As for maximum ship sizes, in 1972 and 1973 Malcolm McLean launched his largest container vessels, each with a capacity of 1,968 standard steel containers (nearly five times larger than his first converted vessels in 1957). In 1996, Regina Maersk could load 6,000 standard units; by 2008 the maximum was 13,800; and in 2019 the Mediterranean Shipping Company put into service six giant vessels each able to carry 23,756 standard containers, hence a 12-fold increase of maximum vessel capacity between 1973 and 2019.77 Inevitably, this mass-scale conversion to container shipping required the
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