Drifting Ducks and Floating Phones: Lost Cargo's Unexpected Journeys

Ever wonder what happens to cargo lost at sea? 

In this episode, we discuss the wild world of floating freight, from 28,000 rubber duckies teaching us about ocean currents to Garfield phones mysteriously washing up on French beaches for decades. 

Blythe and Grace explore bizarre incidents like Lego pieces still appearing on English coasts and a British pilot's emergency landing on a Spanish cargo ship, touching on salvage rights and environmental impacts. 

WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE

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Chapters

• 0:05 Lost Cargo at Sea: Introduction and Setup
• 1:58 The Friendly Floaties Spill: Rubber Duckies and Ocean Currents
• 4:25 Impact on Ocean Shipping and Trade Lanes
• 7:00 Cargo Crime and Salvage Rights
• 10:19 The British Pilot Incident and Salvage Rights
• 13:53 Garfield Phones, Coffee, and Legos: More Stories of Lost Cargo
• 19:57 Stories of Lost Cargo and Their Impacts

Transcript

Blythe Brumleve: 0:05

Have you ever wondered what happens to cargo that's lost at sea, whether it's weather related or user error, containers and its contents are lost at sea all the time, and some of those contents end up washing up on beaches all over the world. Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics day podcast, logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI Logistics, and I am your host, Blythe Brumleve In this episode, Grace Sharkey is back for another mashup where we talk about lost cargo at sea. First recovering the story of friendly floaties, aka rubber duckies that got dumped into the ocean, subsequently teaching us so much more about how ocean currents work. Then we're going to round out the show with another segment covering lost cargo such as Garfield phones, coffee and Legos. Hope you all enjoy this one. These are examples that stories that you could be telling within your own office, right? So for mine in particular, I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but it's called the friendly floaties. Have you ever heard of this? Just like off the day you never heard of that phrase. Okay, so have you ever wondered what happens to a container if it falls off of a cargo ship? Yes,

Grace Sharkey: 1:19

because I lost I lost some Ivy Park merchandise from a ship that lost containers. I never got my socks. So, so basically, Beyonce has like, a bunch of stuff at the bottom of the oceans, or maybe not. Are you telling me that it's somewhere?

Blythe Brumleve: 1:37

Well, it depends on the product that was actually being shipped, because the overwhelming majority, and I'll play this clip here in just a second, but the overwhelming majority of freight, when it falls off of one, you know, maybe weather patterns, or, you know, rough seas. Obviously, weather affects the the rough seas. So what happens is these containers will fall off, and it just becomes a either a salvage situation, where you can claim salvage rights, or it becomes a situation where they're just going to immediately, like, be at the bottom of the ocean. So let me play this quick clip, because this particular freight that got lost was pretty buoyant, and so it hung around for a little while. Let me, let me play the clip. I'll go think about

Unknown: 2:21

it, a container with two cars inside will obviously sink when it floods, while the same container filled with bath toys will instead stay afloat. This is actually what happened in 1992 when the ever Laurel lost some of her containers in a storm while on passage between Asia and the USA. One container that went over had over 28,000 bath toys inside, meaning that even when the container flooded, it would still remain afloat, because the toys would displace so much water, generating enough buoyancy for themselves and the steel container. Of course, we know that for whatever reason the toys got out so that container will have sunk while the toys spent the next few decades riding the ocean currents, giving scientists and unexpected insight into ocean flow patterns worldwide. Anyway. The point is, the only way for a container to remain afloat for a prolonged period is for it to contain cargo that is sufficiently buoyant, and for that cargo to remain secure enough that it doesn't get out.

