Australian port officials temporarily took over a Hong Kong-based ship at the port in Newcastle after learning crew members had unlashed a cargo load of 300 rail cars prior to the ship’s arrival in port.<\/p>\n
The ship — the Orient \u00a0Becrux, owned by Chinese operator Pacific Basin — was held by Australian authorities for several hours before eventually being released with a warning.<\/p>\n
Originally, investigators believed the ship’s owners had ordered the crew members to unlash the cargo while the vessel was still waiting for a berth at the harbor. But they later learned that the crew members had acted on their own.<\/p>\n
“The crew took this into their own hands, and when we inquired why, we were told that the master was keen to be efficient,” said a Pacific Basin spokesman<\/a>.<\/p>\n Unlashing cargo while a ship is still at sea is dangerous because it can lead to the cargo shifting, which can compromise the vessel’s stability and potentially cause it to sink.<\/p>\n But port operators also don’t want crews to unlash cargo due to labor contracts with stevedores who perform this function at a cost to the carrier.<\/p>\n The ship’s crew was told that if it happens again, the company could be banned from using Australian ports in the future.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Australian port officials temporarily took over a Hong Kong-based ship at the port in Newcastle after learning crew members had unlashed a cargo load of 300 rail cars prior to the ship’s arrival in port. The ship — the Orient \u00a0Becrux, owned by Chinese operator Pacific Basin — was held by Australian authorities for several … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,293],"tags":[1079],"class_list":["post-7328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-material-handling","category-news","tag-material-handling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12348,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7328\/revisions\/12348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahrns.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}