When you’re moving a 13 900 TEU boxship, things are bound to get out of hand every now and then.

For the uninitiated, TEU stands for Twenty-Foot Equivalent Units, or containers as they’re more commonly called. A ship that can carry 13 900 of those is, to put it lightly, extremely large.

The badly berthed boxship in this story is the Milano Bridge, part of the Ocean Network Express fleet. As per procedure, the ship was approaching Busan New Port, in South Korea, with the assistance of two tug boats.

What should have been a smooth docking went horribly wrong.

Here’s Splash247:

Dramatic footage sent to Splash shows the incident, which also sees the vessel come into contact with 10,000 TEU boxship Seaspan Ganges.

As well as bringing down crane 85, at least two other cranes sustained damage however no injuries were reported.

It’s hard to look away, with the impact occurring just after the 45-second mark:

The crane never stood a chance.

Take it in from a different angle, this time from the 40-second mark:

Finally, an animation of what went wrong, to round things off:

And I thought my parallel parking skills were bad.

The world of shipping is difficult enough without container ships destroying cranes and rear-ending other boats.

I’m talking route optimisation, currency cover, tariff determination, customs regulations, packaging requirements, marine insurance and so on.

You know – all the fun stuff.

Berry & Donaldson, one of South Africa’s largest private-owned logistics companies, has been helping our importers and exporters navigate the labyrinth that is international freighting for over half a century.

If you want things done right, they should be your first port of call.

[source:splash247]