Shipping Disasters That Cost Billions

If you lived in Islip, New York, back in 1987 and looked out across the ocean, you’d have seen an inexplicable sight. A huge barge with 6 million pounds of trash towering on it, floating in the middle of the water, doing nothing. Why was it there? How did it get there? The answers are more insane than you could ever guess. Let's go on a wild tale of nationwide panic, criminal connections, and trash as we set sail through some of the most mind-blowing shipping mishaps of all time.

Mobro 4000, The Garbage Barge

Before you can begin to understand how crazy the story of New York's trash-filled, sea-locked boat is, we need a little context. Each American produces around 1,600 lbs of trash annually, which is about the weight of a Grizzly Bear, and you don’t want that rotting away in the corner of your home.

In New York in the 1800s, they didn’t have garbagemen. People would just toss their trash in the gutter, and the city was covered in piles of rotting food, broken furniture, and even bodily waste. Disgusted by the filth they lived in, city officials began collecting the trash and placing it into landfills to be burned. Nowadays, a massive network of 2,600 landfills handles solid waste throughout the US.

You wouldn’t know about it because waste management is a largely invisible industry. The truck comes, the truck goes. But thinking about the disgusting mess we produce just ain’t sexy. And that’s where the crazy story of the Mobro 4000 comes in! In 1987, New York’s landfills were full to the brim. So, budding entrepreneur Lowell Harrelson saw his chance to make a name for himself in the energy game. When waste decomposes it produces methane gas, which can be harnessed and turned into energy.

Harrelson was trying to secure a load of trash to start his own energy plant, and New York was literally overflowing with it. So, he proposed a plan: he’d charter a boat to ship their garbage away for less money than they would’ve paid to send it to a different state. That way, Harrelson gets his trash and the city gets a cheap clean up; everyone’s a winner! Here’s where things start to get a little tricky.

At the time, the whole New York garbage hauling industry was under the control of the Mafia. What do those jabronis want with everyone’s trash? During the mid-20th-century, cities started paying private companies to sort out the trash for them. This gave the Mob a chance to get involved, exploit, and clean up their own dirty money while they picked up everyone else’s dirty goods. It's also probably easier to throw away evidence of your wrongdoings if your cousin is driving the garbage truck.

Harrelson struck up a deal with Camorra crime family capo Salvatore Avellino for 6 million pounds of his finest trash. After the deal came through, the plan was to load all the waste onto a large barge, the Mobro 4000, and charter a tugboat to pull it from Islip in New York down to Morehead City, North Carolina. Here, the methane gas would be processed.

On March 22nd, 1987, the barge set off with its 20ft high pile of trash headed for North Carolina. Harrelson hoped that he’d get down and back for the weekend, ready for another shipment. Only, things didn’t exactly go to plan. Six million pounds of trash isn’t very attractive. The repulsive eyesore trudged slowly along the coast, upsetting the eyes and noses of anyone who came too close.

People weren’t used to seeing the repulsive underbelly of their filthy existence and instantly became very “not in my backyard” about accepting this giant, floating trashberg. A vicious rumor began to spread that one onlooker had seen a hospital bedpan, used by patients who are bed-bound to relieve themselves, among the garbage. The Environmental Protection Agency had recently released new regulations saying toxic waste could no longer be landfilled, and mountains of trash bags full of poop and pee are definitely toxic waste.

Except the rumors were just that: rumors. All the trash was just normal garbage we might throw away. Whether it was the mafia ties or the sheer revoltingness of seeing the filth we make, but the court of public opinion was swayed by the lie. North Carolina officials blocked the barge’s entry into the port because the waste wasn’t fit for purpose. Suddenly, 6 million pounds of rotting trash became stranded offshore.

The tugboat docked slightly outside of Morehead City while Harrelson and co tried to formulate a backup plan. However, local news network WRAL-TV received a tip-off regarding its location. They flew by in a helicopter to see the disgusting scenes for themselves and on April 1st, Action 5 News reporter Susan Brozek broke the story to the national audience. Viewers in their living rooms throughout the country couldn’t believe their eyes.

