The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger - Second Edition with a new chapter by the author

by Marc Levinson

The breakneck construction of new containerships transformed the world’s merchant fleet. In 1967, 50 American-owned vessels, most of them built during World War II and rebuilt during the 1950s or 1960s, accounted for all but a handful of the fully containerized ships in operation around the world. From 1968 through 1975, no fewer than 406 containerships entered service. Most of the new vessels were at least twice as large as any that had been on the scene in 1967. Beyond these fully containerized vessels, ship lines added more than 200 partially containerized ships, with container cells built into some of their holds but not others, and almost 300 roll on–roll off ships to serve routes that lacked the volume to justify containerships. With these hundreds of new vessels, container shipping was coming into full flower.17