This is the time of year when boxes are moving every which way on land. Delivery drivers for companies like FedEx and UPS work even longer hours on dark streets, especially here in the north. Click here for a graph of global container ship capacity in seaborne trade since 1980. How many containers exist worldwide? Answer follows.
Box ships move containers around the world all year round. Astrid Schulte departed the sixth boro a week ago and has moved through a handful of US ports since then, approaching Savannah now. Assisting her around the bend at Bergen Point are (r to l) Ellen McAllister, Marjorie B. McAllister, and Charles D. McAllister.
I haven’t found the resource with info on air draft, so I don’t know if this vessel (ex-APL Illinois) would have fit beneath the old roadbed.
All photos by Will Van Dorp.
And the answer to the question in paragraph one is . . . . there is no answer. See more here.
Nor is there an answer on airdraft, since it is a range based on loading.
tugster: a waterblog 
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December 23, 2017 at 1:57 pm
john hinckley
Speaking of containers, I ran across this book a while back…I think interesting, but on the other hand, it doesn’t seem to be rising to the top of my pile very fast…
https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10724.html
This article from the Telegraph quotes estimates of 33 million containers, while the World Shipping Council (trade group), says that “In 2016, the international liner shipping industry transported approximately 130 million
containers packed with cargo”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travel-truths/lost-container-ships-bizarre-world-of-global-shipping/
On another interesting note, the WSC has determined that “WSC estimates that for the combined nine year period from 2008 to 2016, on average, there were 568 containers lost at sea each year, not counting catastrophic events, and 1,582 containers lost at sea each year including catastrophic events.”
While the loss of cargo and effect on the ocean environment are not good, many of these containers stay afloat long after going overboard. If the load/trapped air balance is right, or the container is full of something tat floats, they often end up floating just barely awash, unable to be seen by eye or radar. Large commercial ships will probably survive a collision, but small wood or fiberglass boats can easily suffer hull piercing damage.
A couple of articles describing what can happen if you hit one:
http://www.oceannavigator.com/March-April-2013/A-legendary-offshore-danger/
http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/2017/01/02/the-container-conundrum/
December 23, 2017 at 2:14 pm
Bob
Umpteen gazillion
December 24, 2017 at 5:23 am
Robin Denny. Windsor, UK.
As so often with “progress” the solving of some problems creates more but different problems. Stevedores/ dockers were not above “taking their dues”, ullage, when handling cargo, much to the annoyance of owners and shippers. Moving very many smallish items by hand was time consuming, keeping a ship in port, sometimes for days or even weeks, earning nothing until she sailed again. The Box Boats reduced berthing times dramatically to mere hours alongside and limited pilfering but…. Fully loaded, the view from the bridge was seriously obscured, the declared content, and perhaps the weight, of a container may be inaccurate and, as John Hinckley reminds us, loss overboard of containers is a serious hazard. Visibility from the bridge is being resolved by forward control or, as with your tugs pushing empty barges, building a skyscraper wheelhouse. The unknown content is another matter, at times conducive to illegal practices. The older cargo ships were more elegant. One takes one’s choice.