Talk:List of largest container ships

Rename per convention
The List of X naming convention documented at WP:SAL says that this article should be titled List of Biggest Container Ships. Or maybe for more formal English, List of Largest Container Ships. Brianhe 04:30, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

This article has been renamed as the result of a move request. --Stemonitis 11:49, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Order?
The order of the ships in this table appears to be random. Hobbema (talk) 23:29, 15 August 2012 (UTC)

TEU DESC, Length DESC, GT DESC, Year, IMO--JoachimG (talk) 19:07, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

On second thought: all ships on this list are members of a class of vessels of the same size. For this reason, all ships of the same size should be assumed to have the same rank. An additional figure could indicate the number of vessels of the same size and rank. I devised such a concept in my sandbox: User:JoachimG/List_of_largest_container_ships, together with e few other thoughts. What do you think? (never mind my English on that draft. The explanations would have to be formulated by somebody else).--JoachimG (talk) 09:17, 21 July 2013 (UTC)
 * That might not be a good assumption. There are often minor changes during the course of production; to accommodate that, a class-based table would have to split them into subclasses which don't really exist in reality. bobrayner (talk) 20:36, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Inclusion criteria?
What are the inclusion criteria for this list (per WP:CSC)? Dricherby (talk) 09:53, 15 October 2012 (UTC)


 * 13,000 TEU and above. That's 150 vessels and more.--JoachimG (talk) 21:52, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * I found out that there are more than 130 vessels with 13,000 TEU and above. It's impossibe to keep track of such a fleet, so let's stick to the TOP 100.--JoachimG (talk) 19:05, 29 June 2013 (UTC)


 * German WP talk convinced me that the top 100-rule would rather arbitrarily cut through a class of vessels of the same size. So I would suggest to amend the rule to the effect that, if at least one vessel of a given class is within the top 100, the whole class should be included. Objections?--JoachimG (talk) 11:49, 14 July 2013 (UTC)


 * Seems reasonable to me. If it starts making the article too long, maybe we should drop down to something like "top 50 plus everything in the same class" but we can worry about that if we get there. Dricherby (talk) 13:58, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Work needed
This article needs a huge amount of work. It needs inclusion criteria. Many of the quoted gross tonnages are wrong. Many of the quoted flags are wrong. What does "Owner" mean? (For example, Bureau Veritas says that CMA CGM Marco Polo is owned by SNC Nordenskiold but the article says it's owned by CMA CGM.) Should "Owner" actually be "Operator"? (Most ships are owned by one company and leased or chartered to the company that uses it day-to-day.) I was going to start working on this but there doesn't seem to be any point unless we can reach a consensus about which ships should be listed. Dricherby (talk) 00:30, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

Length; criteria
This article is still too long, and out of date, and incomplete; we need clear inclusion criteria. Any suggestions? Perhaps we should set a threshold at 350m or 10,000TEU or thereabouts - although even that threshold is likely to be a very low bar a few years from now... bobrayner (talk) 16:54, 22 April 2013 (UTC)


 * I am in the process of completing the list, and that's quite a lot. I would suggest to set the bar at 13,000TEU. At preliminary count, 50 (fifty!!!) vessels are missing above 13,000 TEU! Any objections?--JoachimG (talk) 16:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)


 * The list is already quite long so, yeah, if there are fifty more ships to add above 13,000 TEU, I think it's perfectly reasonable to set that as the requirement and delete anything below that level. Having said that, it might also be worth having a selection of historically biggest container ships: it would be good to have a section of "Container ships that were the biggest in the world at the time they were built", even though many of those ships would be tiny by today's standards.  Please also try to provide sources for anything you add, to improve the general quality of the list!  Thanks, Dricherby (talk) 21:03, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

done. I used an excel table with a vba module to create the source code, so whatever changes needed will be easy to implement.--JoachimG (talk) 21:21, 21 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Nice work. Especially this. Thanks. bobrayner (talk) 10:52, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Missing Ships
What about the 2012 MSC Altair? http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/shipdetails.aspx?MMSI=636015604 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:C410:6130:D3A:3B99:D792:83AB (talk) 05:04, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

