we used to ship stuff like that as deck cargo, on pallets with waterproofed cardboard sides and loose fitting cardboard lids or flaps. Just taped down lightly, no banding or strapping. In the event of detonation nothing solid to cause harm. Even the pallets were compressed cardboard, not wood.. Chemcials themselves would be in PVC double layer sacks. Once on deck the stuff would have been tarpaulined
I presume current regulations are similar.
Picric acid was a strange one. You had to ship in small cardboard kegs, with loose fitting lids that could blow off.. You could only part fill each keg - around 20% max - to allow an expansion space in the event of detonation.
On another tangent, the timing of this "find" seems very strange, with this announcement on Friday:
Raytheon Awarded $685.7 Million for New Patriot Systems for Taiwan - PR Newswire - sacbee.com
"TEWKSBURY, Mass., Dec. 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) has received a $685.7 million Foreign Military Sales (FMS) contract for additional new fire units of the combat-proven Patriot Air and Missile Defense System for Taiwan"