I got a rare opportunity two days ago to tour an oceangoing cargo ship. The ship, above, is the Maersk Hartford, which is rated at 6,500 TEUs (twenty-foot equivalent units), which means it can carry roughly 6,500 shipping containers of the sort we landlubbers are more likely to see being hauled by large trucks or on train cars.
Over the course of four hours, the ship was piloted into the Port of Newark and berthed, with the help of several tugboats, at the Maersk facility. Then U.S. customs officers boarded the ship to check the identification of crew members.
The Newark stop was to unload cargo. Efficiency is everything with cargo ships now. The Hartford arrived just after 10 a.m. and left not quite 11 hours later.
After it left, it cruised south to to pick up cargo in Charleston and Savannah, after which it will return to Newark for more loading. Then it will cross the Atlantic to Algeciras in Spain, then proceed across the Mediterranean and through the Suez Canal to ports in Dubai, Pakistan and India.
Shortly after its arrival in Newark, a barge (below) pulled up alongside to refuel the Hartford. On the lower decks, crew members were consulting with the Coast Guard about staffing efficiencies.
Outside, the cranes were moving back and forth, plucking containers, sometimes two at a time, and transporting them to the dock.
Below is an illustration of how containers were lashed together, high into the air, to hold them in place as the Hartford moves across unstable seas through all kinds of weather. Some of the wiring connects to the interior of special containers, called "reefers" for refrigerated cargo, that are climate-controlled and can hold anything from fruits and vegetables to blood supplies needed in dangerous regions. Interestingly, the reefers ride above the hold because water temperatures are so high in the seas traveled by the Hartford.
The bridge, below, manned when the ship is at sea, was quiet, affording a nice view of the Manhattan skyline in the distance.
Big as the Hartford is, it remains subject to pitching with the water in the weather it encounters as it travels. When it steams at high speed, about 25 knots I believe, off-duty crew members sometimes don noise-canceling headphones to get in quiet sleep time and a little aural distance from engine noise.
Because of the danger of pirates, the ship is joined as it enters the Suez Canal by several armed mercenaries who travel with it as it steams to the Indian Ocean and back. In addition, the Hartford's decks have been fitted with barriers that can be deployed to frustrate entry from outside the ship.
Bigger Ships Today
The Hartford is a big ship, in the Post-Panamax category -- too wide and with a draft too deep to pass through the Panama Canal. It was built in Korea (where virtually all cargo vessels seem to be built these days) and launched in 2007.
By some lights, the Hartford is too tall for the Newark port. The top pieces of the ship, mostly navigation equipment, are folded down when the ship passes under the Bayonne Bridge to its berth at the Maersk facility. A new Bayonne Bridge is being built now to allow port entry for taller ships.
In fact, ports around the world are being retrofitted to accommodate a group of even larger cargo ships, the fuel-efficient Triple-Es, which began plying the oceans a couple years ago.
Here are the specs for the Hartford and a Triple-E.
Hartford Triple E
Length 941 feet 1,312 feet
Width 131 feet 194 feet
Draft 66.6 feet 48 feet
TEUs 6,500 containers 17,603 containers
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