done. Problem is that I'm using http://www.hafen-hamburg.de/cv10000 which is great but only includes vessels that are passing my living room. Any source known that would include ALL vessels above 13,000 TEU?--JoachimG (talk) 21:41, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Ship references
... are still missing. Is there a WP-method to link IMO numbers? Looking at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMO_numbers#External_links it appears that that's not the case. Any suggestions? There are dozens of websites that list all vessels, but which one to choose?--JoachimG (talk) 14:05, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
 * If there's one that can be used as a single source for all the data presented about each ship, that would be ideal. Dricherby (talk) 14:38, 22 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Have you tried Cite ship register? bobrayner (talk) 10:55, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, JoachimG!
I know this sort of thing really belongs on user talk pages but I'm going to say it here because I think it should be done in a more public way. A week ago, this article was in pretty poor shape but now, thanks to the bold editing of JoachimG, we have a proper inclusion criterion and references for everything. Thank you, Joachim – that's really great work and I appreciate it very much. Dricherby (talk) 22:29, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but actually it was fun. Like probably many WP editors have experienced, after a while you get addicted and it is harder to stop than to continue. It was quite an incentive, that while I was working I could watch some of the vessels passing my window!--JoachimG (talk) 06:55, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

FYI: the German version of this page has just been proposed for deletion!--JoachimG (talk) 14:50, 29 June 2013 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I don't know what the criteria are on German Wikipedia but the frequent media coverage given to each new record-breaking container ship should demonstrate notability. Dricherby (talk) 15:23, 29 June 2013 (UTC)

The same standards: No original research. See Deletion discussion.--JoachimG (talk) 13:09, 30 June 2013 (UTC)
 * The main criterion on English Wikipedia is notability. That's related to No Original Research but not quite the same thing.  (Notability essentially means that there are enough sources to write an article without any original research.) Dricherby (talk) 13:56, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Missing?
Skagen Maersk?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.136.29.223 (talk) 03:59, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Missing updates
Hi! The list has not been brought up to date for months now. It lacks a whole bunch of new ships that have since been delivered. I am particularly interested when and where the new CSCL Globe series with its completely theoretical container capacity will be sorted here. Leaving aside the sorting itself is based on "original research", which is why the list has been deleted in the German Wikipedia. Brgds, --SteKrueBe (talk) 15:14, 2 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree. The length of the list makes it even less likely that the list will ever be accurate. We should trim the list and concentrate on quality rather than quantity. bobrayner (talk) 17:35, 9 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I think the list should be shortened more. Keeping a long list of lesser ships guarantees that the list is incomplete and inaccurate; that's not what readers want. bobrayner (talk) 19:52, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Numerical error
How can 400m be shorter in feet than 398m. Something is horribly wrong with the conversion... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fido frog (talk • contribs) 09:36, 9 December 2014 (UTC)

Length
Please, I suggest you to read well this article and make a revision, some english speakers must still have some difficulties to deal with metric units and convert them correctly to imperial ones (or vice versa): how can a “398” meters long ship be 1,306 feet and a “400” meters ship be 1,300 feet? Franjklogos (talk) 15:01, 8 January 2015 (UTC)
 * I would guess that almost all lengths are correct in metres, and conversions to feet are poorly computed. For instance, a number of 400m ships are listed as 1300ft, when it should be 1312.3ft. These errors come from the original ship page where the data are also listed. 173.180.150.33 (talk) 23:06, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[ - occasional anonymous contributor]

Sort function?
The first column "Date" does not sort when the arrows are clicked, on my browser. Do others see this? It seems only the first column is affected, and as I don't see any obvious cause, I'm wondering if there's a problem with the sortable wikitable (in general). It's all outside my expertise, but could someone advise? 173.180.150.33 (talk) 23:06, 28 December 2015 (UTC)[ - occasional anonymous contributor]

MSC London Class missing
The "MSC London"-Class is completely ommitted from this list. I ask for someone to add these 6 ships (399m long, 16652 TEU). Link to German Wikipedia page of this class: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSC-London-Typ

Inclusion criteria, The list is getting too long
As of writing this, the list contains almost 180 ships. The list now contains all container ships built before 2017 that are approximately 400m long and 60 m wide.

