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

In 1966, while the British government was trying to convince container ship lines to call at Tilbury, Felixstowe’s owners had had the foresight to strike a private deal with Sea-Land Service. They spent £3.5 million pounds, less than one-eighth of the government’s outlay at Tilbury, to reinforce a wharf and install a container crane. Sea-Land opened service in July 1967 with a small ship shuttling containers back and forth to Rotterdam, and soon added ships directly from the United States. In 1968, with Tilbury closed by the strike, the hitherto obscure Port of Felixstowe became Britain’s largest container terminal. United States Lines finally was able to use Tilbury after reaching a union agreement, but the port remained closed to most other container carriers, including British lines. By 1969, Felixstowe, with two or three North Atlantic sailings each week and several feeder services running across the North Sea to Rotterdam, handled 1.9 million tons of general cargo, every bit of it in containers.