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Stacking up
Larger ships are demanding ports grow
By Dan McCue
Staff Writer
Just an hour or so removed from a bustling city rush hour, the Port of Charleston’s Columbus Street terminal had already begun to take on the lonely cast of a late night.
A longshoreman who had worked the day shift walked heavily toward a refurbished school bus. The old bus, looking gray in the shadows, idled as its driver waited to take dock workers to their parking lot beyond the terminal’s gate.
Nearby, a member of the lashing crew, still wearing his hard hat and protective vest, called out for the bus to wait as he negotiated a path to it, his progress impeded by his balancing the poles he used to knock out locking pins and liberate the highest of stacked containers from others lashed to a ship’s deck.
All the while a lone security guard, routinely stepping out of the twilight of her booth and back again, electronically checked the IDs of the few who sought admittance to the terminal at this off hour.
The scene could have made for a prequel to Edward Hopper’s famous Nighthawks, the artist’s 1942 oil on canvas painting. It could have been, but for the abrupt arrival of Sergio Fedelini, driving a Porsche Targa Carrera, and the object of his journey, the Mediterranean Shipping Co.’s hulking MSC Marina, moored several hundred yards away.
Brimming with containers, the 74,000-ton vessel was bathed in a light that was rivaled only by those of the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge. Somewhere inside, Capt. Salvatore Esposito waited.
From large to larger
At 997 feet long and with a capacity of 6,402 20-foot equivalent units, the MSC Marina is the largest container ship currently calling on the East and Gulf Coasts of the United States.
As such, the vessel, which is part of MSC’s North European service, is not only a bellwether of the contemporary realities of international trade, but also the stepping off point for the future, a topic that will be discussed during the upcoming Port Productivity Conference, which will be held at the North Charleston Convention Center on Feb. 20-22.
As much of a presence as the MSC Marina has when it enters Charleston Harbor, it’s already being surpassed on the high seas by vessels more than twice its size.
Although it did not begin alternating weekly calls on Charleston with other MSC super vessels until November, the industry is already rushing ahead with orders for vessels capable of carrying as much as 14,000 TEUs.
“Those larger ships draw too much water to be accommodated by most ports, but their presence in the scheme of things will create a ripple effect on the industry,” said Byron Miller, spokesman for the S.C. State Ports Authority.
“What will happen is ports like Charleston, which have deep enough channels and berths to accommodate them, will see a lot more ships like the MSC Marina in the future as other trade lanes begin to see the larger ships.”
Fedelini, who in addition to being vice president of Mediterranean Shipping USA Inc. is honorary consul general of Italy, made his way up the MSC Marina’s gangway and was led into the vessel’s immaculate interior by the ship’s Croatian first mate.
Esposito stood near the officers’ dining room enjoying some rare leisure time aboard the vessel. As Port of Charleston cranes raised containers from his ship, Esposito, a 35-year veteran of the shipping industry, was about to hold court over a four-course meal for his guests in spotless officers’ quarters.
As a waiter poured the first glass of Montelpulcino D’Abruzee, an Italian wine vintage 2005, Esposito explained the ship’s welcoming confines in part by recalling that until the mid-1990s, vessels like the MSC Marina routinely carried passengers as well as cargo.
“When we first began our North American service, the company deemed it important to carry passengers; it was a form of propaganda, a way to call attention to ourselves,” he said. “These are cargo vessels, of course, but they’re very good looking ships, and we had a chef, a sauna. We even hired women to serve as stewardesses.”
The company was offering a way for people to take a cruise to Europe without having to pay for the luxuries of a cruise ship.
“The problem, of course, is that because our main job was carrying cargo, access on board the ship was somewhat restricted; in fact considerably so,” Esposito said. “A day or two out, once the romance of the journey wore off, the passengers would start to get restless. The ships we sailed then were considerably smaller than those we sail today.”
Ship calls Antwerp home
Founded in 1970, the Mediterranean Shipping Co. S.A. is currently the second-largest container shipping line in the world, operating 318 vessels with a combined capacity of 1,022,044 TEUs.
It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with its main European hub being Antwerp, Belgium.
Although it charters some of its vessels to other companies in order to keep its fleet flexible, ships bearing the large white MSC on their hulls call on more than 215 ports on six continents.
In addition to Charleston, the MSC Marina’s current itinerary includes 12 other ports of call. Four of those are in the United States (Savannah, Ga.; Port Everglades, Fla.; Houston, and New Orleans), while five are in Europe: Antwerp, Belgium; Felixstowe, England; Hamburg and Bremerhaven, Germany; and Le Havre, France.
