Revisiting the leeway of shipping containers: a case study of the M/V Zim Kingston incident

On 22 October 2021, 109 shipping containers fell overboard from the M/V Zim Kingston in rough seas off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. While afloat, these shipping containers pose a significant risk to marine traffic in addition to being a source of marine pollution. Out of the 109 shipping containers, 4 were discovered on the beaches of northwest Vancouver Island 5 days later. Drift simulations were made using the standard leeway tables for shipping containers that vary with the immersion fraction of the shipping container. These leeway values over the expected range of immersion levels underestimated the travelled distance of the shipping containers relative to the observed grounding locations. An increase in the leeway of 1.5% of the wind speed improves the agreement between the simulations and observations, which is consistent with the addition of the Stokes drift to the leeway of the shipping container. It is argued that the leeway measured using the direct method, which was used to calculate the leeway of shipping containers, does not implicitly include the Stokes drift as previously suggested. This result suggests that the Stokes drift should be added to the leeway calculated with the direct method. While the error is small over timescales of 24 to 48 h, it accumulates in time and is appreciable for drift prediction greater than 48 h.