Every refusal we make annoys somebody. Here is the list, with the reason behind each one.
We turn cargo away most weeks, and it is never popular. It is worth explaining what gets refused and why, because almost all of it could have been avoided at booking.
Undeclared dangerous goods, first. Gas cylinders, fuel, oxidising chemicals, unstable pool chemicals, and anything with a warning diamond on the box. Most of these we will carry perfectly happily if they are declared, properly packaged and stowed in the right place. What we will not do is discover them in the middle of a stack. A cylinder that has been loaded as household goods is a fire in a steel hold with nobody able to reach it.
Lithium batteries deserve their own paragraph, because they arrive constantly and almost never declared. Loose batteries, power tool packs, solar storage, anything with a battery inside it. Declared and packaged they travel. Buried in a carton marked electrical they are the single thing most likely to burn a hold.
Cement in bad weather. This one causes the most argument, and we still refuse it. Bagged cement under a hatch that will take water is eight hundred bags of rubbish that the customer pays to carry, pays to unload and pays to dispose of. We will hold it for the next sailing and we have never once been proved wrong by waiting.
Unsecured heavy items. A drum, a machine or a bundle of bar that cannot be lashed will move at sea, and something that moves in a hold destroys whatever is next to it and endangers the crew. If it cannot be secured as presented we will crate or palletise it and charge for that, which is cheaper for everybody than the alternative.
Food loaded next to chemicals. We stow these apart as a matter of course, but where a customer's own sealed container has both in it we cannot control that, and one leaking bottle of bleach will write off a pallet of flour. Pack them separately.
Livestock. We do not carry it. There is no equipment on our boats for it and there is nobody to look after an animal for eleven hours.
And cargo whose owner cannot be reached. Everything on board is on a manifest with a name and a telephone number at both ends, because cargo that arrives with nobody responsible for it sits on a quay until it is stolen or spoiled.
The pattern in all of this is the same. Tell us what it actually is at booking, not what it looks like in a box. Nearly everything can travel if it is declared, and almost nothing can travel if it is found.