It takes about a week to make the Atlantic crossing in good weather. The captain said he and the crew typically make several runs back and forth before taking a day off. In all, Esposito spends about six months at sea before taking a few weeks off.
When Esposito started sailing, containerization of cargo was still in its infancy and ships routinely stayed in port for up to a week as they were loaded and unloaded.
“These days a normal call is 12 hours, but there are times, like today, when it is much shorter than that. Today, we called on two ports in one day,” he said. “We did 217 container moves in Savannah before leaving at 4 a.m. to come here. We’ll do another 420 container moves here and then we’ll be on our way again.”
Prior to departing from Antwerp on a cargo run, Esposito receives a loading plan from a ship agent at MSC, telling him what cargo is being loaded and where it will be stowed on the vessel for the most efficient passage.
Typically, the captain concerns himself little with the specifics, delegating the implementation of the stowage plan to another of the ship’s officers, Fedelini said.
“The captain always knows if dangerous cargo is being loaded aboard his vessel, but beyond that, his main concern is the safe operation of his ship,” Fedelini said.
“You see my job is this,” Esposito chimed in. “Even if you handle a container a thousand times, so long as it reaches its destination in a good manner, a safe manner, then you’re giving the clients what they want.”
The cargo manifest is entered into a computer that has a software system specifically designed to make handling cargo easier and more efficient. Every container on the MSC Marina’s manifest is assigned an address denoting in which bay, row and column it’s located. The software also color-codes the containers on the screen, so that with the click of a mouse, the captain and crew can quickly see where the cargo is going.
On this given night, for instance, cargo bound for Antwerp from the United States was stowed below deck and color-coded brown; cargo destined for Hamburg, meanwhile, was color-coded light green.
Esposito estimated that about 70% of the cargo the MSC Marina would leave Charleston with the following morning was bound for Antwerp, where at least 60% of that would be off-loaded for transport by rail and barge to other ports and to inland facilities as far away as Russia.
“In all, we have nine rows of containers stacked below deck, seven up on top,” he said.
Saving 55 tons a day
The MSC Marina sails with a crew of 23, with almost as many nationalities on board as there are people.
“We have Italians, Eastern Europeans, Croats, Indonesians, Samoans. We have employment offices in Hong Kong, Italy and Greece, just about every corner of the world,” Esposito said.
While at sea, each man on board has a specified set of tasks, Esposito said. Some of the crew are assigned to perform the overall maintenance of the vessel, others work in the engine room tending to a 77,000-horse-power engine that encompasses four stories at the back of the vessel, others cook or do the wash.
As for the captain, international regulations restrict him and anyone who works on deck to working eight hours a day on a split schedule: four hours on, eight off.
“While rest is mandated, I can tell you there’s never a single day that I have absolutely nothing to do,” Esposito said. “Besides operating the ship at sea, as captain you do an amazing amount of paperwork. And, of course, you’re constantly communicating with people on land, telling them where you are and when you think you’ll arrive at your next destination.”
The MSC Marina costs more than $50,000 a day to operate, said Fedelini. The captain and crew are well aware that time literally is money in the shipping business. At full speed, roughly 24 knots, the ships burns 240 tons of fuel per day. At 20 knots it uses 185 tones of fuel per day.
“That’s why it’s important to plan and important to keep in constant contact,” Esposito said. “If you know that, for whatever reason, a berth isn’t going to be available when you’re expected, you can slow down just a little bit and save a tremendous amount of money on fuel.”
Another factor influencing how quickly a ship will get into port is its potential arrival time relative to the start of the shift of union dock workers.
“In Europe and much of the rest of the world, when you dock, they work,” the captain said. “In the United States, given the labor contracts that exist, you try as much as possible to arrive near the union’s start time. Otherwise, you wait.
“A seaman’s lot is to always be thinking of his next port. You can imagine what would happen if we proceeded toward a port with no planning at all.”
There’s also a matter of compliance to contend with. The MSC Marina visits seven countries, all of which have different regulations related to the ship-borne movement of international trade. MSC routinely sends Esposito regulatory updates that he familiarizes himself with while at sea, he said.
“Every port we visit, inspectors come onboard, looking for some kind of discrepancy,” Esposito said. “This afternoon here in Charleston, a U.S. Coast Guard safety team, consisting of five individuals, came onboard, checking the safety and security of the vessel, and, I’m proud to say, we had no discrepancies.”
Despite the wide-ranging nationalities of his crew, each man sees himself and his counterparts as indispensable parts of something bigger, Esposito said.
