MSC Monterey, a 4,892 TEU container ship, was bound from the Belgium port of Antwerp to Newark, NJ, but diverted to Newfoundland after cracks in her hull were discovered. The ship is now at anchor south of Newfoundland, near Trepassey Harbour. Four passengers were airlifted off the ship. The crew of 20 remains aboard.  MSC Monterey was built in 2007 in Daewoo Mangalia Heavy Industries in Mangalia, Romania.

In June, the 2008 built, 8,110 TEU container ship, MOL Comfort, broke in two about 200 nautical miles off the coast of Yemen.   The aft section sank of the ship on June 27th while the bow section stayed afloat until July 11th.  The MOL Comfort’s five sister ships were also found to have bottom plate buckling deformation, suggesting that they were experiencing excessive hull loading.   A few weeks ago the Committee on Large Container Ship Safety of the Maritime Bureau of Japan’s Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism issued an interim report on the casualty.  Interestingly, in the structural modeling of the hulls the ships, the engineers were not able to replicate the conditions that would have caused the MOL Comfort to break in half.  The report found that the calculated loading was only 67% of the allowable design stress of the ship.