Saturday 30 September 2023 · below the Index · spike
Cocaine cargo ship seized off Cork coast
A cargo ship carrying a record cocaine haul was seized off the Cork coast in late September 2023, linked to drugs seizures in France and Spain. Seven men were arrested in connection with the probe.
Peak 75.7 on Saturday 30 September 2023. 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 76% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Monday 18 September 2023.
How far it spread
Spilled over — 2 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: shady industry. Trade press was 2% 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 42% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 64% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Cocaine cargo ship seized off Cork coast is linked to drugs hauls in France and Spainirishexaminer.com · 2023-09-29
- Drugs found onboard a cargo ship linked to the vessel stranded off the Wexford coast may be the biggest seizure of cocaine ever recorded here.southeastradio.ie · 2023-09-27
- Kinahan cartel had 'significant' stake in €500m cocaine haul seized on cargo ship off Cork coastindependent.ie · 2023-09-28
- Army Rangers board container ship off the Cork Coastredfm.ie · 2023-09-26
- Container ship off Cork coast detained by defence forces personnel and gardaírte.ie · 2023-09-27
- 'Significant' drugs seizure after cargo ship is boarded by Army Ranger Wing off Irish coastthejournal.ie · 2023-09-26
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 (89/1045 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Cocaine cargo ship seized off Cork coast, peak 75.7 on 30 September 2023. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2023-cocaine-cargo-ship-seized-off-cork-coast/