Triple-E Ship Leaves Port With World Record Load | Hacker News Reader

Triple-E Ship Leaves Port With World Record Load

gcaptain.com

131 pointschermanowicz64 comments

Seeing the video in the article I was reminded of a corporate video they did a few years ago. I know the director second-hand, and he was basically given free reign to go wherever he wanted and spend as much money as he deemed necessary to make a video that got the size and trust of the brand across.

This is the result: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjD9VvhXJrE

I think he succeeded - it's one of the best brand videos I've ever seen.

That's a really good video! Any idea what the final budget was? Would be interesting to know how much companies dish out for that sort of thing

I've heard that for things like this you start at $1m per finished minute, and then go from there.

This is about 12 minutes long, has a fairly well known British Actor narrating, a well known film director, involved lots of world travel and various types of specialist equipment operators, lighting and sound folks.

I wouldn't think you'd get away from this for anything under $20m, and wouldn't be shocked to hear it was $30m.

Tbh to my ears that sounds like a bit of an overestimate.

Serenity, a 119 minute feature film, had a production budget of $39M.

Of course, there are probably higher costs for a "documentary" like this Maersk one, primarily because of fixed-costs and international travel, but I couldn't imagine that it would be more expensive per-minute by a factor of 7.

Yeah, possibly. I have no expert knowledge of this particular shoot.

Serenity's not a great example though, normally a movie like that would've been closer to $100M at the time. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serenity_(film)#Filming

I've worked on feature film (90 or more minutes) productions that with a full crew cost <$400,000 to create. $20m for an advertisement is a gross overestimate. I would be shocked if it cost more than $100k to make this video.

I'm sure it cost them at least $50 to license that cheesy score.

Many helicopter/offshore shots in exotic locations in that feature film?

USD $2 million[1]

[1] http://www.porttechnology.org/news/we_are_maersk_worlds_larg...

"Pick a point on the globe--any point--and Maersk won't be far away."

This immediately makes me want to calculate the Maersk pole of inaccessibility just to prove them wrong. Maybe xkcd can get on it. (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pole_of_inaccessibility)

Maersk does some land shipping too.

But I don't think Maersk (or anyone) does much work shipping across land on Antarctica. They do supply some of the research stations[1], but these tend to be on the coast.

Given that, I'd imagine somewhere in the middle on Antarctica would be about the furthest.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Peary

But if there's a single shipping container at Amundsen-Scott...

Key line in that video "It's difficult for us, it's easy for our customers and that's what it is all about."

That's the core of any really successful business, package a challenge in such a way that the rest of the world takes it for granted, internalize the complexities and reap the rewards that go with taking the responsibility for doing so.

Excellent corporate video, one of the best I've seen.

21 years ago I was in a Korean shipyard where the largest container ships of the day were being built. Their capacity was 6000 TEUs, one-third of the Mary Maersk. The captain of one of the ships (a 27 year old (!) German woman) told me most ports cannot handle the 6000 TEU vessels, so their line will be building mainly 4500 TEU ships.

One interesting thing is that those older, smaller ships had more powerful engines than the much larger current vessels! The engine installed on the 6000 TEU vessel was ~90,000 hp, and the ship was designed for sailing at ~25 knots, the justification being that the value of cargo onboard was so high that the cost of shipping was dominated by the interest charges!

Interesting to note - the change in interest rates therefore has an impact on the size of ship engines, with lower interest rates resulting in smaller engines (or perhaps engines being run at more efficient speeds in terms of fuel consumption)

It way more directly influences by the bunker rates. Maybe various for a lot of the cargo it makes most sense to have the container vessel sail quicker. However, that's not taken into account while deciding between shipping lines. Further, a shipping line has loads of cargo. Some high value and time critical, some not at all.

Look at historical bunker prices to get an idea. I couldn't find a good link, but the USD/barrel is a nice indication: http://www.infomine.com/investment/metal-prices/crude-oil/al...

First a note: The useful engine power of ships is logarithmically proportional to the size of the vesel. A ship that is twice as big will only require and engine that is half as big.

A problematic thing is they way ports generally work, you may generally not book a port for a specific arrival date. You have to rush to get there before other ships, to sit still outside and wait in line.

Not very good for fuel consumption and the environment.

> ... logarithmically proportional to the size of the vesel. A ship that is twice as big will only require and engine that is half as big.

Surely not "half as big". ITYM the engine size for a 2x vessel size increase is 1.5x. Maybe "half again as big" would convey it.

> A problematic thing is they way ports generally work, you may generally not book a port for a specific arrival date. You have to rush to get there before other ships, to sit still outside and wait in line.

For most ports in North Europe that's not the case (though it used to be). You generally agree on a standard arrival date (day of week + time + number of moves), then you should arrive at that time. This differs per region though. For Africa, it's "different". You have terminals owned by customers, etc. More often you still have to rush, then wait for ages.

Maybe things are different if you're a small shipping line and the same terminal also working for a few big ones.