So, North Carolina began their own procedures to move the Mobro on. Not in my backyard. Out of sight, out of mind. Originally, Harrelson struck a deal with Florida to take in the trash, but by the time the barge made it to port a party of 10,000 people had gathered to protest its arrival. So, after a change of course, the barge set sail for Louisiana, but they too declined the waste. Alabama said no. Mississippi too.

Anywhere the boat went, people came forward to object to it. Some say the barge made it as far as Mexico, Belize, and the Bahamas. But Harrelson himself denies ever trying to send the trash to another country. Still, that didn’t stop Mexico from mobilizing its navy as a blockade.

Cutting his losses, Harrelson ordered the boat to return to New York and hoped to dock near Queens. But Borough president, Clare Shulman, had something to say about that. She ordered a temporary restraining order against the barge to keep the trash out at sea. So, that’s exactly what happened.

With every passing day, the trash decayed a little more, meaning it smelled worse and looked worse. Worst of all though, Harrelson was losing that precious methane gas which was money straight out of his pocket. But there was seemingly nothing he could do about it. The Mobro and its cargo hung about offshore near Brooklyn until July, a staggering five months after it initially set sail.

Finally, after a long and painful negotiation, it was agreed that the trash could be incinerated in Brooklyn. The deed was done, and the 430 tons of ash produced from the incineration was then loaded into trucks and transported back to Islip. That 3,000 tons of trash spent five months sailing up and down the east coast, traveling some 6,000 miles, just to end up right back where it started.

The thing is, there was nothing wrong with the trash or what Harrelson was doing. If anything, he was doing something right. But the barge became this weird symbol of America’s problems with trash. We all make it, but we want someone else to be in charge of cleaning up our mess. The trash wasn’t the problem, we were. Not necessarily us, mainly the late 1980s versions of us.

After the Mobro incident, nightly news began running stories about how America was running out of landfill space and that giant piles of trash might be the new normal. But it wasn’t true. The Environmental Protection Agency had just changed the rules on landfills. Now, all landfills had to line the bottom with plastic so spillage from decomposing waste wasn’t filtering into water supplies. However, many small-town dumping spaces were out of compliance so could no longer legally accept trash. But that didn’t mean that space was running out.

Harrelson never officially said how much the Mobro disaster left him out of pocket, and who can blame him? The poor man had already suffered enough embarrassment. If that were me, the number of zeroes would have me fighting back the tears.

But it wasn’t all bad news. The following years saw an unprecedented level of public discussion about waste disposal, and there’s a good chance Mobro played a significant role in the spike in recycling rates throughout the late 1980s and beyond. Sure, Harrelson got egg on his face, but it did something good, right?

Well, that’s debatable. Fast forward to today, and seven Mobro’s worth of garbage leaves New York every single day. That’s almost 50 a week. So, has anything really changed? Sure, many of us are far more conscious about waste and what we do to the planet, but it doesn’t seem to have done anything to quell the steady stream of refuse we make getting higher and higher.

MV Tricolor Accident

MV Tricolor was a 620ft vehicle carrier, which was traveling from Zebrugge, Belgium to Southampton on December 14th, 2002, transporting around 3,000 luxury automobiles when it collided with another cargo ship, the Kariba. Supposedly, the crash was caused by an error involving a third ship, the MV Clary, which forced the two colliding ships to change course into each other.

The Kariba wasn’t damaged too badly and managed to make it back to port. But the Tricolor sank where she was struck, and sat fully submerged in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes. Crashing a 620ft boat and losing $30m worth of cars with it would have you feeling pretty silly. But do you know what would have you feeling even sillier? Crashing into a ship that’s already sunk, twice!

