Wednesday 2 June 2021 · below the Index · plateau
MV X-Press Pearl fire off Sri Lanka
A container ship carrying nitric acid caught fire off the coast of Colombo, Sri Lanka in late May 2021, with two crew members injured in an explosion. The Indian Coast Guard responded to assist Sri Lankan authorities as the fire raged and threatened to cause a major oil spill and chemical pollution.
Peak 94.2 on Thursday 3 June 2021. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Over the whole window this ran Media-led; on the peak day itself it read Mixed-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 86% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Friday 9 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: pollution event. 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 71% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 31% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Container ship ablaze off coast of Sri Lankareuters.com · 2021-05-26
- Singapore-flagged container ship ablaze off Sri Lanka threatens chemical, oil spillstraitstimes.com · 2021-05-26
- Seafarer rescued from burning boxship X-press Pearl tests positive for Covid-19tradewindsnews.com · 2021-05-27
- Indian Coast Guard in full swing to control fire onboard container vessel MV X-Press Pearl off Colombo, Sri Lankanewsonair.com · 2021-05-27
- Sri Lanka Evacuates Crew from Burning Container Ship MV X-Press Pearlmsn.com · 2021-05-25
- Sri Lanka : Indo-Sri Lanka joint operation puts out fire aboard MV X-Press Pearl, legal action mulled against Ship ownercolombopage.com · 2021-05-28
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)
- 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 (676/1307 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: MV X-Press Pearl fire off Sri Lanka, peak 94.2 on 3 June 2021. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2021-mv-x-press-pearl-fire-off-sri-lanka/