MSC Zoe investigations thwarted by 'black box defect'

Photo: Coast Guard Netherlands

At the beginning of this year, some 281 containers were lost overboard off the Dutch coast from the ultra large container ship MSC Zoe, while it was en route from Sines to Bremerhaven. A criminal investigation in the district court of Amsterdam is currently underway, according to World Cargo News, but it also suggested that problems with the vessel’s “black box” are making the investigation difficult: “it has not been possible to make a correct reading of the ship’s Voyage Data Recorder, so it cannot be determined exactly when the ship’s captain first became aware the ship was losing containers, and thus whether there was a time lapse when he reported the incident to the coastguard authorities.”