Life Inside the World's Largest Container Ships Ever Built

this is the MSC Irena she is the biggest cargo ship in the world weighing in at a mindboggling qu million tons this Behemoth of the Seas is over 1,000 ft long and can stack containers up to 25 stories high but how in the heck can such a large ship even move much less carry cargo safely throughout some of the world's most constricted and turbulent waterways let's find out this past March history was made when the MSC Irena and her sister ship MSC Loretto were floated out of a dry dock Yi Jang Shipyard built in an impressive 144 days these two ships are the first of their class in the largest container vessels ever to set sail with four more sister ships being built soon the world will see these ships more often but just how big are they as far as Dimensions the MSC Irena and all follow on ships in her class 1312 ft long 2011 ft wide and have a draft of 48 ft the draft of a ship is how much of the ship sits in the water the dead weight tonnage is the ship's weight without anything in it for MSC Irena she weighs in at just over 240,000 tons unloaded by comparison US aircraft carriers displace around 100,000 tons however the most telling sign of just how massive the Irena is is through how many container she can carry in the shipping world the standard shipping container is 20 ft the measure of how many containers one ship can carry fully loaded is measured in teus or 20ft equivalent units for Irena and her sister ships she can carry an impressive 24346 teus but with so much stuff to haul around the Irena has some interesting technologies that she has incorporated to make her Transit smoother one of those is through incorporating air lubrication along her hole whenever a ship is sailing the resistance on the hole from the water is constantly working to slow the ship down however Irena is using a tried and true technology to help her glide through the water several large nozzles on her hole blow air bubbles along the length of her Hull these air bubbles serve to make a barrier between the hull and the water because there's less resistance with air than with water the ship can move slightly faster without having it another interesting techn ology these ships incorporate is what are called shaft generators while traditional generators use fuel to burn in an engine that turns a shaft inside a magnetic field to create electricity shaft generators use the energy already generated from the main engines whenever an engine generates power the power it makes has to go to the shaft to turn the propeller a shaft generator takes advantage of the shaft's rotation by using it to create electrical energy by doing so the ship can use less fuel for making electricity and generate more power for the numerous systems on board that needed but despite this awesome technology we today are only one or two generators removed from how goods were shipped for thousands of years so what did it look like back then before the Advent of containerized shipping the way that shippers used to send Goods was through the use of breake bulk cargo breake bulk cargo could be basically any container that was available to ship the goods in and was probably what the manufacturer placed them into barrels bags Nets cages and boxes were all common ways to ship goods from Antiquity to Modern Times however the problem with brake bolt cargo is that the loading and unloading process is highly labor intensive so with many different sizes and shapes of containers specialized Dock Workers known as stors and long shoreman are needed to carefully pack each ship individually there are of course limits on what a man can carry and all all the work has to be carried out by hand for the most part because of this it took an average of 8 hours to load the standard cargo ship before containerized shipping came about such inefficiency infuriated many in the shipping industry but it was only when a small shipper out of New Jersey named Malcolm McLean came around that he got an idea unlike many in the shipping industry Malcolm had not started its SE his expertise was getting Goods to Port since he was a truck driver before saving up enough money to start buying some freighter Malcolm wondered if it would be practical to ship goods in containers versus the old methods when he first tried it out he took an old US Navy oil tanker from World War II named the ideal X and converted it to carry 58 35t containers on her top deck the result was a resounding success before the containers it cost him $1,956 $583 per ton to load this cargo but with the containers it cost him just 16 cents per ton with such huge cost savings everyone started buying up every available ship and began converting the decks to carry containers for the next 10 years these modified container ships were the norm until purpose-built containerized ships started coming out in 1968 these ships had the advantage of having their cargo holds specially designed to carry containers below deck 2 additionally most ancillary equipment like cranes that were needed to haul brake bolt cargo were removed however with the removal of cranes from cargo ships this meant that ports around the world needed to adjust their operations for loading and unloading containerized ships so just how does say a pair of blue jeans in China get put onto a shelf in a department store in New York City in the global Shipping Community there are three major players