Blythe Brumleve: 3:16

So how? Okay, so I'll set that up, but, you know, a little bit more. But that's essentially what happens. It depends on the cargo that is actually being shipped. And so this particular incident is called the friendly floaties spill, and it was a bunch of bath toys, like, not bath toys, but like rubber duckies, some other bath you know, type animals that have a similar, like buoyancy level to it. And because of this situation that all of these rubber duckies, literally, 28,000 of these rubber duckies were released into the ocean. We're still finding them to this day. This happened in 1994 I believe, is what the video said. But we learned so much about ocean currents from this spill, because there was this doctor that like, or this professor that like, studied where all of these rubber duckies were ending up, and some of them were ending up in, you know, the Australian coastline, we figured out that to go through one full ocean current cycle takes one year, if you for so these duckies, they were still washing up a year later in massive I mean, there was 28,000 of them, so they were ending up in all areas of the world. And what I thought was really cool is that for a lot of us, that we didn't understand, especially those who work in ocean shipping, they didn't understand a lot of how these ocean currents work, and what we we don't know, what we don't know, right? And so for some of these companies, especially how trade lanes are established. So trade lanes, meaning, what route is your ship going to take from one country's port to another port? What's the most efficient way to do that, where you can kind of ride the currents and get there more. Efficiently, you know, avoid the bad weather. It's very, very like booking a ship is very similar to booking a truck. And I don't know why that blew my mind. When I found out about it, I just assumed, like you booked the ship, and it takes the quickest point, you know, from port to port. That's not the case. They use different ocean currents, and because of that situation, they were able to find and establish new trade lanes, based on the on how the little rubber duckies like ended up all over the place. And I thought that that was so cool. And another cool part of this is that it was turned into a children's book, so it's called a ducky. I ordered this yesterday, so it actually should get here too. I was hoping it would get here in time, but it hasn't gotten here yet. But I will let me share this little book, and it is so cute,

Grace Sharkey: 5:54

you should send that to Lauren began. She just had a baby too. So it got

Blythe Brumleve: 6:02

me thinking, like, how are we teaching kids about the supply chain? Like, if you're if you're just listening to this, it's like the cutest little rubber duck that's on the cover of it. It's called Ducky, and one of the intro pages says, I am a yellow plastic duck, and I am in great danger. Yesterday, I was snuggled safe with hundreds of other bathtub toys. We were in a crate on a big ship. A storm came and our crate was washed overboard. So it shows a little picture of, like a wet, you know, duck. He's obviously scared, and all of the different things that you learn from this. And so I thought that that was, it was it was one of those stories that I was like, Oh, this is our cool video. And let me really quick that video that we just listened to came from casual navigation on YouTube, that it's a great follow for, you know, sort of, you know, casual navigation stories. But I thought that that was when I saw that video, and I was looking up on Wikipedia on how the story sort of evolved, and every all of the insights that came from learning about the ocean shipping patterns and things like that, and learning where these different where, I guess, salvage rights and and we've been totally an entire show on air travel rights. Yes, it's just so, like, ancient and fascinating. And there was this other video that I did want to show too, because that's really, like the cute side of it, so that, you know, the children's book came out of it. But then on the other side is where I wanted to loop it back around to cargo crime, because some of these floating containers just end up in the middle of the sea and or middle of the ocean, and it causes danger for some of like, maybe sailboats, for example, because only part of the container is kind of sticking up out of the water, and you don't have time to maneuver around it. So if it hasn't sunk yet, depending on the product that it's carrying, it might remain buoyant for, you know, longer than you would imagine. But then there was another incident where, and I'll share this tab here, of these other folks that stumbled upon these merchant I think, fishermen that stumbled upon a container that was floating in the middle of the ocean and that had cigarettes in it. Oh, hell yes. So all of the merchants they cut, oh my god, the container that floating in the middle of the ocean, and so they start ripping out all of the cigarettes from the ship. Obviously, you probably see that if you're a fisherman and you're like, Oh, well, what's in here? Salvage rights, technically, you can seize that. You can lay claim, as long as nobody else is laying claim like ownership wise, which, if you think about it, I'm sure that you know, the insurance companies maybe saw this video and maybe had something to say about this process, but it was, I thought it was a really cool case of like, okay, this is what happens when it's stuff that people actually want, that they're going to find a way, or just, oh yeah, city, that they're going to try to find out how what's inside of there and see if it's worth anything. And I'm sure for a lot of these guys on the boat finding a lot of those cigarettes, boxes in boxes. It was estimated to be millions of dollars in cargo worth of cigarettes.

