Container ships are the largest ships that sail the seas now. Only oil tankers are at the moment, and larger, with dwindling oil supplies, the largest oil tankers have been broken up for bit. Presently, the longest ships which are traveling the seaways would be the Maersk E Class container ships, which at 397 meters1, is 64 meters longer than a Nimitz Class aircraft carrier. Container ships are among the most incredible things that have ever been constructed, and some of the details about these mass transportation vessels are staggering for the imagination.

The largest container ships in the whole world, the Maersk E Class ships, are capable of carrying 15,000 containers at a time. The CMA CGM Marco Polo, which is somewhat smaller, has an even greater capacity at over 16,000 twenty foot containers. If each of the containers around the average sized container ship were loaded onto a train, it would be 44 miles long4. Container ships also often carry passengers, and there are currently around 350 freighters that carry passengers, more than the absolute number of cruise ships in the world.

The engines that generate these huge ships make around 1000 times as much strength as the average family car, and use solid-fuel with the consistency of asphalt, which needs to be pre-warmed before it could be burned. At this velocity, the trip from Southeast Asia to Los Angeles takes only 16 days.

Perhaps the most amazing fact about modern container ships is that, even as big as they are, they appear likely to carry on to grow in size with the capacity for ships that could take as many as 20,000 containers at a time only in the horizon. It really is believed the engines that are used to drive these big container ships might be utilized to drive even larger ones, meaning that all that actually needs to occur is for somebody to construct another, bigger category of container ships. There seems to be little impediment to the sustained growth of these oceangoing behemoths that dwarf even the largest passenger ships in the whole world today.