As she rocked, the cargo vessel lost 62 containers overboard including one that contained 4.8 million pieces of Lego. The container must have burst open, because over the coming weeks, months, years – and even decades – Lego has been washing up on the shores of Cornwall.

The lost Lego haul included…

4200 Octopuses   

13,000 Spear guns

418,000 Diver flippers

353,264 Daisies

33,941 Dragons

As the Lego washed up on the shores of bonnie Blighty, a trend started to emerge. People started flocking to the beaches to hunt for the “Lost Lego”. It’s even become quite competitive. A quirk of fate meant that a lot of the Lego lost at sea was marine-themed so many find flippers, cutlasses and scuba gear. But apparently, the real holy grail today is an octopus – with only 3 of the 4200 recently found.

Twenty-five years on and people still visit “Lego Beach” in Cornwall hoping to find some Lego-y treasure. Of course, it wasn’t just Lego that was lost that day. 61 other containers also fell overboard

In the freight industry, we call this “a rare catastrophic loss” – when more than 50+ containers are lost in a single incident. But are container losses all that rare? On average 1300 containers sink to the bottom of the ocean each year, never to reach their final destination.

So is sea freight safe? Yes. Around 200 million containers are shipped around the world each year so that 1300 is only a teeny tiny 0.00065%! So your cargo is pretty certain to reach its destination…

But a good freight forwarding company will help make sure you’re protected with the right insurance – just in case your luck turns and your cargo ends up in Davy Jones locker.

.