https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/06/06/when-shipping-containers-sink-in-the-drink Skip to main content The New Yorker * Newsletter To revisit this article, select My Account, then View saved stories Close Alert Sign In Search * News * Books & Culture * Fiction & Poetry * Humor & Cartoons * Magazine * Puzzles & Games * Video * Podcasts * Archive * Goings On * Shop Open Navigation Menu To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories Close Alert The New Yorker New Yorker Favorites * The Maraschino Mogul's Secret Life * Marie Antoinette's Closet * The End of Ice * F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood Dept. of Transportation June 6, 2022 Issue When Shipping Containers Sink in the Drink We've supersized our capacity to ship stuff across the seas. As our global supply chains grow, what can we gather from the junk that washes up on shore? By Kathryn Schulz May 30, 2022 * * * * * Save this story for later. Shipping containers and miscellaneous objects floating underwater. The shipping container is a lesson in the uncontainable nature of modern life.Illustration by Bianca Bagnarelli * * * * * Save this story for later. Content This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. There is a stretch of coastline in southern Cornwall known for its dragons. The black ones are rare, the green ones rarer; even a dedicated dragon hunter can go a lifetime without coming across a single one. Unlike the dragons of European myth, these do not hoard treasure, cannot breathe fire, and, lacking wings, cannot fly. They are aquatic, in that they always arrive from the sea, and they are capable of travelling considerable distances. One was spotted, like Saoirse Ronan, on Chesil Beach; another made its home on the otherwise uninhabited Dutch island of Griend, in the Wadden Sea. Mostly, though, they are drawn to the windswept beaches of southwestern England--to Portwrinkle and Perranporth, to Bigbury Bay and Gunwalloe. If you want to go looking for these dragons yourself, it will help to know that they are three inches long, missing their arms and tails, and made by the Lego company. Cornwall owes its dragon population to the Tokio Express, a container ship that sailed from Rotterdam for North America in February of 1997 and ran into foul weather twenty miles off Land's End. In heavy seas, it rolled so far abeam that sixty-two of the containers it was carrying wrenched free of their fastenings and fell overboard. One of those containers was filled with Lego pieces--to be specific, 4,756,940 of them. Among those were the dragons (33,427 black ones, 514 green), but, as fate would have it, many of the other pieces were ocean-themed. When the container slid off the ship, into the drink went vast quantities of miniature scuba tanks, spearguns, diving flippers, octopuses, ship's rigging, submarine parts, sharks, portholes, life rafts, and the bits of underwater seascapes known among Lego aficionados as LURPs and BURPs--Little Ugly Rock Pieces and Big Ugly Rock Pieces, of which 7,200 and 11,520, respectively, were aboard the Tokio Express. Not long afterward, helicopter pilots reported looking down at the surface of the Celtic Sea and seeing "a slick of Lego." (As with "fish," "sheep," and "offspring," the most widely accepted plural of "Lego" is Lego.) Soon enough, some of the pieces lost overboard started washing ashore, mostly on Cornish beaches. Published in the print edition of the June 6, 2022, issue, with the headline "Shipping News." New Yorker Favorites * The attorney fighting revenge porn. * Pauli Murray was an architect of the civil-rights struggle--and the women's movement. Why haven't you heard of her? * What old money looks like in America, and who pays for it. * An MSG convert visits the high church of Umami. * Why the archives of so many great writers end up in Texas. * Fiction by Donna Tartt: "Tam-O'-Shanter" Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker. [schulz-kat] Kathryn Schulz, a staff writer at The New Yorker, won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing. Her latest book is "Lost & Found ." More:ShipsCargo shipsSeaBooksShippingLegoLosslosses This Week's Issue Never miss a big New Yorker story again. Sign up for This Week's Issue and get an e-mail every week with the stories you have to read. E-mail address [ ] Sign up By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement. 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