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It's the Titanic of the Cargo Ships! At 1,302 feet long it is the largest container ship ever built. The gigantic ship, which would awe anyone, was given the name Emma Maersk by the daughter of the late Arnold Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller and his wife Emma. After 65 happy years the Maersk's spent together, there is no question that this ship is the largest monument of love ever created.

Propelled by the largest diesel engine ever manufactured, the Emma Maersk will cruise at more than 25 knots and be capable of much more. The 14-cylinder Wartsila-Sulzer engine standing five stories tall and weighing 2,300 tons packs in an astonishing 109,000 horsepower. Surprisingly, she has actually been built with environmentally safe features that cargo ships half her size don't possess. One of those features is the specifically designed silicone-based blue paint used on her hull. This paint not only keeps the barnacles off without putting biocides into our oceans, but it also reduces the drag of the ship, making her exceptionally fast for her size.

Now, let's put this all in real terms. The Emma Maersk is a quarter of a mile long, more than four football fields in length, and 183 feet wide. Her 109,000 horsepower engine is equal to the horsepower of 1,156 family sedans. Equivalent to five adult elephants, the anchor of the Emma Maersk weighs in at 29 tons. Every year the ship will travel approximately the distance of going around the world seven and a half times!

In recent years commercial container vessels have been growing in size promptly to accommodate the growth in global trade. The amount of cargo carried in containers has been increasing by about 9.5 percent every year since the early 1990s, and it is expected that such growth will continue through the next decade. Despite her size and capacity to carry 1,400 more containers than any other working cargo ship carries, the Emma Maersk will save approximately 1,200 tons of fuel a year due to her design and special silicone paint. She is fully computerized and requires a crew of just 13! The cost savings are obvious here, and to surprise the Emma Maersk is the first of eight ships that are part of Maersk's E-Line. Soon these monster ships will dominate global trade.

In looking back to the first cargo ship ever built its inconceivable how much the ships have grown. The Ideal X, the first container-carrying vessel, carried only 58 boxes on its voyage from Newark, N.J. to Houston in 1956.

Having noted all of the amazing capabilities and features the Emma Maersk has to offer, there is one slight drawback to her massive size: not all ports and canals can accommodate her. As of now the Emma Maersk travels between Asia and Europe via the Suez Canal. The existing locks of Panama Canal are too small for the ship of her scale.

The building of the Panama Canal was taken over by the United States in the early 1900's, after a twenty year attempt and the loss of more than 20,000 workers failed under French leadership. The canal was finally finished in 1914 after more than 27,000 people lost their lives. Over the past ninety years global trade has obviously dramatically changed. The ships are longer and wider than anyone could have ever imagined.

Panama has been involved in a national debate about the Canal's enlargement project. Unfortunately, the economic situation in the country is very bad and corruption is raging. Because of such a poor and miserable economic atmosphere ordinary Panamians aren't very concerned about the benefits in expanding the Canal.
There has been battle about the decision to expand the canal. The cost predictions are exorbitant and predicted to more than quadruple by the time it would actually be finished. As the plans for the expansion stand now the new canal would put it at 55 meters wide when the Emma Maersk and other post-Panamax ships are 56 meters wide.

There are obviously some adjustments needed in order for the Panama Canal to really accommodate such commercial vessels of the future. Nowadays a lot of modern cargo ships have to take the long way round and go through the Suez Canal. Regardless of the size of the ships, the Panama Canal is experiencing a lot of congestion at either side.

The Emma Maersk is without a doubt the wave of the future in cargo ships, and to confirm that she was awarded "Ship of the Year" at Lloyd's List awards in London in March 2007. They stated that the Emma Maersk has set new standards in innovation, environment, and safety, thus making it impossible for any company to not up their standards on new cargo ships built.

If the canal expansion continues as planned, it will be finished by 2013. Its estimated growth is expected to go from a current 330 million tons a year to 507 million tons by 2025. We'll have to wait and see if the politics behind the expansion will work itself out in order to make global trade the industry it is capable of being.


Source: http://www.jtashipphoto.dk