[astrodust]

What are you going to steal from these ships? Everything's in containers and those are packed really tightly together, there's no accommodation for opening these doors while the ship is loaded.

If you have another self-loading container ship you might be able to pull off a big heist, but who has one of those just kicking around?

[ethanbond]

As a thought experiment... let's say your pirate crew has an unloading port someplace. Why not take the ship and get going to said port? Would the crew alert the navy/coast guard? Probably.

But then what?

The navy kills the pirates and liberates the vessel... And Hanjin refuses to take it back? The navy now has the responsibility of getting it to port and unloading it, despite ports not wanting to do that?

[nols]

Pirates do hit container ships, actually some even hire hackers to locate the high value cargo to steal. A bankrupt shipping company doesn't really change much, since the ship is still worth millions. If pirates stole and abandoned the ship then at worst salvage laws apply, and a salvage company would go out and take over. The ships aren't worthless because the company is bankrupt, there's just an issue with operating costs and companies not wanting to shoulder them.

[astrodust]

There's been cases, but those are almost always inside jobs where they need help positioning and/or locating the containers they want to loot.

These are just random ships at sea. No such advantage here. It's truly a needle in a haystack problem.

If you want to steal the ship, a more practical plan would be to convince the crew to abandon ship (bribes?) and then claim it as salvage.

[ethanbond]

Thank you for actually contributing to my understanding rather than just saying "it'll be dealt with by someone!" as if the situation as-is shouldn't already have been dealt with by someone.

[astrodust]

Unloading these ships with state of the art equipment takes upwards of twelve hours. Many of those containers have GPS tracking devices embedded in them.

The sorts of ships routinely subjected to piracy are those carrying an easily transportable commodity (e.g. oil) that can be pumped out or stolen quickly and offloaded on a market without arousing suspicion.

You'd spend weeks going through all those containers to look for anything useful. Many, I'm sure, contain half-finished products, super cheap consumer goods, promotional merchandise, and niche application bulk supplies with almost zero value on the grey market.

If you had someone on the inside that could position the crate you wanted to steal right on top and ready to pick off, you'd just do that with a helicopter anyway and save yourself the trouble of hijacking it.

[ethanbond]

Very interesting! That's actually pretty shocking that they can be unloaded in 12 hours. I would've expected far longer than that, though now thinking about it I suppose it seems reasonable with all those crazy crane systems that industrial docks have.

[bkor]

Hanjin has max 13.000 TEU vessels. That's maybe 8000 containers. One crane can unload at around 30 containers per hour. You might be able to use 6 cranes on such a vessel. It works out to 45 hours to unload such a vessel if completely full. I might be off a bit in some of the calculations, but 12 vs 45 hours is quite a big difference.

There's various physical limitations. You cannot have too many cranes working on a vessel (need to have space between cranes). Further, most cranes aren't that quick. Depending on a region you might hit 45 containers per hour, but that's pretty high (usually only seen in Asia).

[astrodust]

Is the upper end getting much higher with aggressive automation efforts like those in Rotterdam? (https://www.flexport.com/blog/port-automation-oakland-rotter...)

Smaller vessels can be cleared out inside a day, but the larger ones are still a project for all but the best equipped ports.

[ghostly_s]

This seems like a rather pointless thought exercise, but the Navy has a responsibility to enforce law and order (...in addition to extra-legal responsibilities), and impact on "bottom line" is not really a factor considered directly in military operations.

[ethanbond]

I didn't say it was. I'm asking "and then what?" Can they force a port to take in and unload a ship? Would they just leave it adrift? Would they unload it themselves?

[astrodust]

If it became a nautical or environmental hazard they'd be compelled to act. If it's just anchored in international waters there's nothing they could or should do.