Containers Swept Off Ship In North Sea Storm

A storm over the North Sea swept 45 empty containers off a freighter travelling from the German port of Hamburg to Le Havre, France, sea rescue officials in Cuxhaven, Germany said. Officials were calculating the likely position of the lost containers from the Panamanian-registered NYK Antares and believed they were off the Dutch coast, near the island of Schiermonnikoog. The storm earlier battered the coasts of England and the Netherlands, but did less damage than feared. NYK AntaresSeveral cars which had been imprudently parked in low-lying parts of Bremerhaven were partly submerged at high tide. On the German island of Heligoland in the North Sea, officials said hundreds of thousands of cubic metres of sand might have been washed off the main beach, but the damage would not be clear till the seas subsided.