Friday 18 February 2022 · moved the Index · regime
Felicity Ace ablaze
The Panamanian-flagged cargo ship Felicity Ace caught fire in the mid-Atlantic on February 16-17, 2022, while carrying approximately 4,000 luxury vehicles including Porsches, Lamborghinis, Bentleys, and Audis bound for the United States. The crew abandoned ship safely. The vessel remained adrift and burning for weeks before sinking in early March 2022 off the coast of Portugal.
Peak 155.6 on Thursday 3 March 2022. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Mixed-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
The #8 incident since 2020 by peak. Its peak day ranks #112 among all days — the higher days all belong to 8 bigger incidents.
How far it spread
Sector-wide — 4 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 1% 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 58% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 20% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Porsche-Carrying Cargo Ship Felicity Ace Has Sunk in the Atlanticmsn.com · 2022-03-01
- 'Felicity Ace' Cargo Ship Has Sunk; Was Carrying Porsches, Lamborghiniscaranddriver.com · 2022-03-01
- Huge Damages Await Volkswagen Group as Cargo Ship Felicity Ace Heads to the Bahamasautoworldnews.com · 2022-03-01
- Volkswagen Loses Almost 4,000 Cars As the Felicity Ace Cargo Ship Sinks in Rough Seasautoevolution.com · 2022-03-01
- Firefighting efforts aboard the Felicity Ace cargo shipfirerescue1.com · 2022-03-01
- Felicity Ace: Cargo ship carrying millions of dollars worth of Porsche, Lamborghini and Bentley cars sinks9news.com.au · 2022-03-02
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
- coverage scored on title only (no excerpt) — measured ~8pp frame precision cost vs title+excerpt (docs/HANDOVER-incidents.md §2.3)
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Felicity Ace ablaze, peak 155.6 on 3 March 2022. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2022-felicity-ace-ablaze/