I am ready to admit defeat in this debate, but those of us who were paying attention in physics
class are of the opinion that a fully-laden container ship
will turn turtle if a big wave hits IF all the containers are securely fastened to one another and to the ship

In the story related earlier, several containers were swept overboard but the ship and its crew survived just fine

So please explain how the FRIENDY FLOATEES went on to float while the ship and its crew did NOT go down to Davy Jones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_Floatees

Game. match and set to me. I think!

As a Merchant Mariner for 40+ years and having been on ships up to around 900ft, I can tell you that containers do break loose. You haven't lived until you are standing on the deck of a ship looking up at a wave. There is sooo much power there. I remember one news story in Alaska that containers broke loose from a big ship and for a long time there were rubber toys and shoes on a lot of uninhabited Alaska beach's. If I remember right the same ship lost a container full of batteries also, but they sink.(doesn't help the fish and crabs very much though.)

In 2014 the big container ship Svendberg Maersk was in 30ft seas and 60mph+ winds on the Bay of Biscay. They lost 520 containers. Its estimated that between 2000 and 10,000 containers are lost every year. The shipping companies stake them as tall as they can. If they lose a few, big deal they are insured. Its all about big profit. Look at how many people they pack on those big top heavy cruise ships and how little they pay their crews.

BTW/ Containers can and do float depending on what is in them, and they can break open after being damaged during their fall.

I used to work as port crane operator, the containers are slotted into metal slots+metal fasteners to lock to bottom container at 4 corners+diagonal cross bars, but they still come loose in strong wave hit on the side

This fine piece of writing will tell all of us what we need to know

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/01/moby-duck/

but a real sailor could tell us 100 times more

Uuuh John Bingham, I was saying "Military Police as in France" not "Royal" as in France. That is, the structure and role of the Gendarmerie is as in France. Which answers the question "are they federal police?"

Just that the French don't have a word for Gendarmerie. Or is that 'entrepeneur' they don't have a word for? I'll check with Al Gore.