X-Press Pearl fire highlights duty of care required in shipping hazardous cargoes

The X-Press Pearl’s sad fate is the latest in a disappointing recent and persistent catalogue of container ship fires of varying degrees of severity, which occur on an almost weekly basis. The vast majority of these are initiated by a cargo of a hazardous nature. One estimate puts the number of mis- or undeclared dangerous cargoes in excess of 150,000 containers a year – each of which has disastrous potential. While still to be fully investigated, the catalyst for the inferno on the X-Press Pearl has been asserted to be a leakage of nitric acid, which was correctly declared but apparently incorrectly packaged or packed.