tell me more about "leper ships"

Factual Questions
1

I don’t know where I heard this from but it suddenly jumped into my mind last night that there were a group of ships named “leper ships” because they are filled with some of the nastiest poisons on earth and have been roaming the seas for some twenty or so years now with no port accepting them exscept to sell the supplies. I did not know how true this story was until I decided to google it today and found some interesting tidbits.

Can anybody shed light on how this phenomena happened and where all the leper ships are today?

2

bump

3

This doesn’t appear to have been a whole fleet of such ships. (In fact, the SS?/MV? Khian Sea appears to be the first and last of the ships that had to sail forever. (And, as this site notes, the Khian Sea discharged its load (illegally) and sailed on to find other locations to scam.

For more information, I’d suggest Googling on the name(s) of any ship mentioned in the article.

4

There was recently a story about a garbage ship that finally dumped it’s cargo after being out for something like 18 years. Hope that helps.