Saturday 12 October 2024 · below the Index · spike
Oil tanker fire off German Baltic coast
An oil tanker caught fire off Germany's Baltic Sea coast on October 11, 2024. All 7 crew members were rescued. The vessel was towed to a northern German port and the fire was extinguished by October 12.
Peak 64.6 on Saturday 12 October 2024. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Media-led, both over the window and on the peak day.
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 61% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Friday 4 October 2024.
How far it spread
No vessel type moved — 0 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Readers here means readers of the Wikipedia article on each vessel type — the same source as the Research signal, not news coverage — so an incident can dominate the news without moving this panel. 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 3% 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 92% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 51% negative overall; 21% strongly so.
Each article is scored on a five-step scale from strongly negative to strongly positive; the bar is the share of coverage at each step.
Sample of the headlines
- German Oil Tanker Ablaze in Baltic Seagcaptain.com · 2024-10-11
- Fire breaks out on an oil tanker off Germany's Baltic Sea coast. All 7 crew members are rescued – Winnipeg Free Presswinnipegfreepress.com · 2024-10-11
- Fire breaks out on oil tanker off Germany's Baltic Sea coast. All 7 crew members are rescuedtheweek.in · 2024-10-11
- Oil Tanker Catches Fire Off Germany's Baltic Sea Coastbiztoc.com · 2024-10-11
- Black smoke billows out as fire burns at oil tanker off Germany's Baltic Sea coastoffshore-energy.biz · 2024-10-11
- Fire on board oil tanker off Germany's Baltic Sea coast extinguishedcountytimes.co.uk · 2024-10-12
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title.
- Registered in a single underlying series only — one vessel-type article, news term or social query — and never moved the Index itself.
- The coverage panels count only articles matched to this incident specifically.
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Oil tanker fire off German Baltic coast, peak 64.6 on 12 October 2024. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2024-oil-tanker-fire-off-german-baltic-coast/