A few years ago I sailed past the port of Felixstowe and we saw the big ships being loaded. The captain said something like "those cranes can handle a ship 19 containers wide. When they built them people said it was madness, that there would never be a ship that big. Well, they're at 17 now, so they're worried they'll have to replace them soon."

Fuel costs have increased hugely since. The present generation of ships are designed for "slow steaming", ~13 kt, at a very significant fuel savings. That's likely to extend for much of the life of the ships (~20 years, possibly more).

NB: ~19 kt, not 13, as discussed in the Triple-E Wikipedia article elsewhere in this thread, for 37% fuel savings.

Several years ago I traveled from Rio De Janeiro to Capetown on a freighter (although not nearly as large as this Triple-E ship!) There are some ships that still offer paid passage and staying on board of one of these enormous ships, manned by just a small crew, is an amazing experience. I got to visit all the areas of the ship, could wander about during the day, hung out on the bridge with the night watch, visited the engine room etc. Being on the bridge when the building sized ship docks at port is incredible to watch.

This sounds super cool, how do you arrange something like that?

A variety of websites can do it. See http://www.seaplus.com/mainmenu.php and/or search "freighter travel".

It costs more than you might think, partly because meals are included.

That's a fascinating starting point, thank you!

Relatedly, 'The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger' is a great little book. I don't see sense in retreading existing reviews, but I think it would offer something of interest for many in this crowd.

And if you can find it, the BBC TV documentary "The box that changed Britain" is a good one.

The containers are stacked higher and nearer the edge than I would've expected for an oceangoing ship. Do ships like this lose containers in rough seas?

Yes, they do. A few weeks ago this hit hacker news: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8062864. 62 containers were lost due to a "once in a 100 year wave." One of which contained Legos.

I'm not sure what the expected value is for number of TEUs lost per journey. I'd hope that it's near zero, but I don't know.

Edit: quick google. Estimates range from 1,000 (World Shipping Council)[0] to 10,000 (Singularity Hub)[1] lost per year. Either way, with 120 million containers shipped per year, it's quite low.

0. http://gcaptain.com/how-many-shipping-containers-lost-at-sea...

1. http://singularityhub.com/2011/04/05/10000-shipping-containe...

And as a recreational ocean racing sailer, nothing is more terrifying than seeing one of these bobbing just below the surface.

Have you seen All Is Lost with Robert Redford? It came out in the last 12 months, and the premise is that he's sailing in the Indian Ocean when his boat strikes a lost container. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

This is the primary reason the catamaran I'm building has a titanium superstructure. I refuse to let an orphaned cargo container floating in the Pacific be my undoing on a circumnavigation.

When you strike a container at speed all bets are off, regardless of what material your boat is made of. You're in a catamaran, at least you have two hulls rather than just one. And it would appear that the part that is underwater is the most important bit when it comes to striking containers so I'm not sure why you think a titanium superstructure will help you if there is a gaping hole in your hull.

Exactly. Keep an eye on your scanning instruments and make sure you have a raft or two ready.

Maybe he expects to be hit from above by the container?

No, I expect to hit roughly head on. A container won't show up on radar, and its hard to detect something that near the surface using any sort of transducer/depth measurement device.

Titanium is non-reactive/corrosive, lightweight, and extremely durable. I'm extremely confident of the design, ensuring survivability of a container encounter, even at 12-15 knots.

Titanium is expensive. So people that build hulls (not the superstructure, let's take that as a given) out of titanium tend to make those hulls fairly thin. Containers are made out of thick chunks of angle and square profile welded together, with huge sheets of steel in a double wall in order to make the structure rigid. So rigid that you can stack them 10 to 15 high loaded without any of them buckling.

If you ram something like that (at it's own velocity, which will be roughly the speed of the current) at a vessel made out of titanium (thin, because it is expensive) then you're essentially aiming a can opener at a can.

I'm really happy that you're extremely confident of the design but I really hope you're going to do the normal thing and run with the regular complement of safety gear on board for the crew (raft, vests etc) because I fear that you may be over-estimating the degree to which oceanside encounters with container sized semi submerged obstacles weighing multiple tons allow themselves to be predicted.

FTR my somewhat checkered career included working for a sail making company and I've seen a few boats that had very mild collisions at sea and on the larger lakes and those definitely did not look pretty. I've never seen a boat come back that had had a head-on encounter with something the size of a container.

Titanium is a great material, but it is (very) hard to work, if used properly can give you the same strength as steel for a lighter weight. But due to the higher material costs and higher costs to work it you will more than likely end up with a boat that is just as expensive as a steel one with slightly less displacement or you'll end up with a boat that is much more expensive than a steel one.

In the end whether or not you will survive a container encounter depends to a very large degree on what the relative velocities are and how the container is oriented relative to your boat. If the container is dead in the water and you hit it at a 45 degree angle no amount of metallurgy will stop you from having a breached hull unless you go for something that will also survive impact with an iceberg.

Which reminds me of some other captain that was convinced his boat could handle anything the ocean could throw at him.

