Marine claims consultancy WK Webster has removed drone footage showing extensive cargo damage to an AP Moller-Maersk boxship from its website at the request of the Danish shipping giant.
WK Webster put up the video of the 13,092-teu Maersk Essen (built 2010) showing its condition after it arrived at anchorage at the Port of Lazaro Cardenas on Wednesday.
As earlier reported by TradeWinds, the vessel lost around 750 containers after running into a storm in the Pacific and was diverted to the Mexican port from Los Angeles.
WK Webster’s video, which appeared briefly before being removed, clearly showed extensive cargo damage to the Maersk Essen.
The nature of the damage, with numerous collapsed container stacks, appears similar to that suffered by the Ocean Network Express-operated, 14,052-teu boxship ONE Apus (built 2019) after it was also hit by a Pacific storm in an almost identical accident two months earlier.
The scale of the damage of the Maersk Essen is much smaller than in the case of the ONE Apus.
Video footage removed
But in response to a request from Maersk the footage was removed from the website last night.
WK Webster said: “We regret to advise that we have removed our copyright footage of the Maersk Essen following a request from Maersk.”
The consultancy’s drone footage of containership damage has been used to help cargo interests and their insurers to understand the cargo damage suffered in such containership casualties.
Such video footage recently revealed that the cargo damage suffered by the ONE Apus was much more severe than had been initially thought.
Maersk was initially slow to release information on the Maersk Essen incident. The Maersk Essen ran into trouble on 16 January, and Maersk did not issue a press statement until 21 January, after the liner giant was contacted by TradeWinds.
There is still no mention of the Maersk Essen incident on Maersk’s public website. Maersk has said it is committed to safe, responsible and transparent business practices.
Maersk has been contacted by TradeWinds over the removal of the WK Webster video.
By comparison, when the ONE Apus casualty occurred, ONE issued press release within two days and maintained regular updates on the situation on its website that are freely available to the public.
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