago, three large container ships coming down the English Channel lost substantial numbers of containers off their aft end. This prompted concerns about the twistlocks used to secure them and also, coming as it did on top of other deck losses, wider concern about the whole question of deck stows. This was the genesis for the Dutch Government, together with the British and Swedish Maritime Administrations, classification societies, shipowners and lashing equipment manufacturers, to join together with the Maritime Research Institute of the Netherlands (MARIN) to launch the pioneering industry-wide Lashing@Sea project, aimed at investigating why containers are lost overboard.

Three years of intensive research ensued with five ships being instrumented, as were containers at the bottom and higher in the stack and a model test programme of container stack dynamics being carried out. Interviews with crews were also conducted. The five vessels included two container ships, one operating in the North Pacific and one in the Far East, in which accelerations along the entire hull were measured over 18 months and three years respectively.

The overall conclusions were that if every factor involved in the carriage of such deck cargoes were within the design parameters, all the stresses were within expectations. However, if additional weight was added to two of the rows, for example, and the lashings were not as tight as they could be, the effect on the secured row was dramatic. Extra loads, in combination with other unfavourable factors could trigger a collapse of containers or securing. It is understood that the Dutch Government, together with others, will be submitting proposals to MSC/87 regarding implications of this important research and there is more that will come out of it.