Tuesday 18 April 2023 · below the Index · spike
Container ship Shiling breaks down in Wellington Harbour
The Singaporean container ship Shiling experienced a mechanical breakdown in Wellington Harbour, New Zealand on or around April 17, 2023. The incident raised reliability concerns and marked the third such incident in less than a year, prompting official scrutiny and seafarer protests.
Peak 49.6 on Tuesday 18 April 2023. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Public curiosity-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 23% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Monday 17 April 2023.
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: safety failure. Trade press was 18% of in-scope coverage. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 0% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 0% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- New Zealand raises 'concerns' after Singaporean container ship breaks downtradewindsnews.com · 2023-04-17
- More testing needed on container ship Shiling that broke down in Wellington Harbourstuff.co.nz · 2023-04-17
- Container ship breakdown in Wellington harbour is third incident in less than a yearnzherald.co.nz · 2023-04-17
- Seafarers rally in Wellington to defend New Zealand coastal shipping - MUNZvoxy.co.nz · 2023-04-18
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 (11/85 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
- coverage panel is based on only 11 articles (< 30) — directional, not precise
- decay half-life: >30 days (still elevated at window end)
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Container ship Shiling breaks down in Wellington Harbour, peak 49.6 on 18 April 2023. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2023-container-ship-shiling-breaks-down-in-wellington-harbour/