Saturday 15 May 2021 · below the Index · spike
Golden Ray cargo ship fire off Georgia
The Golden Ray, a cargo ship wreck off the Georgia coast, caught fire in mid-May 2021. Seawater was being used to extinguish the flames on the vessel's remains. No injuries were reported.
Peak 70.7 on Saturday 15 May 2021. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Media-led, both over the window and on the peak day. 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 71% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Friday 16 April 2021.
How far it spread
No vessel type moved — 0 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 0% 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 95% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 0% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Golden Ray: Seawater being used to put out fire on a cargo ship wreckage off the Georgia coastmsn.com · 2021-05-15
- Golden Ray, the cargo ship catches fire on St. Simons Islandwjcl.com · 2021-05-14
- Golden Ray cargo ship cleanup continues after firefirstcoastnews.com · 2021-05-15
- Flames engulfing cargo ship's remains off Georgia coastsfgate.com · 2021-05-14
- Georgia capsized cargo ship catches firewtsp.com · 2021-05-14
- Wreckage of cargo ship catches fire off Georgia coastnydailynews.com · 2021-05-14
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).
- 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 (101/418 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Golden Ray cargo ship fire off Georgia, peak 70.7 on 15 May 2021. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2021-golden-ray-cargo-ship-fire-off-georgia/