13 ms·

Triple-E Ship Leaves Port With World Record Load

131 points by chermanowicz 12y ago

_delirium 12y ago
The containers are stacked higher and nearer the edge than I would've expected for an oceangoing ship. Do ships like this lose containers in rough seas?
- joezydeco 12y ago
  What a great time to introduce you to http://www.cargolaw.com/gallery.html http://www.cargolaw.com/gallery.html This site has lots of amazing pictures if you can get past the Geocities design. Like this: http://www.cargolaw.com/2012nightmare_bai_chay_bri.html http://www.cargolaw.com/2012nightmare_bai_chay_bri.html
  - trhway 12y ago
    seems like losing a few at sea is nothing compare to the fire : http://www.cargolaw.com/2006nightmare_hyundai_for2.html http://www.cargolaw.com/2006nightmare_hyundai_for2.html How would you put out such a fire from under/inside the stacks of the containers? (and given the content of the containers with consumer goods - plastic, plastic and more plastic ... ) What are the limits on the size of a ship? Width of Panama/Suez channels? Lets say they would build by 2019 (they plan to start this year and be done by 2019) the Nicaragua canal : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal "The proposed canal would be between 230 meters and 520 meters wide and 27.6 meters deep." And Egypt also invests billions in improving (and as i remember - building new pieces) of Suez. So, how about double length and double width of the Triple-E?
    - lmm 12y ago
      Inert gas, if you can get it. I'm not sure about the legalities of Halon these days, but ordinary CO2 would work, and in compressed cylinders you can store quite a lot of it in a small space. Given that we're assuming there's burning plastic you'd hope any firefighters are using respirators already, so just flood the area with CO2, deprive the fire of oxygen and there you go. CO2 is heavier than air so would naturally fill the ship, though whether you could avoid getting oxygen to the other levels I don't know. Maybe put a big tarp over the top of the ship? :P.
- 3JPLW 12y ago
  Yes, they do. A few weeks ago this hit hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8062864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8062864. 62 containers were lost due to a "once in a 100 year wave." One of which contained Legos. I'm not sure what the expected value is for number of TEUs lost per journey. I'd hope that it's near zero, but I don't know. Edit: quick google. Estimates range from 1,000 (World Shipping Council)[0] to 10,000 (Singularity Hub)[1] lost per year. Either way, with 120 million containers shipped per year, it's quite low. 0. http://gcaptain.com/how-many-shipping-containers-lost-at-sea/ http://gcaptain.com/how-many-shipping-containers-lost-at-sea... 1. http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/05/10000-shipping-containers-lost-at-sea-each-year-heres-a-look-at-one-2/ http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/05/10000-shipping-containe...
  - wclax04 12y ago
    And as a recreational ocean racing sailer, nothing is more terrifying than seeing one of these bobbing just below the surface.
    - evanb 12y ago
      Have you seen All Is Lost with Robert Redford? It came out in the last 12 months, and the premise is that he's sailing in the Indian Ocean when his boat strikes a lost container. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
    - toomuchtodo 12y ago
      This is the primary reason the catamaran I'm building has a titanium superstructure. I refuse to let an orphaned cargo container floating in the Pacific be my undoing on a circumnavigation.
      - jacquesm 12y ago
        When you strike a container at speed all bets are off, regardless of what material your boat is made of. You're in a catamaran, at least you have two hulls rather than just one. And it would appear that the part that is underwater is the most important bit when it comes to striking containers so I'm not sure why you think a titanium superstructure will help you if there is a gaping hole in your hull.
- johntb86 12y ago
  They lock containers together with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock (and probably with other mechanisms) though of course if the ship tilts enough there can still be problems.
  - Gracana 12y ago
    Lashing bars are the other mechanism. Big turnbuckles that hold down the first few levels.
    - unwind 12y ago
      Obligatory terminology helper link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnbuckle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnbuckle.
