New Zealand Calls for Banning Substandard Vessels Based on 2023 Incident

Maritime investigators in New Zealand are calling for the banning of substandard ships from the country’s water to avoid potential disasters. In the wake of the release of the final report on the near catastrophic incidents involving container ship Shiling, which twice had to be rescued and towed back to port in 2023, the investigators as saying that New Zealand can take a cue from Australia and ban substandard ships.

The Transport Accident Investigation Commission (TAIC) contends that the Singapore-registered Shiling, which had a notorious history of mechanical problems, should never have been allowed in New Zealand waters. TAIC is calling on the Ministry of Transport to pass a law giving Maritime NZ the authority to ban certain ships from the country. The Australian Maritime Safety Authority has the powers, which it has repeatedly utilized in banning ships deemed unsafe.

In the case of Shiling, the telltale signs were already evident even before the boxship twice experienced engine failures in New Zealand waters in a span of less than a month in 2023. Evidence pointed to the fact that the ship was a disaster in waiting from as early as 2018 when she was classified as a “high risk” vessel under the Tokyo Port State Control (PSC) statutes.

In 2020, a year after Shiling Navigation purchased the vessel and tapped Asian-Alliance Ship Management as the operator providing liner services between New Zealand and ports in Asia, inspections in Russia, China, and Chile detected a total of 19 deficiencies in five PSC inspections.

The same happened in New Zealand where Maritime NZ had issued 16 deficiencies against the ship during three PSC inspections between March 2022 and March 2023, with the last one coming just a month before the first major incident. It is also emerging that twice, in February 2022 and July 2022, the Shiling suffered engine failures while arriving and departing the Port of Wellington.

“The Commission found that the Shiling had a history of deficiencies and that it’s virtually certain the ship wasn’t seaworthy while in New Zealand,” said Naveen Kozhuppakalam, TAIC’s Chief Investigator of Accidents.

Owing to its troubled history, it was just a matter of time before a serious incident could occur. It did not take long for the 294-meter (965-foot) long ship built at HD Hyundai Heavy Industries in 2005 with a capacity of 5,117 TEU to experience its first major incident.

On April 15, 2023, the Shiling was under pilotage at Wellington. Just after initiating a turn into the Wellington Harbour entrance channel, the vessel suffered a blackout that caused the main engine to stop. The momentum of the turn carried the ship into the shallow waters of Falcon Shoal, where the bridge team succeeded in using both the ship’s anchors to stop the ship from grounding. She was subsequently towed dead-ship by tugs back to its berth.

Maritime NZ issued a detention order against the Shiling and carried out detailed inspections that identified numerous deficiencies. For the next 25 days, the boxship remained at Wellington undergoing repairs to its generators and rectification of the deficiencies identified.

On May 10, the Shiling departed Wellington bound for Singapore. Normal operational standards entail that while a vessel is in port, any accumulation of oily water must be stored in tanks for later controlled discharge away from any coastline. Due to the length of the Shiling’s stay at Wellington, the various tanks used to store oily water were at capacity.

The engine room bilges were confirmed as dry before the ship departed with the chief engineer intending to begin pumping out the tanks through the approved oily water separator once the ship was outside New Zealand’s territorial waters.

Owing to adverse weather forecasts for the Tasman Sea, the master decided to take shelter near the New Zealand coast and wait for about 36 hours for the weather to abate. At about 2300 on May 11, the Shiling departed the sheltered waters bound for Singapore. Because the engineers had been unable to begin pumping out the oily water holding tanks, additional oily water that had been produced while the ship remained in sheltered waters had filled the engine room bilges and begun accumulating on the engine room tank top.

When the ship entered the Tasman Sea, it began to roll, and the free water on the tank top entered the void under the main engine sump, where three rubber diaphragms were located. The fact that all three rubber diaphragms deteriorated with age allowed the bilge water to enter the lube-oil tank, causing the lube-oil pumps to lose pressure and the main engine to stop. New Zealand’s inspectors later concluded the diaphragms had gone uninspected for years.

Given the contamination of the lube oil tank, the engineers were unable to restart the main engine. Without propulsion, the Shiling settled beam-on to the waves and began rolling heavily. At 0828, the master radioed the New Zealand Marine Operations Center to request towing assistance. At 1056, due to continued heavy rolling, the master made a mayday call and a tow vessel responded, managing to rescue the container ship to the sheltered waters of Golden Bay and eventually back to Wellington.

For the next 45 days, the Shiling remained at Wellington undergoing surveys and repairs to the main engine, further repairs to the generators in connection with the first incident, and repairs to several other systems identified as substandard. On July 7, the ship was finally allowed to depart New Zealand for Singapore.

In both incidents, there were no injuries reported for the ship’s 24 crewmembers or environmental pollution. Following the release of the final report, TAIC has gone ahead to issue several recommendations, key of which is banning substandard vessels from New Zealand’s waters.