# The Global Port Follow the journey of goods from orbit to the quay: shipping lanes, a giant container ship, the captain's bridge, the crane operator's cab and the inside of a container By Numa Topic: Engineering [Open the interactive Jig](https://ask.jig.com/j/jdJEkA3DLTQp) ## Guide ### 1. The Global Port Every glowing line is a shipping lane, and every spark on it is a container ship\. Together they carry more than 170 million twenty\-foot boxes of goods a year\. Slide to send more ships to sea, and drag the space around the Earth to spin it\. The busiest lane crosses the Pacific, from Asia to North America\. ### 2. Choose a port Shanghai is the busiest container port on Earth\. Singapore is where ships swap boxes between oceans, Rotterdam is the gateway to Europe and Los Angeles is the biggest in the United States\. Tap a glowing port or choose one below to light up its lanes\. 2024 traffic in twenty\-foot boxes: Shanghai 51\.5 million, Singapore 41\.1, Rotterdam 13\.8, Los Angeles 10\.3\. ### 3. Dive to the quay We drop out of orbit, through the clouds, to a container terminal where a giant ship has just tied up\. Ship\-to\-shore cranes line the quay with their booms stretched over the deck, and the yard behind is stacked with boxes waiting for trucks and trains\. ### 4. A giant at the berth This ship is about 400 metres long and 61 metres wide, longer than three football pitches end to end\. It can carry 23,756 twenty\-foot boxes, stacked up to 24 across\. Below the waterline the hull is painted red with antifouling paint\. Modelled on the MSC Gülsün class, among the largest container ships afloat\. ### 5. Up close with the boxes Each box is a 40\-foot steel container\. Its corrugated walls make thin steel strong, and a cast\-steel corner fitting at each corner lets cranes grab it and twistlocks lock it to the box below\. Red lashing bridges brace the rows on deck\. A 40\-foot box is 12\.2 metres long, 2\.44 metres wide and usually 2\.9 metres tall\. It counts as two TEU\. ### 6. The captain's seat Now we are at sea, on the bridge, looking over a field of containers toward the bow\. The stacks are taller than a house, so the bridge sits high above them to let the crew see ahead\. Drag to look around, and sound the horn\. Big container ships usually cruise at around 20 knots, about 37 kilometres an hour\. ### 7. In the crane cab Back in port, the crane operator rides in a cab under the trolley and looks straight down through a glass floor\. Lift a box: the spreader drops onto a container, its twistlocks turn in the corner castings, and the box rides ashore onto a waiting truck\. A big ship\-to\-shore crane can lift about 65 tonnes under its spreader\. ### 8. What is inside the box Containers stay sealed from the factory to the warehouse, so nobody unpacks them on the way\. Open the doors and step inside this one: cartons on pallets, shoe boxes and bicycles, packed tight so nothing shifts at sea\. The code on the door names the owner, the box number and its size and type: 45G1 is a 40\-foot high cube\. ### 9. Around the world again One box, one ship, one crane and one truck at a time, the world's goods keep moving\. Rise back into orbit, add ships, spin the Earth and follow the lanes from port to port\.