Grace Sharkey: 9:11

Oh, my God, especially depending on what country they're from, like, even if they have that type, oh, that's so cool. Oh, those guys just are like generational wealth, like we just hit the jackpot.

Blythe Brumleve: 9:26

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Unknown: 11:46

In the end, it's been a story of mixed fortune. Lieutenant Watson warming up for his first major NATO exercise. He suddenly finds himself in the headlines and four days adrift from his Harrier squadron for the way in which he skillfully managed to land on this crowded cargo Deck, there was much praise and much relief, but the worrying question remains, exactly how did he find himself in such a dire situation in the first place? So Lieutenant Watson's fate is still not certain, but as a party of British naval engineers and mechanics got to work attaching Lifting Gear onto the Harrier clear that no action would be taken until a naval board of inquiry has investigated the affair. The Harrier will be taken back to the United Kingdom after being loaded onto a British tanker, which is expected in Tenerife tomorrow afternoon.

Blythe Brumleve: 12:34

Isn't that insane?

Grace Sharkey: 12:36

So crazy, and then it's just so nuts that, like, yeah, it's not technically owned by them at that point either. Interesting,

Blythe Brumleve: 12:45

and that's what ended up happening with like that, I guess, like the jet propulsion that he could just land straight helicopter, because that was my first question too, is like, how the hell do you land on a cargo ship? Because I've been on a naval carrier before, and they have the area where you can land and take off, but to land straight down obviously takes a lot of skill, and apparently that pilot had only completed about 75%

Grace Sharkey: 13:15

of his training years old. Yeah, jeez, Wow, that's incredible.

Blythe Brumleve: 13:19

So that that was a That's why I brought it back to the cargo. Crimes is that Spain basically found themselves in the hands of a British jet and made the Brits pay for to have it back, which is probably one of the few ways that you can get the Brits to give things back nowadays. Yeah. Just just have a salvage race. So if any museum, especially like Egypt, or anybody else that's looking to get some of your stuff back, maybe try it salvage rights, because the Brits do listen when it comes to that.

Grace Sharkey: 13:50

That's so funny.

Blythe Brumleve: 13:53

I just love that story so much, and I love that it taught us so much about ocean currents and where you're turning something involving, essentially pollution into a positive and learning something from it. Now next up, let's learn about Garfield, phones, Legos and coffee, how all three of those commodities have washed up from containers lost at sea onto some unsuspecting beach residents who continue to find these items still to this day, that container was a bunch of rubber duckies. And like, you know, kind of they call it floaty friends, which is, you know, just different animals in the same shape as a rubber ducky. So they all spill out into the ocean. They teach us a bunch about ocean currents, things that we never knew, like these duckies are ending up in England and Australia. So it was, you know, obviously, it's a sad story that a lot of pollution, like ends up in the ocean, but on the positive side of things, it did teach us a lot about that, and it led into like a giant rabbit hole of, you know, just containers lost at sea and things like that. And so I think my algorithm now on Tiktok is absolutely a geek. Towards that, because I get that all those stories now, and I say all those stories, but I'm going to bring up this next one, because it's the mystery of the Garfield cat phones. So I don't know if your cat is still around, so hopefully, maybe she'll find this interesting. But brokering success demands a battle ready strategy. Thai TMS equips freight brokers with the ultimate battle station for conquering a tough market. With Ty, brokers gain access to a comprehensive platform where raid intelligence and quote history converge on a single screen. It's not just a page, it's a strategic command center designed to help brokers win. Thai equips your team with all of the data they need to negotiate with confidence and allows them to communicate directly with carriers and customers from a simple control base, revolutionize the way your brokers perform by giving them a competitive advantage with Thai TMS. For more info, go to Tai software.com backslash battle stations. And we also have a link for you in the show notes to sign up for a demo

