The Mediterranean makes me think of amphorae. At a stretch, Greek and Roman amphorae were the first form of standardized shipping container. Mainly used for wine and olive oil, they were a uniform shape and size, had handles for lifting and fitted into slots that kept them safely upright at sea. In port, they would be loaded onto carts. The amphora was a by-product of early globalization as trade linked different peoples across the ancient Western world.
Two millennia later, Amber can carry 4,400 TEUs - Twenty Foot Equivalent Units, a term dating from the earliest, twenty foot long shipping containers. In fact, most of the containers are forty feet and not entirely of one standard. They can be different lengths and heights, and configured for different loads.
Below is my morning exercise route. Trusting the supports are secure, I stride beneath rows of creaking, groaning, banging containers stacked six high.
What's inside these metal boxes? Unless potentially dangerous, the captain doesn't know. According to Maersk Lines (the world's biggest shipping company), a single 20-foot container (twenty feet long, eight feet wide and eight feet high) can hold 48,000 bananas.
APL (American President Lines) says a 40-foot container can transport 16,500 boxes of running shoes or 25,000 blouses. The mind boggles at the possible number of Chinese-made iPods.
Because containerization was an American innovation, feet rather than metres remain the standard measure.
A stroll among the boxes reveals something of shipping history. From the old ...
... to the new.
And the simply useful.
The crew's tightening lashings, which hold containers in place. Heavy seas take a toll: one ship I was on had lost thirty-three containers off Australia.
Containers, container terminals and container ships are much the same, but route names are sometimes reminiscent of what we like to think were romantic - even heroic - times.
Until recently, Amber was on the Amerigo Express service between U.S. and Mediterranean ports. This honours Amerigo Vespucci, 15th Century explorer and writer, after whom North and South America are named. Amber's current, around-the-world route is the more mundane Pacific Express 3.
Some other CMA CGM routes:
Swahili Express - India to East Africa
Phoenician Express - East Asia to the Adriatic
Liberty Bridge - U.S. to the U.K. and Continent (and evoking memories of wartime convoys)
Black Pearl - New York to Halifax to the Caribbean (think Pirates of the Caribbean)
Container ships ('box boats' as they carry boxes) may be monsters of mass-produced metal, but, with a bit of imagination, they can be turned into modern East Indiamen plying the Seven Seas. Still, the crews on those creaking, leaking, wooden hulks probably didn't find them too romantic. It was only the writers ... and journalists.