Be safe.

> I'm really happy that you're extremely confident of the design but I really hope you're going to do the normal thing and run with the regular complement of safety gear on board for the crew (raft, vests etc) because I fear that you may be over-estimating the degree to which oceanside encounters with container sized semi submerged obstacles weighing multiple tons allow themselves to be predicted.

Of course. To do otherwise would be insanity.

> Be safe.

Thank you.

Afterthought: and remember to look very closely at the corrosion of other materials the Titanium connects to, you can't just mix two kinds of metal in one construction exposed to salt water without figuring in exactly where the contact points are between the two kinds of metal and how you deal with the potential difference at that point. The typical way is to use some kind of sacrificial anode at the stern of the vessel (and possible a few others if it is large enough), if you don't take care of this you may lose fittings, stays and terminals well before their time.

A titanium hull failure is superior to a fiberglass or wood hull failure. Even if I hit a container at speed, the worst scenario is the structure deforming, versus fiberglass failure scenarios.

A titanium hull is, but you mentioned superstructure, which is everything above the hull.

What a great time to introduce you to http://www.cargolaw.com/gallery.html

This site has lots of amazing pictures if you can get past the Geocities design. Like this:

http://www.cargolaw.com/2012nightmare_bai_chay_bri.html

seems like losing a few at sea is nothing compare to the fire : http://www.cargolaw.com/2006nightmare_hyundai_for2.html

How would you put out such a fire from under/inside the stacks of the containers? (and given the content of the containers with consumer goods - plastic, plastic and more plastic ... )

What are the limits on the size of a ship? Width of Panama/Suez channels? Lets say they would build by 2019 (they plan to start this year and be done by 2019) the Nicaragua canal :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaragua_Canal

"The proposed canal would be between 230 meters and 520 meters wide and 27.6 meters deep."

And Egypt also invests billions in improving (and as i remember - building new pieces) of Suez.

So, how about double length and double width of the Triple-E?

Inert gas, if you can get it. I'm not sure about the legalities of Halon these days, but ordinary CO2 would work, and in compressed cylinders you can store quite a lot of it in a small space. Given that we're assuming there's burning plastic you'd hope any firefighters are using respirators already, so just flood the area with CO2, deprive the fire of oxygen and there you go. CO2 is heavier than air so would naturally fill the ship, though whether you could avoid getting oxygen to the other levels I don't know. Maybe put a big tarp over the top of the ship? :P.

They lock containers together with http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twistlock (and probably with other mechanisms) though of course if the ship tilts enough there can still be problems.

Lashing bars are the other mechanism. Big turnbuckles that hold down the first few levels.

Obligatory terminology helper link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnbuckle.

> Do ships like this lose containers in rough seas?

No.

Losing customers containers is bad for business I would find it unlikely you'd just factor loses like that in.

I't take an accident/mistake or rare natural event to knock them out.

Even if you wanted to allow containers to 'fall off' as a business expense I'd see the maritime union causing issues increasing this expense since I'd imagine it creates an unsafe work environment.

If anyone is interested in container shipping in general and how software is applied to optimising it specifically I can shamelessly plug Markus Völter's Omega Tau podcast on these subjects http://omegataupodcast.net/2014/04/146-container-shipping/

It's currently in the South China Sea

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:114.6631/ce...

http://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/9619921/ve...

That's a really high quality site for a community effort.

Now, I don't have to wonder about all the ships sailing on the Hudson river.

When I was in the USCG we would be underway at night off the west coast of the US. It'd be halfway through a midwatch and a huge blob would appear on the radar up off our port bow. That blob would go tearing down our port side with a ridiculous speed - and we weren't contributing much because we were just lagging along at 6 knots. Just an amazing sight after seeing salmon trollers on the radar all day long.

More on the ship: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class

I thought this was the largest ship in the world. It looks like it will soon be eclipsed by a floating natural gas platform called Prelude.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prelude_FLNG

This is the path it has taken since it left Spain on 7/21: https://imgur.com/2w8vg3R

Something something Docker containers.

17,603 TEU is the equivalent of 1/2 the Empire State Building in volume.

i assume this is a panamax ship? is the suez canal wider than the panama canal?

This ship is larger than Panamax [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class].

The biggest limitation on Panamax size is whether a ship can fit into the Canal's locks, but the Suez canal is a sea-level waterway with no locks, so the limit is a lot higher.

The Mary Maersk is much wider than Panamax, at almost 200 feet wide. This ship seems designed to just barely squeak through the much wider Suez.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maersk_Triple_E_class claims the ship is too deep for the Panama Canal.

Loads and loads of vessels are too big for current Panamax locks/canal (max size around 5.100 TEU). One of the vessel classes is post-panamax and there are various classes above that :-P. Panamax canal is now being expanded, but it'll only fit about 14.500 TEU vessels. The previous largest vessels Maersk has (E-class instead of triple-E class) also don't fit to the _new_ Panamax. That new Panamax is still underway.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ships#Size_categories

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