- aaron695 12y ago
  > Do ships like this lose containers in rough seas? No. Losing customers containers is bad for business I would find it unlikely you'd just factor loses like that in. I't take an accident/mistake or rare natural event to knock them out. Even if you wanted to allow containers to 'fall off' as a business expense I'd see the maritime union causing issues increasing this expense since I'd imagine it creates an unsafe work environment.
NickWarner775 12y ago
revolutionary transportation
alepper 12y ago
Relatedly, 'The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger' is a great little book. I don't see sense in retreading existing reviews, but I think it would offer something of interest for many in this crowd.
- rurounijones 12y ago
  And if you can find it, the BBC TV documentary "The box that changed Britain" is a good one.
brianbreslin 12y ago
i assume this is a panamax ship? is the suez canal wider than the panama canal?
- azernik 12y ago
  This ship is larger than Panamax [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class]. The biggest limitation on Panamax size is whether a ship can fit into the Canal's locks, but the Suez canal is a sea-level waterway with no locks, so the limit is a lot higher.
- Sanddancer 12y ago
  The Mary Maersk is much wider than Panamax, at almost 200 feet wide. This ship seems designed to just barely squeak through the much wider Suez.
- Someone 12y ago
  http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class claims the ship is too deep for the Panama Canal.
- bkor 12y ago
  Loads and loads of vessels are too big for current Panamax locks/canal (max size around 5.100 TEU). One of the vessel classes is post-panamax and there are various classes above that :-P. Panamax canal is now being expanded, but it'll only fit about 14.500 TEU vessels. The previous largest vessels Maersk has (E-class instead of triple-E class) also don't fit to the _new_ Panamax. That new Panamax is still underway. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ships#Size_categories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ships#Size_categories
w1ntermute 12y ago
More on the ship: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class
mixmax 12y ago
Seeing the video in the article I was reminded of a corporate video they did a few years ago. I know the director second-hand, and he was basically given free reign to go wherever he wanted and spend as much money as he deemed necessary to make a video that got the size and trust of the brand across. This is the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjD9VvhXJrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjD9VvhXJrE I think he succeeded - it's one of the best brand videos I've ever seen.
- kctess5 12y ago
  That's a really good video! Any idea what the final budget was? Would be interesting to know how much companies dish out for that sort of thing
  - will_hughes 12y ago
    I've heard that for things like this you start at $1m per finished minute, and then go from there. This is about 12 minutes long, has a fairly well known British Actor narrating, a well known film director, involved lots of world travel and various types of specialist equipment operators, lighting and sound folks. I wouldn't think you'd get away from this for anything under $20m, and wouldn't be shocked to hear it was $30m.
    - robzyb 12y ago
      Tbh to my ears that sounds like a bit of an overestimate. Serenity, a 119 minute feature film, had a production budget of $39M. Of course, there are probably higher costs for a "documentary" like this Maersk one, primarily because of fixed-costs and international travel, but I couldn't imagine that it would be more expensive per-minute by a factor of 7.
      - will_hughes 12y ago
        Yeah, possibly. I have no expert knowledge of this particular shoot. Serenity's not a great example though, normally a movie like that would've been closer to $100M at the time. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_(film)#Filming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_(film)#Filming
na85 12y ago
It's currently in the South China Sea http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:114.6631/centery:22.32802/zoom:8/mmsi:219018692 http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:114.6631/ce... http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/9619921/vessel:MARY_MAERSK http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/9619921/ve...
