On 25 July, the Freemantle Highway, a Japanese owned and Panamanian flagged car carrier caught fire about two hours after leaving the German port of Bremerhaven. The ship was en-route to the Suez canal with a final destination of Singapore. For those not familiar with car carriers. They are ships which resemble the box they came in.
The ship had a crew of 20. One was killed and the rest had to abandon ship, two by jumping into the water. Fortunately they were able to get a salvage ship to take it in tow before a westerly wind blew it onto the Dutch coast.
This is the Freemantle Highway after the fire burned itself out.
The ship was carrying ~3,800 cars including Rolls Royces, BMWs, and Mercedes. It was also carrying ~500 Electric Vehicles. It is believed that one of the EVs was responsible for the fire.
EV fires are not like regular auto fires. A regular car burns at about 850-900 degrees and can generally be put out with one pumper truck of water, ~500 gallons. An EV fire burns at over 5,000 degrees and takes 4,500-5,000 gallons of water. The water is mostly to keep everything around the car from burning until it extinguishes itself.
Last Thursday they managed to get the ship into the port of Eemshaven in northeastern Netherlands. This is significant as previous car carriers carrying EVs which had caught on fire, sank.
The other big shipping news is the ongoing drought plaguing Panama and affecting Panama Canal shipping. The canal operators have had to institute draft restrictions on ships transiting the canal due to severe low water levels in the Gatun lake. This affects both the new and old locks.
The old locks could take container ships up to about 4,500 TEUs. TEU stands for a Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit. A 40' shipping container would be 2 TEUs. The world's first container ship, the SS Ideal X carried 800 TEUs. The largest ship to ever transit the Panama Canal, new locks, just transited. It was the Ever Max which can carry 17,600 TEUs. The world's largest container ship is the MSC Gulsun which can carry 23,756 TEUs. I should note that due to depth restrictions, part of the Ever Max's cargo had to be offloaded and railed across Panama.
MSC Gulsun length 399.9 meters, width of 61.5 meters across the beam and has a displacement of 232,618 GT. This is over twice the displacement of a Ford-class carrier. 
WWG1WGA
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
