Cargo & Dangerous Goods: What the Ship Carries Can Change Everything
Cargo is easy to underestimate.
Most of the time, it sits quietly behind steel bulkheads or inside sealed containers. It doesn’t look dangerous. It doesn’t make noise. And it often feels like “someone else’s responsibility.”
Until it shifts.
Until it reacts.
Until it heats up.
Until it burns.
In Episode 9 of Seafarer’s Way, Captain Rommel explores SOLAS Chapters VI and VII — Cargoes and Dangerous Goods — and reveals why cargo is one of the most underestimated threats at sea. Ships do not only face danger from weather and machinery; they face danger from what they carry, and from what that cargo does under pressure, motion, moisture, and heat.
This episode breaks down cargo safety in plain, practical terms: stowage, securing, cargo information, weight distribution, and why “ordinary” cargo can still turn deadly when stability and stress are ignored. It also takes listeners into the darker side of cargo operations: misdeclared dangerous goods, incorrect documentation, and the reality that crews are often left to fight emergencies involving cargo they were never properly warned about.
Captain Rommel touches on modern incidents where misdeclared cargo — including lithium batteries — contributed to major fires at sea, forcing crews into prolonged firefighting operations and even abandon-ship situations. These events are reminders that cargo documentation is not office paperwork; it is survival information. In an emergency, those details determine whether the crew uses the right method — or makes a decision that worsens the situation.
This episode also highlights a hard truth: once the ship sails, the cargo is no longer just a commercial product. It becomes a force governed by physics. And if something goes wrong, the ship and crew pay the price first.
SOLAS Chapters VI and VII exist because cargo has sunk ships, burned ships, and killed crews — often without warning.
Cargo does not read the manifest.
It behaves according to nature.
And that is why what you carry… matters.