Just two days after the crash, another cargo ship, the Nicola, sailed straight into the wreckage. The Nicola got stuck on top of the ship and had to wait for the tide to rise before she could free herself. Then, on January 1st, yet another ship, The Vicky, sailed into the MV Tricolor. The crew hadn’t paid attention to the warnings by the French navy and, consequently, also got stuck on top.

Except The Vicky had 77,000 tons of highly flammable oil on board. Miraculously, they managed to free themselves without a hitch and none of the oil spilled out! But it could’ve been a hell of a lot worse. As if this wasn’t already a ridiculous enough scenario, on January 22nd, a salvage tugboat coming to aid the Tricolor accidentally hit a safety valve on the ship, causing a huge oil spill.

This is one of the most incompetent operations ever! In just over a month, three ships had collided with it, and the boat that was meant to be helping just dumped oil everywhere. What a catastrophe! If $38 million in lost cargo wasn’t bad enough, there was also the cost incurred from a 2-year salvage operation to remove the ship, the damage done to three other ships, cleaning up the oil spill, and the delays it caused running through the shipping route too.

The framework for the salvage operation was never made public, let’s face it, they were embarrassed enough already, so, we don’t know the exact figure. But considering everything, it wouldn’t be surprising if this went deep into the hundreds of millions.

Amoco Cadiz Oil Spil

So, the MV Tricolor got away with only a teensy tiny oil spill, but what about when oil spills go horribly wrong? That’s where the Amoco Cadiz comes in. On March 16th, 1978, while transporting over 58 million gallons of light crude oil from Saudi Arabia to Rotterdam, the ship ran into some issues near Portsall Rocks, near Brittany, France. The weather was choppy, and a giant wave slammed into the ship’s rudder, causing the helm to lose control completely.

You’d think being able to handle the ocean is one of the fundamental basics of a boat. And in most cases, it is; however, American petroleum company, Amoco, who owned the boat, had cheaped out on essential repairs. The threaded studs on the rudder had sheared away, and were no longer suitable, so the Amoco Cadiz got battered. But that was only the start of their woes.

12 hours after the steering was ruined, the ship ran aground, causing water to rush into the engine room, completely flooding it. This violently ripped the hull in two and millions of gallons of oil came pouring out. The sea was still rough, so containing the spill wasn’t an option and oil began to spread far and wide. Before long, more than 45 miles of French coastline were slathered with thick oil. Over 20,000 birds perished, and the local marine life was decimated. At the time it was the largest oil spill ever recorded.

Although tugging vessels responded quickly to the disaster, the poor weather conditions made it impossible to attach a tow line to the Cadiz. Because of this, the boat ripped in half, and each part began to drift in almost opposite directions.

It took two whole weeks for a decision to be made on what to do with the vessel, and in the end, something drastic was settled on. Seeing no other choice, the Navy was enlisted to destroy and sink the vessel by dropping depth charges onto it from helicopters. A whopping 4,200 lbs of explosives were detonated 26ft below the surface and the Amoco Cadiz sank just 15 minutes later.

So, how much did this cost? Discounting the irreversible damage done to local marine life and biodiversity, which is arguably priceless, a U.S. Federal judge ordered Amoco oil Corporation to pay $85.2 million in fines, $45 million was to cover the costs of the spill, and $39 million was in interest for the damage caused. But we’re not even close to being done.

According to estimates made in 1978, the Amoco Cadiz disaster was likely to have caused $250 million in damage to fisheries and tourist amenities alone! That’s a quarter of a billion dollars. However, the French government later claimed the damage and clean-up operation cost far more, at a mind-boggling $1.6 billion. Of this, Amoco agreed to pay just $230 million in 1992 for their negligent responsibility in causing this horrendous ordeal.

MV Hyundai Fortune Incident

On 21st March 2006, the MV Hyundai Fortune was sailing through the Gulf of Aden, 60 miles south of Yemen. Suddenly, the crew was startled by the sound of a ferocious explosion below the deck. Nobody knew where it had come from, or what had caused it, but the subsequent flames began to spread through the stern of the ship at an alarming pace.