- solutionyogi 12y ago
  That's a really high quality site for a community effort. Now, I don't have to wonder about all the ships sailing on the Hudson river.
tcopeland 12y ago
When I was in the USCG we would be underway at night off the west coast of the US. It'd be halfway through a midwatch and a huge blob would appear on the radar up off our port bow. That blob would go tearing down our port side with a ridiculous speed - and we weren't contributing much because we were just lagging along at 6 knots. Just an amazing sight after seeing salmon trollers on the radar all day long.
D_Alex 12y ago
21 years ago I was in a Korean shipyard where the largest container ships of the day were being built. Their capacity was 6000 TEUs, one-third of the Mary Maersk. The captain of one of the ships (a 27 year old (!) German woman) told me most ports cannot handle the 6000 TEU vessels, so their line will be building mainly 4500 TEU ships. One interesting thing is that those older, smaller ships had more powerful engines than the much larger current vessels! The engine installed on the 6000 TEU vessel was ~90,000 hp, and the ship was designed for sailing at ~25 knots, the justification being that the value of cargo onboard was so high that the cost of shipping was dominated by the interest charges!
- ghshephard 12y ago
  Interesting to note - the change in interest rates therefore has an impact on the size of ship engines, with lower interest rates resulting in smaller engines (or perhaps engines being run at more efficient speeds in terms of fuel consumption)
  - bkor 12y ago
    It way more directly influences by the bunker rates. Maybe various for a lot of the cargo it makes most sense to have the container vessel sail quicker. However, that's not taken into account while deciding between shipping lines. Further, a shipping line has loads of cargo. Some high value and time critical, some not at all. Look at historical bunker prices to get an idea. I couldn't find a good link, but the USD/barrel is a nice indication: http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/all/ http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/al...
- callesgg 12y ago
  First a note: The useful engine power of ships is logarithmically proportional to the size of the vesel. A ship that is twice as big will only require and engine that is half as big. A problematic thing is they way ports generally work, you may generally not book a port for a specific arrival date. You have to rush to get there before other ships, to sit still outside and wait in line. Not very good for fuel consumption and the environment.
zachrose 12y ago
I thought this was the largest ship in the world. It looks like it will soon be eclipsed by a floating natural gas platform called Prelude. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_FLNG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_FLNG
apaprocki 12y ago
This is the path it has taken since it left Spain on 7/21: https://imgur.com/2w8vg3R https://imgur.com/2w8vg3R
macmac 12y ago
If anyone is interested in container shipping in general and how software is applied to optimising it specifically I can shamelessly plug Markus Völter's Omega Tau podcast on these subjects http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-shipping/ http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-shipping/
kitd 12y ago
Something something Docker containers.
onion2k 12y ago
17,603 TEU is the equivalent of 1/2 the Empire State Building in volume.
conorh 12y ago
Several years ago I traveled from Rio De Janeiro to Capetown on a freighter (although not nearly as large as this Triple-E ship!) There are some ships that still offer paid passage and staying on board of one of these enormous ships, manned by just a small crew, is an amazing experience. I got to visit all the areas of the ship, could wander about during the day, hung out on the bridge with the night watch, visited the engine room etc. Being on the bridge when the building sized ship docks at port is incredible to watch.
- toothbrush 12y ago
  This sounds super cool, how do you arrange something like that?
  - jccooper 12y ago
    A variety of websites can do it. See http://www.seaplus.com/mainmenu.php http://www.seaplus.com/mainmenu.php and/or search "freighter travel". It costs more than you might think, partly because meals are included.
    - toothbrush 12y ago
      That's a fascinating starting point, thank you!

