Container ship: how to identify one
The most recognisable ship afloat: a wall of stacked steel boxes, often six or seven high above the deck and as many again below it.
| Typical length | 150–400 m |
|---|---|
| Capacity unit | TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) |
| Service speed | 16–24 knots |
| AIS type codes | 70–79 (cargo) |
| Map colour | Green (cargo) |
How to spot one
- Containers stacked visibly above deck — nothing else looks like it.
- On the largest ships the accommodation block sits well forward of the funnel, so the crew can see over the stacks.
- Lashing bridges: the walkway structures between bays that crew clip the twist-locks and rods to.
- A pronounced bulbous bow, usually visible in ballast, and a fine hull form — these are the fast ships of the merchant fleet.
- In port, gantry cranes straddling the ship rather than the ship's own gear; container ships are almost never geared above feeder size.
Reading the size
Capacity is quoted in TEU — the volume of one twenty-foot container. A 40-foot box, which is what most cargo actually moves in, counts as two. The classes run from feeders of a few hundred TEU that serve small ports, through Panamax and Neo-Panamax sized to the canal locks, to Ultra Large Container Vessels of more than 20,000 TEU that shuttle between a handful of deep-water hubs and never leave the Asia–Europe or transpacific trunk routes.
Why the bridge moved forward
Visibility rules require a clear line of sight over the bow. As stacks grew taller, the only way to keep that sightline without wasting slots was to split the superstructure: accommodation forward, engine and funnel aft. A big ship with two separate blocks on deck is almost certainly a modern ULCV — an easy identification at long range.
Where you will see them
At dedicated terminals with gantry cranes: Hamburg's Burchardkai and Altenwerder, Rotterdam's Maasvlakte II, the Singapore Strait approaches where traffic queues for Tuas and Pasir Panjang. They keep tighter schedules than almost anything else afloat, so the same names come past the same points on the same days of the week.
See them live
The live map colours container ships as cargo traffic. Filter to that category and you have every one within 30 km of wherever you are looking.