Saturday 18 December 2021 · below the Index · plateau
Cargo ship fire off Sweden; Baltic collision
A fire broke out on a cargo ship carrying timber off the Swedish coast in early December 2021. Separately, two cargo ships collided in the Baltic Sea off Sweden on December 13, resulting in one death and one person missing. The spike reflects mixed maritime incidents during this window, with significant media attention to both events alongside broader shipping industry coverage of port congestion, freight rates, and seafarer issues.
Peak 62.0 on Monday 13 December 2021. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Over the whole window this ran Mixed-led; on the peak day itself it read Media-led. When the two differ, the fast signals (social, news) spiked and faded while the slow ones (search, research) carried the tail. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.
Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.
How unusual it was
This was above 59% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Monday 13 December 2021.
How far it spread
Stayed in one vessel type — 1 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.
How it was framed the frame glossary →
Lead frame: human drama. Trade press was 4% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 83% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 50% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Two cargo ships collide in the Baltic Sea near Sweden and Denmark | News | DWdw.com · 2021-12-13
- Cargo ships collide in Baltic Sea off Sweden's coastbbc.co.uk · 2021-12-13
- Two cargo ships collide in Baltic, rescue underwaystraitstimes.com · 2021-12-13
- Two cargo ships collide in the Baltic Sea near Swedenonenewspage.com · 2021-12-13
- Baltic Sea: Two reported missing after cargo ships collide off Sweden's coastitv.com · 2021-12-13
- Two missing after cargo ships collide in Baltic Sea off Sweden's south coastmsn.com · 2021-12-13
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title.
- social = X only before Bluesky (2024-07-01); not comparable with today's series
- tier C: only a Wikipedia article, GDELT sub-vocabulary term, or social per-term query fired — not yet confirmed as a real maritime incident (Phase C naming/is_maritime_incident does that).
- integrated and peak-day verdicts differ (smoothing artefact likely)
- naming step found more than one plausible cause in the headlines (alternatives: ['cargo ship fire off Sweden carrying timber', 'cargo ship collision in Baltic Sea off Swedish coast']) — attribution.confidence is low; label may be an honest compound
- coverage scored on title only (no excerpt) — measured ~8pp frame precision cost vs title+excerpt (docs/HANDOVER-incidents.md §2.3)
- coverage filtered to articles matching this incident specifically (212/645 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Cargo ship fire off Sweden; Baltic collision, peak 62.0 on 13 December 2021. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2021-cargo-ship-fire-off-sweden-baltic-collision/