these are the Importer or buyer the exporter or manufacturer and the shipping company in our example the department store in New York City places an order for more blue jeans once the store's headquarters gets enough orders from its stores for more jeans it places an order with its manufacturer in China once the manufacturer makes the jeans the exporter will work with a freight forwarder to get the goods from the factory to the port a freight forwarder is just another name for a shipping company that gets goods from the point of origin to the next stop in the supply chain these companies could carry Goods by rail truck boat or any combination thereof once the container carrying the blue jeans has made it to the port a truck will bring one container at a time from the warehouse to the dock waiting for the truck is a specialized crane that will place the containers inside the cargo hold and on the top decks before the crane places each container down workers will place special locks on each corner of the container these locks are known as twist locks twist locks form the core of the safety features of container operations these specially design designed locks are meant to hold each corner of the container onto one another making it almost like a wall of containers these locks are very simple to operate and slide onto a corner in addition to twist locks crew members will usually use lashing rods on the first one or two levels of a container wall lashing rods are simply greased steel rods that are used to Anchor the first and sometimes second layer of containers to the deck between the various twist locks and lashings the irena's captain can rest assured that his cargo will remain secure despite the strongest Seas now with everything loaded and secured the captain sets sail from her current birth in Singapore to New York City for the crew of the Irena this means an early Sunday morning Transit before the sun comes up thankfully this crew has done this run before and they have an experienced pilot on board the transit is otherwise uneventful throughout once out of the Singapore Straits the Irena must then Transit The Straits of Mala this is the busiest Waterway in the world and connects Asia with the Middle East Africa and Europe even though she is quite large her crew has plenty of experience sailing on other ships since only senior crew members could serve on such a large ship however despite the mundane Journey the ship encounters a storm in the Indian Ocean in route to the Suez Canal unlike Sailors of yester year Mariners today have a huge advantage in regards to weather information the ship's master and Navigator get upto-date weather reports daily Additionally the company will also send updates to their track and direct the captain to take weather avoiding routes if necessary however this doesn't mean that ships can avoid all bad weather for the Irena although she is altering course slightly her crew must still prepare the ship to weather the storm the ship engineer ensures that the ship has the proper stability and may transfer Fuel and water around to different tanks around the ship to ensure the ship is not listing with all these preparations the ship weathers the St storm without issue and heads toward the Suez Canal making their pilot pickup time is crucial since ships will not get picked up early or late this means that the bridge team must ensure an ontime arrival since time is everything in the shipping industry after making it through the Suez the Ship Sails for Barcelona Spain because the ship is so large the container ship cannot dock it just any port with a draft of nearly 50 ft and such a long length there are very few dock around the world she can ever more at however Barcelona is one of around two dozen European ports with upgraded facilities to take on such huge ships once in Port she offloads some of her cargo and takes on some more containers this is because shipping companies want to make as much money as possible on each voyage and May schedule intermediate stops to drop off and pick up more cargo along the way after getting underway again she arrives at the Port of New York where another shipping forwarder takes the UN loaded containers and brings them to a warehouse the company then sends a truck to deliver the blue jeans to the department store but while the ability to send such a large amount of cargo at once might seem like a good idea at first having a monopoly on the trade might be a bad idea for everyone involved as of the making of this video the top 10 shipping companies in the world own about 85% of the market share of these 10 companies two absolutely dominate these companies mer and MSC combined carry just over a third of all the world's Goods however there is a problem with this Arrangement back in 2015 these two companies decided that after Decades of trying to compete with one another why not come to an agreement while never officially merging so as not to violate antitrust laws the two companies signed an agreement known as the 2m deal essentially what the 2m deal was and still is until it expires in 202 5 is a gentleman's agreement between the two companies to not step on each other's toes in transatlantic or transpacific trade deals Additionally the two companies agreed to cost share whenever possible however the covid-19 epidemic changed things drastically with all the supply chain issues going on the two companies had differing policies