Unknown: 16:03

stitch this with a fact so ridiculous you didn't believe it until you looked it up yourself. Someone told me this story years ago, and I always thought it was a joke, until like, a couple weeks ago when I saw Tiktok about it. So I had to look it up, and it's real. So essentially, since the 1980s the Britain region of France, collectible Garfield phones have been washing up on shore, and nobody knew why. For 35 years, these creepy Garfield phones were just washing up on the beach by the dozens. Then finally, a farmer who lived in the area discovered a container ship that had been hit by a storm and washed up inside of a sea cave. He said the cave was nearby, but you had to know the area really well to find it. So no one had discovered this shipwreck, and in the shipwreck, they found an open container that was full of Garfield phone stock and was slowly seeping out to sea and washing up on shore. Is it useful information? No, but it's hilarious. So

Blythe Brumleve: 17:04

I love that, because for 35 years, these people had no idea of what, where these Garfield phones were coming from, and so I, you know, just as I was reading through the comments, there were a bunch of other people that, of course, listed that were talking about the ducky story, which we've already talked about. But then there were these other people that were talking about, there's another story of back in 2015 Let me switch to this tab. So back in 2015 container went overboard during rough seas and cafe Bustelo, the coffee brand, one of the containers went overseas

Grace Sharkey: 17:43

that coffee, it's so good and it's so cheap.

Blythe Brumleve: 17:47

Well, on a Florida or FLORIDA BEACHES, 1000s of cans of 10s of Cafe Bustelo is washing up on the beach. And so it was just like, this massive thing that, you know, beach goers, they could go and they could, essentially, like, fill up an entire trash can or trash bag of these still sealed, you know, I guess, you know, kind of tied back to the makeup story, like, how do you know if it's been contaminated or not? But if you have ever had a coffee bustello, you know that if you take the yellow lid off, they have that metal tin that is, you know that you can rip off and then start using the coffee. And so there's literally, if you're watching it right now, if you're just listening to it, there's a man, just like on the beach, with a garbage bag, and he's filling it up with Cafe booleans. So that was one that I thought was really interesting and that I did not know about. There was another one which I'm going to I'm probably going to see this on a future what the truck episode? Because this one is when a container went overboard and millions of Lego pieces were lost at sea. 25 years ago, those pieces are still washing up on the English coast. So the backstory on this is on in February, on February 13, 1997 a stormy weather caused Tokyo Express container ship to tilt more than 45 degrees, causing 62 containers to go overboard. One of these containers carried 4.8 million pieces of Lego and more than 23 years later, Lego bricks are still washing up on Cornish coastlines in southwest England. And goes on to say that, according to Delia Webb of the Cornish plastic pollution coalition, that's a alliteration hell. But volunteer beach cleaners are regularly finding Legos to this day, which is a sobering reminder of the enduring nature of plastics in our environment. But basically, yeah, so yeah, 23 years ago, a container goes overboard, and people are still finding these things on the beach. So coffee, we have Garfield phones, we have rubber duckies and Lego pieces now that have all been reported over on Tiktok, which I think is just fascinating that you know, there's random people that are finding these things on the beaches and have no idea. Like how global supply chain works. I hope you enjoyed this episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight, telling the stories behind how your favorite stuff and people get from point A to B. Subscribe to the show. Sign up for our newsletter and follow our socials over at everything is logistics.com and in addition to the podcast, I also wanted to let you all know about another company I operate, and that's digital dispatch, where we help you build a better website. Now, a lot of the times, we hand this task of building a new website or refreshing a current one off to a coworker's child, a neighbor down the street or a stranger around the world, where you probably spend more time explaining the freight industry than it takes to actually build the dang website. Well, that doesn't happen at Digital dispatch. We've been building online since 2009 but also early adopters of AI automation and other website tactics that help your company to be a central place, to pull in all of your social media posts, recruit new employees and give potential customers a glimpse into how you operate your business. Our new website builds start as low as$1,500 along with ongoing website management, maintenance and updates starting at $90 a month, plus some bonus freight marketing and sales content similar to what you hear on the podcast, you can watch a quick explainer video over on digitaldispatch.io, just check out the pricing page once you arrive, and you can see how we can build your digital ecosystem on a strong foundation. Until then, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I'll see you all real soon and go jags. You.