Despite their best efforts to contain the fire, the 27 crew members were forced to abandon ship and were rescued by a Dutch frigate that was conveniently nearby. And just as well, the fire continued to tear through the ship and eventually found several containers of fireworks above deck. The blaze swiftly ignited them and all hell broke loose.

The ravaged ship continued to burn for several days and the coursing flames destroyed the engine room, which flooded due to the damage. It all looked hopeless until firefighting tugboats arrived on March 23rd and managed to quell the inferno.

Once the blaze was contained, the ship was towed to nearby Oman to evaluate the extent of the damage. Roughly one-third of the containers were destroyed by the blaze and many more were lost overboard. What’s more, after the engine had failed, power to the ship had gone down with it. So any refrigerated goods were also ruined despite being untouched by the fire. For the cherry on top, roughly a tenth of all the cargo was uninsured.

But what actually caused that mysterious initial explosion? Well, a subsequent investigation revealed that an undeclared container holding petroleum-based cleaning fluids had been stowed by the engine room. The heat from the engine most likely warmed the fluid to a critical point, then, kaboom. Whoever was shipping it had failed to declare it, probably so they didn’t have to pay the additional handling fee for dangerous chemicals. Well, that little shortcut really backfired.

The combined cost for the ship repairs and lost cargo was estimated at around $800 million. But the ship was repaired successfully and continued to work as a container carrier all the way until 2018!

The MOL Comfort: The Worst Shipping Disaster in History

At over 1,000 feet long, the MOL Comfort container ship was an absolute whopper. On June 17th, 2013, she was crossing the Indian Ocean from Singapore to Saudi Arabia when she got caught in bad weather around 200 miles off the coast of Yemen. The storm was so strong that it smashed a large crack down the middle of the hull and tore the whole ship in half.

The crew justifiably got the devil out of there and abandoned ship. What else were they supposed to do? Stick it back together? No chance. Luckily they escaped unscathed and all that could be done was contact a salvage crew to save what they could. By some miracle, the two 500ft halves remained afloat and began drifting northeast. However, the good news didn’t last long.

By June 24th, tugboats had arrived on the scene to drag the bow to safety. However, just 2 days later, water had crept inside the stern of the vessel. The very next day, the whole stern sank rapidly to a depth of 13,000 feet, carrying some 1,700 containers with it. Amazingly, none of the 1,500 tons of fuel on board the stern leaked, or everything would’ve been made exponentially worse.

But fast forward to July 6th, and things went from bad to worse. A fire broke out in the rear of the bow section, and due to bad weather, the salvage crew was unable to keep the blaze under control. The fire raged on for four days, destroying most of the 2,400 containers on board. Frustratingly, the cause was never properly determined because the bow section also sank the very next evening, this time to 9,800 feet, taking the remaining cargo and an additional 1,750 tons of fuel with it.

Mol Comfort of Fire by blackseanewsyalta

The loss of all 4,293 containers on board is the largest number of containers lost in a single event to this day. So, as you can imagine, the whole ordeal cost a flippin’ bomb. Insurers had to cough up between $300 and $400 million in claims for lost cargo. On top of that, the operator of the ship, Mitsui OSK Lines had insured the MOL Comfort’s hull and machinery for a whopping $66 million. But that’s just the start.

MOL Comfort wasn’t the only boat of this type. Six sister vessels were out in use that were made at the same time to the same specifications. If actions weren’t taken quickly, this could be a problem that spiraled even further out of control. Luckily, all six were called back and phased out while important upgrade work was done to strengthen the hull to make sure another disaster like this never happened again. However, more work means more money, not just in the cost of the upgrades, but also the money lost from them being out of service. The only positive is that nobody was hurt.

I hope you were amazed at these shipping disasters that cost billions! Thanks for reading.