Largest container ship hits East Coast as ports see surge

BAYONNE, N.J. (AP) — With the sun gleaming off the Manhattan skyline in the distance, the massive ship passed slowly underneath the Bayonne Bridge on Thursday morning, tooting its horn to the delight of about two dozen onlookers on the bridge deck hundreds of feet up.

Even by the standards of ocean carriers, the CMA CGM Marco Polo is a behemoth: three-and-a-half football fields long — standing on end, it would be roughly the height of the Eiffel Tower — it can tote more than 16,000 20-foot-long containers, of the sort tractor-trailers carry one at a time.

It's the largest container ship ever to call on the East Coast, and its visit this week to New Jersey; Norfolk, Virginia; Savannah, Georgia; and Charleston, South Carolina underscores both the surging volume handled by ports nationwide as COVID-19 restrictions continue to ease, as well as the billions of dollars spent by port systems to accommodate these larger ships.

Container volume at U.S. ports lagged a year ago during the height of the pandemic as manufacturing slowed, though the demand for goods remained fairly strong as travel and leisure dollars were shifted to home improvement projects and online purchases.

Since then, volume has come roaring back. Beginning last August, monthly container volume for the 10 busiest U.S. ports has surpassed 2019 levels, according to statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Transportation. Los Angeles, the only U.S. port busier than New Jersey/New York, recently had the best April in its 114-year history and has had nine straight months of year-over-year increases.

While Los Angeles has been able to accommodate ships that can carry as many as 23,000 containers, as recently as four years ago a ship the size of the Marco Polo would have bypassed the ports of New Jersey and New York because the Bayonne Bridge, which...