131 points by chermanowicz 12y ago

The containers are stacked higher and nearer the edge than I would've expected for an oceangoing ship. Do ships like this lose containers in rough seas?

joezydeco 12y ago
What a great time to introduce you to http://www.cargolaw.com/gallery.html http://www.cargolaw.com/gallery.html This site has lots of amazing pictures if you can get past the Geocities design. Like this: http://www.cargolaw.com/2012nightmare_bai_chay_bri.html http://www.cargolaw.com/2012nightmare_bai_chay_bri.html
- trhway 12y ago
  seems like losing a few at sea is nothing compare to the fire : http://www.cargolaw.com/2006nightmare_hyundai_for2.html http://www.cargolaw.com/2006nightmare_hyundai_for2.html How would you put out such a fire from under/inside the stacks of the containers? (and given the content of the containers with consumer goods - plastic, plastic and more plastic ... ) What are the limits on the size of a ship? Width of Panama/Suez channels? Lets say they would build by 2019 (they plan to start this year and be done by 2019) the Nicaragua canal : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal "The proposed canal would be between 230 meters and 520 meters wide and 27.6 meters deep." And Egypt also invests billions in improving (and as i remember - building new pieces) of Suez. So, how about double length and double width of the Triple-E?
  - lmm 12y ago
    Inert gas, if you can get it. I'm not sure about the legalities of Halon these days, but ordinary CO2 would work, and in compressed cylinders you can store quite a lot of it in a small space. Given that we're assuming there's burning plastic you'd hope any firefighters are using respirators already, so just flood the area with CO2, deprive the fire of oxygen and there you go. CO2 is heavier than air so would naturally fill the ship, though whether you could avoid getting oxygen to the other levels I don't know. Maybe put a big tarp over the top of the ship? :P.
3JPLW 12y ago
Yes, they do. A few weeks ago this hit hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8062864 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8062864. 62 containers were lost due to a "once in a 100 year wave." One of which contained Legos. I'm not sure what the expected value is for number of TEUs lost per journey. I'd hope that it's near zero, but I don't know. Edit: quick google. Estimates range from 1,000 (World Shipping Council)[0] to 10,000 (Singularity Hub)[1] lost per year. Either way, with 120 million containers shipped per year, it's quite low. 0. http://gcaptain.com/how-many-shipping-containers-lost-at-sea/ http://gcaptain.com/how-many-shipping-containers-lost-at-sea... 1. http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/05/10000-shipping-containers-lost-at-sea-each-year-heres-a-look-at-one-2/ http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/05/10000-shipping-containe...
- wclax04 12y ago
  And as a recreational ocean racing sailer, nothing is more terrifying than seeing one of these bobbing just below the surface.
  - evanb 12y ago
    Have you seen All Is Lost with Robert Redford? It came out in the last 12 months, and the premise is that he's sailing in the Indian Ocean when his boat strikes a lost container. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
  - toomuchtodo 12y ago
    This is the primary reason the catamaran I'm building has a titanium superstructure. I refuse to let an orphaned cargo container floating in the Pacific be my undoing on a circumnavigation.
    - jacquesm 12y ago
      When you strike a container at speed all bets are off, regardless of what material your boat is made of. You're in a catamaran, at least you have two hulls rather than just one. And it would appear that the part that is underwater is the most important bit when it comes to striking containers so I'm not sure why you think a titanium superstructure will help you if there is a gaping hole in your hull.
johntb86 12y ago
They lock containers together with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock (and probably with other mechanisms) though of course if the ship tilts enough there can still be problems.
- Gracana 12y ago
  Lashing bars are the other mechanism. Big turnbuckles that hold down the first few levels.
  - unwind 12y ago
    Obligatory terminology helper link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnbuckle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnbuckle.
aaron695 12y ago
> Do ships like this lose containers in rough seas? No. Losing customers containers is bad for business I would find it unlikely you'd just factor loses like that in. I't take an accident/mistake or rare natural event to knock them out. Even if you wanted to allow containers to 'fall off' as a business expense I'd see the maritime union causing issues increasing this expense since I'd imagine it creates an unsafe work environment.

NickWarner775 12y ago

revolutionary transportation

alepper 12y ago

Relatedly, 'The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger' is a great little book. I don't see sense in retreading existing reviews, but I think it would offer something of interest for many in this crowd.

rurounijones 12y ago
And if you can find it, the BBC TV documentary "The box that changed Britain" is a good one.

brianbreslin 12y ago

i assume this is a panamax ship? is the suez canal wider than the panama canal?

azernik 12y ago
This ship is larger than Panamax [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class]. The biggest limitation on Panamax size is whether a ship can fit into the Canal's locks, but the Suez canal is a sea-level waterway with no locks, so the limit is a lot higher.
Sanddancer 12y ago
The Mary Maersk is much wider than Panamax, at almost 200 feet wide. This ship seems designed to just barely squeak through the much wider Suez.
Someone 12y ago
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class claims the ship is too deep for the Panama Canal.
bkor 12y ago
Loads and loads of vessels are too big for current Panamax locks/canal (max size around 5.100 TEU). One of the vessel classes is post-panamax and there are various classes above that :-P. Panamax canal is now being expanded, but it'll only fit about 14.500 TEU vessels. The previous largest vessels Maersk has (E-class instead of triple-E class) also don't fit to the _new_ Panamax. That new Panamax is still underway. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ships#Size_categories http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ships#Size_categories

w1ntermute 12y ago

More on the ship: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class

mixmax 12y ago

Seeing the video in the article I was reminded of a corporate video they did a few years ago. I know the director second-hand, and he was basically given free reign to go wherever he wanted and spend as much money as he deemed necessary to make a video that got the size and trust of the brand across. This is the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjD9VvhXJrE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjD9VvhXJrE I think he succeeded - it's one of the best brand videos I've ever seen.

