In the competition that has global powers looking for new ways to move goods around the world, the Mary Maersk and nine other sister ships are the biggest pieces.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.
1 A lot of people are jealous of captain Holmberg's job.
2 80,400 containers can be stacked in the Mary Maersk.
3 The captain is worried strangers might get on board the Mary Maersk before setting out.
4 Controlling the Mary Maersk is similar to the way one drives a car.
5 The crew work eight hours non-stop each day.
6 The Mary Maersk cost $190m to build.
7 The crew consists of 27 people.
8 Regulations demand that local pilots control ships so big when getting to port.
We are aboard the Mary Maersk the massive Triple E the biggest container ships in the world. At the moment we are away from Gothenburg to Bremerhaven.
Captain Holmberg has one of the most coveted jobs in the maritime. He’s in command of the Mary Maersk, part of the new class of ships called the triple E that in 2013 became the largest in the world.
Of all 18,400 containers, they can be stacked ten high. Here we’ve got four high, which means we can actually put six more containers on top of the stack here.
Stretching over 1300 feet, the Mary Maersk is as long as the Empire State Building. It contains enough steel to make eight Eiffel Towers. The Maersk shipping company launched the triple E line in June of 2013. Ten of the ships now ply the seas from Europe to Asia, in part to satisfy the hunger for European goods among China’s rapidly growing middle class.
It’s 2.20 in the morning and the operation is almost completed now, so we are making ready to sail. Rest of the crew, they are doing stowaway check at the moment. There’s a definite risk that some people might sneak on board. Most of them think that any ship is going to America which apparently it’s where they all want to go, so they will be solidly disappointed here, obviously.
This ship is so big that you have to think in advance. It’s not like the car, that you can sit the brake and you can stop. You really have to think in advance and plan your actions and what to do. Gothenburg port is quite a good port for this type of ships. It’s a good dredge channel. You always have safety distance under the kilt to make sure that the boat doesn’t hit the bottom.
So working at least eight hours a day in splits of four hours on, eight hours off, that’s the time on the bridge being a lookout or figuring out what’s doing any kind of given situations or in the pilotage. I ship around for about three months on any one vessel.
I’m a second engineer, I’m from the Ukraine, living in Odessa. My grandpa, he was a seaman, my father is also working as an engineer. I enjoy this life. It’s tough life for a... it’s very exciting because of this extremely expensive machinery and you are actually the one who is running it and depending on your judgement or your decision you know, either you will be in big trouble or you will be a winner. The propeller is right there behind this wall, so it is the one that is actually moving the vessel forward.
At $190m each, the new ships are a big gamble for the Maersk company, which is betting heavily on an improving global economy during a time of lingering uncertainty. Currently, many of the world’s major ports cannot yet accommodate ships this large, limiting their ability to be fully loaded as they cross the globe.
It’s not just building a ship, all the ports they need to make quite big, big investments as well.
For a ship so big, the crew is small, just 27 people on this trip, all men. When they are not working, the crew enjoys hot meals, a cinema, a swimming-pool, and a workout room.
I built it here.
Under sail, the ship burns approximately 100 tons of fuel a day, its single largest cost. The company says, however, that it achieves significant savings through its unique design.
A great deal of ship building it has been put into finding the optimum haul shape. There is no other form of transport that can even compare closely to the fuel ton cargo ratio. There is nothing that is even close.
Because this ship is more than 345 metres in length, the German regulations states you have to check the pilot pretty far out at sea … since it’s so far away from everything, the pilot he will be arriving by helicopter. Any port we go in, there will always be pilots. They have local knowledge and they communicate with the talks. We believe that I own the car but they own the parking lot, and if I want to park in their parking lot they want somebody there as well.
What is that like to drop in like that? You look like a navy commander.
I don’t know but that’s not so easy, especially if you have stormy weather, but in these circumstances it’s pleasant.
Every time that a new ship is come out everybody said that this is it, now can’t get any bigger, and then, a few years after then they just add a little bit more.
KEY:
1T 2F 3T 4F 5F 6T 7T 8T
