| 2024: | 24,327 TEU (MSC Irina) |
| 2020: | 23,992 TEU (Ever Ace) |
| 2014: | 19,100 TEU (CLC Globe) |
| 2010: | 14,770 TEU (Emma Maersk) |
| 2004: | 8,500 TEU (CLC Asia) |
| 2000: | 8,160 TEU (Sovereign Maersk) |
| 1990: | 4,614 TEU (American New York) |
| 1974: | 2,984 TEU (Hamburg Express) |
| 1956: | 56 TEU (Ideal-X) |
* “Twenty-foot Equivalent Units.” A TEU represents one 20 x 8 x 8.5 foot shipping container; a 40-foot container is two TEUs.
After a squad of tugboats pulled the stranded Dali away from the Key Bridge wreckage on Monday, the Port of Baltimore’s operators hope to reopen their main shipping channel by the end of May, and Danish shipping giant Maersk plans to start container service to the Port again by early June. With a brightening outlook for Baltimore’s port workers and users, here are four notes on the container-shipping fleet:
There are more container ships each year: Alphaliner, a Paris-based maritime consultancy, counts 6936 container ships operating worldwide this week, up from 5,101 in 2014. Mainly built in China, Korea, and Japan, these ships make up about 6% of the world’s 105,000 cargo vessels, but (being large ships) have a seventh of the world’s 2.2. billion deadweight tons — that is, carrying capacity — of merchant shipping. The full container fleet has a combined capacity of 29.7 million TEU, up about 10% from the 25.8 million TEU at President Biden’s inauguration, and up 50% from the 19.9 million TEU of 2014. This growth is not slowing: Denmark-based shipping association BIMCO says 350 new container ships launched in 2023, and 2024 will likely top 475. A table illustrates:
| 2024 | 29.7 million TEU |
| 2020 | 25.8 million TEU |
| 2014 | 19.9 million TEU |
| 2010 | 12.8 million TEU |
| 2000 | 4.3 million TEU |
| 1990 | 1.2 million TEU |
| 1980 | 0.5 million TEU |
They are getting bigger: The Dali is 948 feet or 300 meters long, with deadweight tonnage of 116,851 tons and a crew of 21. Built by Hyundai and launched in 2015, it has a capacity of 9,971 “TEUs,” meaning it can carry just under 10,000 standard 20’ x 8’ x 8.5’ shipping containers at a time. Twenty years ago, the Dali would have been easily the world’s largest container ship. Today it’s still well above median — average capacity across the whole fleet is now about 4,600 TEU — but has less than half the 24,000+ TEU capacity of its largest relatives.
As of this month, 121 ships can carry 20,000 TEU or more. The largest one on the water today is MSC Irina, owned by Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Corporation, whose capacity more than doubles Dali’s at 24,326 TEU and 240,739 deadweight tons. Delivered in March 2023 from a Chinese shipyard and currently in Busan, MSC Irina is 400 meters/1,312 feet long.
They are mostly new: The container-ship concept is almost 70 years old — the first, Ideal-X, launched from Newark in 1956 — but most of the actual ships are young, and every 20,000+ TEU ship has been built since 2017. UNCTAD’s most recent Review of Maritime Transport says the average container ship is 14 years old, while the average age of cargo vessels in general — container ships plus bulk carriers, general cargo, tankers, ro/ro, etc. — is 22.
And they don’t need many people: Though not exactly a giant floating robot, a modern container ship isn’t far from that. Dali’s forlorn crew totals 21 people — 20 from India, one Sri Lankan, finally getting some land time today after being stuck on board doing maintenance and responding to investigation queries since March — and even MSC Irina with its 24,000 containers needs just 25. To put this in perspective, this is no more staff than you’d find in a medium-sized restaurant or hardware store. Alternatively, Great Republic — the largest 19th-century clipper ship, built to sail back and forth from New to Australia — needed a crew of 67 to manage about 5000 tons of cargo.
Updates:
Maryland Port Authority updates.
Maersk plans an early-June return to Port of Baltimore cargo service.
And Gov. Moore’s interim support program for Port workers and distressed businesses.
Container-ship data:
UNCTAD’s Review of Maritime Transport series has data and trends for container ships, oil tankers, port efficiency, and more. The most recent edition, out last November, counts 105,400 cargo ships around the world, or about 5,000 more than the 99,800 they found in 2020.
Alphaliner Top 100 has day-to-day updates of current container capacity, worldwide and by shipping firm.
The Copenhagen-based Baltic and International Maritime Council (BIMCO), in a January “Shipping Number of the Week”, reports a likely 478 new containership launched in 2024, after a record 350 in 2023.