For smaller ships this list needs work. For example, it is missing the UASC A15 class consisting of 9 15000 TEU ships. It also contains some ships owned by Hanjin which went bankrupt and no longer exists.

Maersk supposedly has ordered a total of 11 20568 TEU ships, OOCL a total of 6 21413 TEU ships and MOL a total of 6 20170 TEU ships. CMA CGM has ordered 9 22000 TEU vessels. MSC also has an order of 11 more 22000 TEU ships.

To prevent the list from getting too long we need better inclusion criteria. The now seems to be any ship with a capacity of over 13000 TEU. Ships are still getting bigger every year. So this list will only grow. Having only ships larger than 14000 or 15000 TEU on this list or having only ships longer than 390m on this list would help.

KiaaTiX (talk) 17:22, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Feel free to cut-off the list, 14000 or 15000 TEU is reasonable limit.--Jklamo (talk) 22:47, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Short notice on why
As I'm watching this list, I see that certain standard sizes are suspiciously common: 400m in length and ≈59m in width seems very popular. Perhaps a couple of lines in the beginning could explain if there are certain limiting factors observed, or if future growth in size should be expected (or a link to where such information could be found)? Spearman (talk) 19:26, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
 * According to this article larger ships can easily be built, but currently the main factor restricting ship size are restrictions for some large ports. The 22000 TEU ships on order possibly have one extra row of containers. Making them a bit wider than the current largest ships. KiaaTiX (talk) 11:57, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130719161738/http://www.cscl.com.cn/english/vessel7.asp to http://www.cscl.com.cn/english/vessel7.asp
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20130719161738/http://www.cscl.com.cn/english/vessel7.asp to http://www.cscl.com.cn/english/vessel7.asp
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List is too long again
Barely a year after raising the TEU threshold for the list, this list has again become too long and unwieldy. We now have 211 ships on the list larger than 14,000 TEU and the large majority of the lower ranking entries are hardly of any encyclopaedic interest, so I think it is time to trim it again. Similar lists such as List of largest cruise ships only have slightly more than 50 entries. However, in the interest of encyclopaediac value, I decided to search for industry definitions rather than create my own, and after a bit of snooping around I finally found some:
 * 1) Prokopowicz et al in a paper (if you are able to access it) about container shipping trends defines "Next-Generation VLCS" as larger than 18,500 TEU and "Ultra Large Container Ships" as larger than 20,000 TEU.
 * 2) Fairplay in an analysis piece about future newbuilds also uses 20,000 TEU as the cut-off for "mega container ship".

The evidence for using 20,000 TEU as a cut-off is much stronger but would leave us with 37 entries on the list, which feels a bit short for a standalone list; whereas if we draw the line at 18,500 TEU, we would have 72 entries. Being on the slightly more conservative side, I will go with 18,500 TEU for now; however if anyone feels the need to be more aggressive and raise the threshold to 20,000 TEU, do feel free. Besides, with at least 49 ships of 20,000+ TEU capacity due to be launched in the next couple of years, this list will probably fill up again quite soon. —Madrenergictalk 07:35, 31 December 2018 (UTC)


 * It may be of interest to have available a record of the changes made to minimum.TEU to feature, with the dates such criteria came into force, if that iformation is still available.
 * Auto 89.185.140.58 (talk) 11:54, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for speedy deletion: You can see the reason for deletion at the file description page linked above. —Community Tech bot (talk) 13:38, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * MSC Tessa.webp