kctess5 12y ago
That's a really good video! Any idea what the final budget was? Would be interesting to know how much companies dish out for that sort of thing
- will_hughes 12y ago
  I've heard that for things like this you start at $1m per finished minute, and then go from there. This is about 12 minutes long, has a fairly well known British Actor narrating, a well known film director, involved lots of world travel and various types of specialist equipment operators, lighting and sound folks. I wouldn't think you'd get away from this for anything under $20m, and wouldn't be shocked to hear it was $30m.
  - robzyb 12y ago
    Tbh to my ears that sounds like a bit of an overestimate. Serenity, a 119 minute feature film, had a production budget of $39M. Of course, there are probably higher costs for a "documentary" like this Maersk one, primarily because of fixed-costs and international travel, but I couldn't imagine that it would be more expensive per-minute by a factor of 7.
    - will_hughes 12y ago
      Yeah, possibly. I have no expert knowledge of this particular shoot. Serenity's not a great example though, normally a movie like that would've been closer to $100M at the time. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_(film)#Filming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_(film)#Filming

na85 12y ago

It's currently in the South China Sea http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:114.6631/centery:22.32802/zoom:8/mmsi:219018692 http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:114.6631/ce... http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/9619921/vessel:MARY_MAERSK http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/9619921/ve...

solutionyogi 12y ago
That's a really high quality site for a community effort. Now, I don't have to wonder about all the ships sailing on the Hudson river.

tcopeland 12y ago

When I was in the USCG we would be underway at night off the west coast of the US. It'd be halfway through a midwatch and a huge blob would appear on the radar up off our port bow. That blob would go tearing down our port side with a ridiculous speed - and we weren't contributing much because we were just lagging along at 6 knots. Just an amazing sight after seeing salmon trollers on the radar all day long.

D_Alex 12y ago

21 years ago I was in a Korean shipyard where the largest container ships of the day were being built. Their capacity was 6000 TEUs, one-third of the Mary Maersk. The captain of one of the ships (a 27 year old (!) German woman) told me most ports cannot handle the 6000 TEU vessels, so their line will be building mainly 4500 TEU ships. One interesting thing is that those older, smaller ships had more powerful engines than the much larger current vessels! The engine installed on the 6000 TEU vessel was ~90,000 hp, and the ship was designed for sailing at ~25 knots, the justification being that the value of cargo onboard was so high that the cost of shipping was dominated by the interest charges!

ghshephard 12y ago
Interesting to note - the change in interest rates therefore has an impact on the size of ship engines, with lower interest rates resulting in smaller engines (or perhaps engines being run at more efficient speeds in terms of fuel consumption)
- bkor 12y ago
  It way more directly influences by the bunker rates. Maybe various for a lot of the cargo it makes most sense to have the container vessel sail quicker. However, that's not taken into account while deciding between shipping lines. Further, a shipping line has loads of cargo. Some high value and time critical, some not at all. Look at historical bunker prices to get an idea. I couldn't find a good link, but the USD/barrel is a nice indication: http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/all/ http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/al...
callesgg 12y ago
First a note: The useful engine power of ships is logarithmically proportional to the size of the vesel. A ship that is twice as big will only require and engine that is half as big. A problematic thing is they way ports generally work, you may generally not book a port for a specific arrival date. You have to rush to get there before other ships, to sit still outside and wait in line. Not very good for fuel consumption and the environment.

zachrose 12y ago

I thought this was the largest ship in the world. It looks like it will soon be eclipsed by a floating natural gas platform called Prelude. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_FLNG http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_FLNG

apaprocki 12y ago

This is the path it has taken since it left Spain on 7/21: https://imgur.com/2w8vg3R https://imgur.com/2w8vg3R

macmac 12y ago

If anyone is interested in container shipping in general and how software is applied to optimising it specifically I can shamelessly plug Markus Völter's Omega Tau podcast on these subjects http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-shipping/ http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-shipping/

kitd 12y ago

Something something Docker containers.

onion2k 12y ago

17,603 TEU is the equivalent of 1/2 the Empire State Building in volume.

conorh 12y ago

Several years ago I traveled from Rio De Janeiro to Capetown on a freighter (although not nearly as large as this Triple-E ship!) There are some ships that still offer paid passage and staying on board of one of these enormous ships, manned by just a small crew, is an amazing experience. I got to visit all the areas of the ship, could wander about during the day, hung out on the bridge with the night watch, visited the engine room etc. Being on the bridge when the building sized ship docks at port is incredible to watch.

toothbrush 12y ago
This sounds super cool, how do you arrange something like that?
- jccooper 12y ago
  A variety of websites can do it. See http://www.seaplus.com/mainmenu.php http://www.seaplus.com/mainmenu.php and/or search "freighter travel". It costs more than you might think, partly because meals are included.
  - toothbrush 12y ago
    That's a fascinating starting point, thank you!