about what to do marisk wanted to ensure its end to-end shipping was up to par and ensure customers that no matter what they would get their goods delivered this meant that while the bulk of its business was tied up in its container ships the company also heavily invested in trucking and Port facilities on the other hand MSC doubled down on shipping volume they reason that if fewer ships can get into Port then they need to make bigger ships along with acquiring massive amounts of secondhand ships the company has also resorted to building the biggest container ships in the world with these gigantic ships the company is settling itself to be a world leader with over 4.6 million teus of capacity with several 100,000 more coming from ships in construction what this consolidation means for the future of the shipping industry is that while shipping costs may go down due to competition it is likely that these savings would be passed on to Consumers especially if other shipping companies take mk's lead and become true point-to-point shipping companies that will cut out the freight forwarders however every like marisk is taking might not be enough to prevent more Port backlogs seen during covid-19 if governments don't invest more in Port infrastructure and workers during the covid pandemic ports across the world suffered record-breaking backlogs of ships trying to dock but couldn't in the United States the worst cases happened at the Port of Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach combined the two ports handled 40% of all Goods coming into the United States however at one point these two ports had over 100 ships at anchor waiting to get in while the backlog was brought down from 100 to several dozen and then to almost zero today what caused this to happen while some news agencies claimed port and Factory closures in Asia caused the backlog this did not have the most significant effect on Port operations in the United States instead Decades of inefficient practices declining worker population and overregulation were exacerbated to the point of what happened during covid-19 for example when Ships Come into Port they must be offloaded by Dock Workers and then the shipping containers must be stored at a warehouse or yard before a train can be loaded or more commonly trucks pick up the containers one of the problems was there were too many restrictions on where containers could be stored and how high they could be stacked once these capacities were reached no more ships could dock since they couldn't unload the next problem was workers both both at the shipyards and taking the containers away Dock Workers were hit particularly hard by covid and with President Biden mandating shift work to 247 operations this did not make some workers Happy who were accustomed to set Union hours however even with expanded operations this didn't solve the problem since there were not enough truckers after the ports expanded working hours to all day every day the Port Authorities soon realized that no shippers wanted to take containers out of their yard s between 3:00 to 8:00 in the morning this was because of a shortage of truckers before the pandemic and a shortage of truckers during which they were forced to wait in hours long lines during peak hours but a shortage of workers and regulations were not the only things that caused the backlog the American Consumer greatly helped with so many restrictions on travel and those fearful of getting exposed to covid online shopping skyrocketed with so many products needing to be shipped from China and other countries companies over ordered to catch the wave of demand sweeping the nation now with fewer workers than ever and more demand than ever before the ports simply couldn't handle the workload and while a container ship not being able to get into Port might not seem like a big deal it's bigger than you think as of today about 90% of all the world's goods are carried on a containership at some point because of the interconnectedness of our world disruptions at one end can have devastating effects at the other for example during Co one of the reasons new car prices Skyrocket in the US was partly because of the shipping industry most computer chips and other sensitive Electronics in newer cars come from countries like Taiwan however with Port closures in China and most shipping containers being used for other commercial Goods the raw materials could not get to Taiwan to make the chips nor the chips to get to the US to assemble the cars with larger and larger container ships the shipping industry also opens itself up to vulnerability because the industry is slowly trending towards larger ships to cut down on fuel and Personnel costs while maximizing profits per Voyage the industry is setting the conditions again to be worse in the event of another pandemic or similar crisis of the thousands of port cities worldwide fewer than a 100 can be accessed by ships like the MSC Irena suppose the shipping industry continues to move towards larger ships without working with governments to ensure the supply chain asore can support them in that case the industry is setting itself up for an even bigger backlog than during the covid pandemic bye for now

Channel: Beyond Facts

Views: 1,417,619

Keywords: beyond facts, ship, cargo ship, ocean, container ships 29.4

Id: L4xeUCqs9I4

Length: 16min 50sec (1010 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 29 2023