HISTORY OF CONTAINER SHIPS

The earliest container ships were converted  tankers, built up from surplus T2 tankers after World War II. In 1951 the first purpose-built container vessels began operating in Denmark, and between Seattle and Alaska. On November 26, 1955 the purpose-built container ship Clifford J. Rodgers,^[1] carried 600 containers between North Vancouver, British Columbia and Skagway, Alaska.

The first purpose-built container ship in the United States was the Ideal-X ^[2], a converted T2, owned by Malcom McLean, which carried 58 metal containers between Newark, New Jersey and Houston, Texas on its first voyage, in April 1956.

Today, approximately 90% of non-bulk cargo worldwide is transported by container, and modern container ships can carry up to 15,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). As a class, container ships now rival crude oil tankers and bulk carriers as the largest commercial vessels on the ocean.