Giants of the Sea

I haven’t written my wish list to Santa yet, but there is a very good chance that whatever I might choose, has just arrived on this ship.  Not the sailing yachts, but the giant in the background at Southampton’s Container Port.
The container vessel OOCL Chongqing which arrived in Southampton yesterday and sails again tonight, is one of the biggest container ships in the world and is one of a fleet of ten which operates a 77-day round trip service for Orient Overseas Container Line from Shanghai and Singapore to Europe.
This ship has been carrying goods from the Far East to Europe and export cargo back to the Far East since 2013, and  was built at the Samsung Heavy Industries’ shipyard at Geoje Island, South Korea and at 144,060 tonnes is one of the giants of the seas, with a length of 1,202 ft — the length of three football pitches or 24 double deck buses parked end to end.
And those containers on deck — it is rated to carry 13,208 standard containers which gives a good deal of choice, should I fancy something on my wish list made in the Far East. Not that I necessarily would, but I have in mind  that even my computer came in a box which said ‘Made in China!’ When I passed by the port this afternoon, the port’s dockside cranes were busy loading containers onto the ship before the next stage of its journey to Antwerp.
On its 77-day round journey from China it will head as far Rotterdam and Hamburg before turning back via the Suez Canal to Singapore, and the Chinese ports.

The port itself is home to the UK's second largest container terminal handling more than 1.5 million standard container units each year — more than enough to deliver whatever should eventually be on my Christmas wish list!