SAVANNAH: COSCO Development, the largest container ship ever to visit the U.S. East Coast, passed through Savannah Thursday morning. With a capacity of 13,092 twenty-foot equivalent container units, the Development measures 1,201 feet long and 158 feet wide. According to COSCO, the ship is the length of eight Statues of Liberty or one Eiffel Tower or two Washington Monuments. It left Hong Kong for the U.S. on April 8, and made a stop in Norfolk, Virginia, earlier this week.
COSCO Shipping Lines is based out of Shanghai, China, which is the country’s biggest city and a global financial hub. The COSCO Development vessel will not only unload containers of imported goods while in Savannah, but it will also load containers of U.S. goods to be exported to Asian countries. The massive ship made its way down the Savannah River and cleared the Talmadge Bridge around 10 a.m. The COSCO crew were even watching WTOC’s live stream from the ship and were tweeting about it as they passed by Fort Jackson and made their way down the Savannah River.