The Port of Baltimore has touted its expanding capacity and ability to accommodate “the world’s largest ships”—and this ship proves it.
The new Evergreen ship Ever Max called on the port over the weekend and made history as the biggest container ship ever to visit Maryland. The 1,200-foot-long Ever Max holds 15,432 Twenty-foot Equivalent (TEU) containers. It’s longer than four football fields, and requires a deep water channel, a very large berth, and ultra-large cranes for loading and unloading containers.
The Port of Baltimore’s 50-foot-deep channel and Seagirt Marine Terminal’s array of Neo-Panamax cranes makes it possible for Maryland to receive a massive container ship like Ever Max.
“Welcoming the new Evergreen vessel, Ever Max, to Seagirt Marine Terminal is an example of continued
growth for the Port of Baltimore,” said Mark Schmidt, vice president and general manager of Ports
America Chesapeake, which operates the Seagirt Marine Terminal. “Ever Max was completed this year,
and comes to Baltimore from the Samsung shipyard in Korea.”
Photo: Larry Wright
Ever Max certainly turned heads coming down the Chesapeake Bay from Baltimore. It left Sunday, attracting attention from boaters and even drivers on the Bay Bridge, who marveled at its size. Bay photographer David Sites captured a view of the ultra-large ship approaching the bridge that dwarfs the bridge itself, while reader Larry Wright shared a shot from the Baltimore Harbor.
Before now, the largest container ship to visit the Port of Baltimore was Evergreen’s Triton, which first visited in 2019. It holds 1,000 fewer containers than Ever Max.
The port says the state-owned, public marine terminals are all seeing growth in 2023. Container shipping is up 10 percent and roll-on/roll-off cargo is up 30 percent.
The port’s container business in particular is expected to grow even more with the CSX-owned Howard Street Tunnel expansion in Baltimore. It will allow for container rail cars to be double-stacked, “giving the East Coast seamless double-stack capacity from Maine to Florida,” the port says. It’s a major project that is expected to take until 2026, making improvements to the 127-year-old tunnel and at 21 locations between Baltimore and Philadelphia.
-Meg Walburn Viviano
