On May 31, 1968, the Port of Hamburg entered a new era:With the "American Lancer", a full container ship docked for the first time. The square boxes on board revolutionize shipping, port work and global trade.
Fire-fighting boats greet the 213-meter-long ship on the Elbe with meter-high water fountains, while on land Hamburg's Senator for Economic Affairs, Helmuth Kern, personally welcomes the captain of the "American Lancer". At 9 p.m. on May 31, 1968, the era of container shipping began at Burchardkai.
Burchardkai:First special facility in the port of Hamburg
As early as November 1966, the first special facility for container handling went into operation there, followed in 1967 by the first container gantry crane. Rapid development begins with the "American Lancer":More and more and ever larger full container ships are mooring in Hamburg. The terminal at Burchardkai is constantly being expanded and is rapidly becoming the largest handling facility in the port.
Container:fast and cheap
Container shipping is replacing conventional cargo shipping faster than many expected. Because container transport has many advantages:While the previous cargo ships often spend several days in the port for loading and unloading, it is only a matter of hours with container ships - this saves time and money. General cargo ships such as today's museum ship Cap San Diego are gradually disappearing from shipping.
Challenge for shipping companies and ports
The new transport system poses major challenges for shipping and the port industry. Thousands of traditional dockworker jobs will be lost.
Malcolm McLean:inventor of the container
The US freight forwarder Malcolm McLean is considered the "father" of the container. Instead of hauling bales, sacks, barrels and pallets on board individually, he had the goods packed in large containers and loaded them directly from the truck onto the ship. On April 26, 1956, the converted freighter "IDEAL X" was the first container ship in the world to travel from Newark to Houston loaded with 58 standardized, stackable metal crates - the birth of container shipping. On May 5, 1966, the "Fairland" was the first container ship to call at Europe and moored in Bremen's overseas port.
The port infrastructure has to be completely converted, special loading bridges, cranes and long-legged conveyor vehicles have to be purchased. Quays are being expanded and direct rail and truck connections are being laid - including the new Elbe Tunnel and the Köhlbrand Bridge. Both buildings are completed in 1974.
Hapag and Lloyd join forces
The shipping companies also have to reorganize themselves. You have to invest heavily and buy new ships. At the same time, the market is highly competitive, as container ships are getting bigger, so fewer shipping companies are needed. Container shipping is also forcing the two large German shipping companies Hapag and Lloyd to join forces. In September 1970, the competitors merge to form Hapag-Lloyd AG.
Special containers for different product groups
Bigger, faster, more effective:This trend determined container shipping from the very beginning. The loading capacity of container ships is calculated in TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit).
The standard container TEU
In overseas shipping, goods are mainly transported in containers today. The two most common standard containers are 2.5 meters wide and six or twelve meters long. They can be of different heights, but usually 2.6 meters. In order to indicate the handling of a port or the capacity of a freighter, the different sized containers are converted. The comparison size is called TEU (Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit). A TEU corresponds to a 20-foot container - i.e. the small standard container with a length of six meters. Its maximum total weight is set at 24 tons.
A TEU corresponds to a standard container of around 20 feet or around 6 meters in length and 2.5 meters in width. The standard containers are mainly used for heavy goods such as motors or transformers and must not exceed a maximum total weight of 24 tons.
The 40-foot container FEU (Fourty-foot Equivalent), which is twice as long, can weigh up to 30 tons and is used for textiles and bulky goods. Special refrigerated containers are developed for the transport of food such as bananas, citrus fruits, meat or dairy products.
Container ships - boom of the giant pots
The currently world's largest container ship "Ever Ace" stopped in the port of Hamburg for handling in September 2021.Over the years, the ships have become larger and larger, but above all their loading capacity has increased thanks to modern shipbuilding technology. For comparison:While the "American Lancer" still transports a maximum of 1,200 TEU, ships with 4,500 TEU are built from the late 1980s. They are already so big that they can no longer go through the Panama Canal. The currently largest container ship in the world, the "Ever Ace" of the Taiwanese shipping company Evergreen, can even transport 23,992 standard containers. The ship is 400 meters long, so it's not even twice the size of the "American Lancer", but it can carry almost 20 times the cargo.
The giant pots pay off because they hardly need a larger crew than smaller ships and the fuel consumption is only slightly higher. The giant ships also dock regularly in the port of Hamburg. The "Ever Ace" has also moored there.
Deepening of the Elbe:Follow the container giants
But the boom of the container giants also has disadvantages:they are less flexible because they cannot call at all ports. The huge ships with their enormous draft are also causing problems in Hamburg. So that they can continue to head for the port via the Elbe, the Elbe has to be deepened again and again - an absurdity in the eyes of environmentalists, who try to stop the deepening with complaints with every plan. Containers currently account for around 70 percent of handling in the Port of Hamburg, with the remainder being bulk goods such as coal, oil or fertilizers. Between eight and nine million containers are handled every year in Europe's third largest port.
Container shipping boom coming to an end?
Until recently, experts assumed that container throughput would continue to grow. In fact, it's stagnating. According to studies, the boom in container shipping is said to be over. According to this, we are at the beginning of a new era:thanks to digitization and 3D printing, production will probably be more close to the market, i.e. in the country of the buyer, in the future. So-called bulkers, i.e. bulk carriers that transport raw materials, would therefore be more important in the future than container ships.