Four days later than expected, my circumnavigation has begun. Last night, I boarded the CMA CGM Amber. The vessel had waited out Hurricane Irene down the coast. Within minutes of arriving in Port Newark (Port Elizabeth), the third mate and a crewman were hauling my bags up the gangway.
Here's the view this morning.
This is from my cabin window.
At 12:35 this afternoon we begin pulling away. Just beyond the last container crane you can see in the picture below, the first experimental container ship departed in 1956. Ships, docks, a traditional maritime way-of-life were about to either vanish or dramatically change. Economic globalization - with 'just-in-time' delivery of products from the other side of the world - would be impossible without millions of easy-to-transport, standardized steel boxes.
That first container ship - the dismally named Ideal X - took five days to sail from New York to Houston. In about sixty-three days, I should be disembarking in Houston. Amber will be taking the long way.
My fellow passenger, Denis, from near Melbourne, and New York harbour.
In the 1960s, the British writer Jan Morris described the port:
"... the presence of the great haven can still send a frisson down my spine, when I see it standing there, so beautiful, so terrible, so squalid and so magnificent, veiled in its own mist, lit by its own steely radiance upon the Atlantic foreshore." (The Great Port - A Passage Through New York Jan Morris 1969)
Amber is one of about 3,700 ships to annually use the combined New Jersey ports of Newark and Elizabeth, New York's main container terminals. Impressive, but consider this: in 1985, New York was the world's busiest port. By 2009, Shanghai was the world's busiest and New York/New Jersey were ranked twenty-third.
As we leave New York, a U.S. courtesy flag flies over a ship that can carry 4,400 twenty-foot containers. Many are empty. They're not filled with American products; they're going back to East Asia to load Chinese and Korean products for export to the States.
The pilot boat departs and we're on our own.
Even in 2011, a circumnavigation is an immense distance. Half a millennium after one of Magellan’s ships (Magellan didn’t make it) first rounded the planet, there is a mildly adventurous quality to this voyage. Cargoes and ports may change; pirates pose risks; storms delay us; engine break down. Any number of uncertainties lie between New York and our return to Houston.
