A helicopter appeared in the sky over the North Sea. It was 7 a.m. on a Wednesday this summer, and the helicopter circled in a wide arc before hovering above a ship traveling south at about 15 knots. At more than 1,300 feet long, the ship, the Mary Maersk, was hard to miss. It is longer than the Eiffel Tower is high, and the Mary and its sister ships are the biggest container ships in the world.
Feet appeared first from the helicopter, then a pair of Levi’s, and gradually a man was lowered by rope onto the ship’s deck. His job was to pilot the ship down a narrow dredged channel in the Weser River, toward the port of Bremerhaven, Germany.
Later that morning, the Mary would undertake the largest-scale act of parallel parking ever — or at least since the last time it docked, the day before, in Gothenburg, Sweden. As companies look for more efficient ways to move freight from factories in China to consumers in Europe, the Mary is among the newest giants, known as the Triple-E’s. Owned and operated by A. P. Moeller-Maersk of Denmark, the world’s largest container shipping company, the Triple-E’s went into service last year, muscling their way into the $210 billion container industry. They have also gained a following: Hobbyist spotters watch for the Triple-E’s and post pictures online, and Lego has created a mini version with 1,516 bricks.
Read the rest of the article at New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/business/international/aboard-a-cargo-colossus-maersks-new-container-ships.html?_r=0
Feet appeared first from the helicopter, then a pair of Levi’s, and gradually a man was lowered by rope onto the ship’s deck. His job was to pilot the ship down a narrow dredged channel in the Weser River, toward the port of Bremerhaven, Germany.
Later that morning, the Mary would undertake the largest-scale act of parallel parking ever — or at least since the last time it docked, the day before, in Gothenburg, Sweden. As companies look for more efficient ways to move freight from factories in China to consumers in Europe, the Mary is among the newest giants, known as the Triple-E’s. Owned and operated by A. P. Moeller-Maersk of Denmark, the world’s largest container shipping company, the Triple-E’s went into service last year, muscling their way into the $210 billion container industry. They have also gained a following: Hobbyist spotters watch for the Triple-E’s and post pictures online, and Lego has created a mini version with 1,516 bricks.
Read the rest of the article at New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/business/international/aboard-a-cargo-colossus-maersks-new-container-ships.html?_r=0