Lost and found: Australia's containers turn up

Mar 19, 2009, 10:00 GMT

   Sydney - The Australian Navy has found 21 of the 31 containers lost overboard when the Pacific Adventurer container vessel was buffeted by a storm off Australia's east coast last week.

   A navy spokesman said Thursday that 270 metres from where the Hong Kong-registered ship lost half its load, the mine hunter HMAS Yarra had located objects that 'meet the dimensional features we are looking for with regards to these containers.'

   The Yarra was sent to look for the lost boxes of ammonium nitrate after an aerial survey failed to find them.

   Maritime experts had predicted the containers would be hard to trace because they might have drifted hundreds of kilometres from the accident location near Brisbane.

   As well as losing half its containers, the Pacific Adventurer spilled oil that washed up on 60 kilometres of beaches.

   Authorities have impounded the 180-metre vessel in Brisbane harbour and started legal proceedings against the captain and the ship's owner, Swire Shipping Ltd.

   The Queensland state government is demanding compensation for having to clean up the oil spill and for any loss of tourism earnings through hotel room cancellations.

   It was also likely to bill Swire for the recovery of the boxes, which contain 620 tons of ammonium nitrate, used to make fertilizer.