… and a decade-old but still evocative visualization of daily maritime transports, with small lights representing a hundred thousand ships against a darkened blue-grey ocean backdrop
Ship comparisons:
Combining various tallies — UNCTAD for cargo, military sites for navies, FAO for fisheries—– the world’s large-vessel fleet comes out at about 170,000. (105,000 cargo vessels, 45,000 large fishing boats, 10,000 navy ships, 5,000 cruise ships, with miscellaneous cable layers, LNG tankers, yachts, and so forth making up the rest.) At the top end, container ships are the longest by about 20 meters. Bulk ore carriers and supertankers are a bit shorter but have more cargo space. A quick look at the largest in each category:
Container ship: Mediterranean Shipping Corp.’s 400-meter, 24,347-TEU MSC Irina.
Oil tankers: Ultra-Large Capacity supertankers, though shorter than the top container ships at 380 meters, at 442,000 deadweight tons can carry twice the cargo weight. The largest are the four T1s, dating to the early 2000s and named for continents. TI-Europe is in Singapore.
Bulk cargo carriers: The 35 Valemax-grade iron-ore freighters are very slightly smaller than the tankers, 360 meters long with deadweight tonnage up to 400,000 tons. Built between 2011 and 2016 (again by Chinese, Korean, and Japanese yards) they carry iron ore from Brazil and Australia to China.
Military: U.S. Navy’s 337-meter Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is the largest naval vessel on the water, launched from the Newport News yard in 2013, and the first of the 11 Ford-class carriers replacing the Nimitz-class fleet.
Roll-on/Roll-off: The standard automobile carriers are a bit smaller. The largest is the 265-meter MV-Tonberg, built by Mitsubishi in 2012 and operated by Norwegian carrier Wallenius Wilhelmsen. It can carry 8500 cars and trucks at a time.
Fishing: The largest fishing vessel, the Vladivostok 2000, is 228 meters and 49,000 tons. A converted oil tanker with a dismal history of IUU (illegal/unreported/unregulated) fishing, V2K is blacklisted in the South Pacific but continues to operate in northern waters. It’s currently berthed in the eponymous city of Vladivostok.
Cruise ship: The Icon of the Seas at 385 meters, launched last January and built for 7,600 passengers. By comparison, the largest 19th-century passenger ship, Victorian super-engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s 211-meter Great Eastern, could carry nearly 5,000. The BBC on IotS.
Shipbuilding:
A gloomy two-pager from CRS on cargo vessel construction worldwide, and the very modest U.S. role in it over the last 50 years.
And some maritime-logistics lit.:
GPS and satellite communication, 60-foot propeller blades, computer terminals, and crane loading — Horatio Clare’s Down to the Sea in Ships (2015) tracks the Gerd Maersk, a 6,600-TEU ship built in 2006 — still operating, en route this week from Oakland to Qingdao — on a two-month trip from Felixstowe through the Suez Canal to Malaysia, Vietnam, China, and Los Angeles. Detail on crew life (Filipino ratings, European and Indian officers; no alcohol at any time), cargo loading, rules for avoiding Red Sea pirates, the approach to the Port of L.A., etc.
Coal-burners and on-board smokestacks, radio, and breakbulk cargo — Richard Hughes’ In Hazard (1938), recounts the fictional passage of a British general-cargo vessel with a ‘globalized’ 1930s crew (Chinese ratings, U.K. and American officers, few if any alcohol limits) from Virginia through a gigantic Caribbean hurricane.
Wood, rope, canvas, muscle, and wind — Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast (1840) on the Pilgrim’s five-month journey from Boston to pre-Gold Rush California via Cape Horn, and back a year later. (Mostly New England crew with some Europeans; strict alcohol limits for sailors, but not for the mates or captain.) Lots here to disenchant age-of-sail romantics – a drowning, a scurvy case, two of the Pilgrim’s 12 sailors flogged for back-talk, ice storms, constant deck-scrubbing, etc. Also looks at early California: Los Angeles, “a large and flourishing town of about twenty thousand inhabitants, with brick sidewalks”, is full then as now of helpful and friendly people; on the other hand, “nothing but the character of the people prevents Monterey from becoming a great town”. San Francisco has promise (“if California ever becomes a prosperous country, this bay will be the centre of its prosperity”); also see the large Native Hawaiian role in West Coast shipping, and Dana’s very disparaging, no-filter comments on visitors from Russia’s Alaska colony, whose southernmost fort was 90 miles north of present-day Oakland.
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
