A picture is worth a thousand words

[Amgine]

That's not my understanding of the structure, or the insurance claims, but I don't know for sure. Note the other picture of container stacks, which are tipping as a stack. As I understand the insurance law, they are required to be phsyically attached to the structure of the vessel.

[GordMay]

Intermodal Shipping Containers often utilize “twist-lock” tie downs, inserted in the corner pockets (not visible in use), as opposed to exterior “tensionable strap lashings”; and are primarily intended to prevent load shifting, as opposed to falling off (in a roll-over).

[Gibbous]

For whatever it's worth, any container loaded to an on-deck position on a container ship at least has twistlocks as Gord mentioned. These are placed in the bottom corner castings of each container as they are loaded and automatically lock into the top castings of the container that they are loaded on top of, or into pockets on top of the hatch if it's directly on deck. Also depending on how high they are stacked, the first two or three tiers will also be secured to the hatch covers with steel hooks, rods, and giant turnbuckles.

The case of the rolled ship in the picture always looked to me like an accident caused by loss of stability while working cargo. Any time you pick up a load with a vessel's own cargo gear like that little ship has, the center of gravity for that piece of cargo moves from its stowed location on the vessel way up to the top of the crane boom, effectively decreasing GM. Once you reach a situation of neutral or negative GM, swinging that hoisted load away from the center line toward the dock will send the ship over like a fallen tree. This would also explain why the containers are scattered all over the place, as typically lashing is removed and twistlocks are unlocked for all the cargo that is going to be discharged at a given port all at once at the beginning of a vessel's calling.

The lashing system is incredibly strong, but won't save you from bad seamanship...

[mike d.]

correct wheels i used to haul them the conts. as stacked on pins that lock on all four corners top to bottom cont. then they are chained every so many high and across. the reason the stacks prob. went over is that when pulling one off or putting one on they hit one of the lower ones while pulling up to clear the pile as they are called or while moving a heavy cont. towards the hole in the middle the op. did not have his cont. raised enough and got hung up on the top tier while moving into the center of the ship. the other pos. is that one not visible in the stack collapsed because it was rotted and could not take the pressure load anymore. the pick of the one on the truck cab could be intentional as the driver could have been giving the longshore men a hard time and they told the crain op. to drop it on the cab to scare the driver or worse. yes this does go on, been there/saw that.
regards mike

[Drexel Engineer]

Any way to read the descriptions in English?