Emma Maersk (the biggest container vessel)

October 11, 2008

Emma Maersk was built and dedicated to maritime shipping in the year 2006. After the introductory presentation, the biggest container ship started serving hers purpose on September 10, 2006 when arrived from Aarhus (Denmark) to Bremerhaven (Northern Deutschland) with about 1000 containers on hers deck.

Official registered capacity of the ship is 11.000 TEU (one Twenty Equivalent Unit = one standardized 20 feet container), although she can carry more then 13.000 TEU. For reception of 398 meter long and 56 meter wide ship, in Bremerhaven had to deepen and widen some critical parts of the port. Because of hers majority, navigation through the canals (60 km) from east coast of Denmark to Bremerhaven on the Northwest Deutschland coast took about 3 hours.

Emma Maersk belongs to new generation of mega container vessels with “magical” limit over 10.000 TEU. Hers capacity is for one third bigger as average capacity of conventional container ships. She mostly serves liner transport routes between Europe and Far East and trans-Pacific routes. Hers speed can push her up to 31 knots, what is an impressive result for ship of that size. Due to her width, she does not fit through Panama or Suez Canals.

The main problem, mega size ships have to deal with, is the depth of ports. Fully loaded Emma Maersk needs at least 16 m of sea depth for secure navigation. In ports, Bremerhaven and Hamburg are already in the process of deepening of the sea from 14 m up to 18 m to be capable of serving the biggest ships on the world including Emma Maersk. In some other ports with lower sea depth, major size ships come only partly loaded in order to assure safe port navigation.

Watch video of Emma Maersk in action (shooting from another Maersk vessel):