“We are a mixed crew, but we are a team,” he said. “The best soccer team in the world is made up of players from several countries. They don’t need language, they just look each other in the eye and they know. It’s not important where the individual comes from.”
Captain relishes Charleston’s harbor
Esposito has visited Charleston many times during his career, but this was his first call to the port in the past six years.
“Container terminals, generally speaking, are all the same around the world,” he said. “Typically, they’re huge, away from the town, and we almost always talk about them in terms of their productivity, in terms of container moves.
“In that regard, the ports that have really impressed me over the years are those in the Far East: China, the Port of Shanghai, Tianjin, Hong Kong, Singapore. In Tianjin, they did 5,000 container moves in less than 10 hours and did them so precisely, removing the boxes in sequence, that they did it without affecting the ships, without listing them.”
But Charleston is one of the captain’s favorite U.S. ports, both because of the efficiency of its workers and because it’s a natural harbor close to the open ocean.
“The Port of New Orleans is 10 hours up the Mississippi River, so if something happens, a sudden storm blows in or something, I cannot get away,” he said. “The safest place to be on a vessel like this when the weather turns against you is out on the open water.
“The Port of Houston is eight hours up river, and that can lead to all kinds of complications.”
In fact, the last time the MSC Marina was due to call on Charleston, in late December 2006, a combination of fog and local regulations prohibiting nighttime departure from the Port of Houston caused Esposito to bypass the Palmetto State completely in order to make up time.
“These ships are very forgiving for the planner,” Esposito said. “If you plan ahead and do things smart, you can deal with situations that are out of the captain’s hands. You can reroute cargo and make other arrangements for its delivery.”
Getting the job done
As Esposito spoke, members of his crew were monitoring every move of the port workers and longshoreman, making sure the containers were unlatched properly and hatches closed correctly and so forth.
“It’s all about making sure the job is done without complication, so that when (the port) tells us the job will be done in a few minutes, we’ll be ready to sail, “ Esposito said.
“The thing about being in my situation is that I have to have people around me I can trust. When I rest, I know someone has his eyes open, that he’s going to perform his job professionally. Otherwise, I could not rest.”
Over the years, Esposito has seen the ebbs and flows of the shipping industry.
“It’s interesting, the things you see take place,” he said. “On the one hand you have a port like Genoa in Italy. There they don’t want cargo ships because they claim they’re polluters. They want cruise ships instead. Now, I understand containers are not pretty, but cruises simply don’t create the jobs that cargo ships do, so from my perspective, they’ve made a mistake, mortgaged their future, if you will.
“In Northern Europe, on the other hand, they’ve invested in their ports and their seaports are tremendously busy, providing jobs to thousands of people. You need that support from government. You need the money it can provide, and you need the commitment of the community.”
While he conceded the planned expansion of the Panama Canal is “a big deal” in some respects, Esposito also said it likely will compound problems that U.S. East Coast ports are already experiencing.
“There’s only so much space available at the ports on either side of the canal. If the highway is congested, what good does it do you to put more vehicles on it,” Esposito said.
Compounding the issue, Esposito said, is that there is no port on the East Coast that can berth an 8,000-TEU ship on a regular basis, due to terminal land issues and the lack of cranes large enough to service them. And the existing inland infrastructure surrounding most port cities simply isn’t equipped to handle the cargo once it leaves the port facilities.
“Things have improved at some ports, but with the new and bigger ships being built, the whole world is going to have to update its infrastructure,” he said. “These ships are being built. If you can’t handle them, somebody else will.”
‘Never fight the sea’
As Esposito prepared his exit, he stood before a computer keyboard and monitored the weather for the coming week.
“The North Atlantic, right now, it looks good, but the weather is so changeable,” he said. “We have a good forecast for the next two days, but the ocean can change dramatically in a short amount of time.
“This vessel is good, powerful, strong. But you never try to fight the sea, because it will destroy you. Never challenge it. Never fight it. It’s something you have to abide by, no matter what your schedule.”
But at that moment, the captain seemed pleased by the radar imagery passing before him.
“Now seems to be the right time to follow the low pressure system,” Esposito said, motioning toward the image of a significant low-pressure system bringing snow and ice to Midwest.
By the time the MSC Marina would be ready to leave the following morning, the low-pressure system would be pushing off the U.S. coast and over the ocean.
“I’d like to get the wind at our back,” he said, adding mischievously, “Then I can open the sails.”
Dan McCue is a staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dmccue@charlestonbusiness.com.
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