The largest container ship to ever visit the Port of Wilmington is due Wednesday
The largest container ship to ever visit the Port of Wilmington is scheduled to steam up the Cape Fear River and dock on Wednesday afternoon.
The MV Hyundai Hope is 157 feet wide and nearly 1,200 feet long and can carry just shy of 14,000 TEU or 20-foot containers. If the ship were stood straight up on its stern it would be a football field taller than the Bank of America building in Charlotte, the state’s tallest.
The Hyundai Hope’s arrival this week is possible because of several changes at the port and along the river itself to allow Wilmington to handle the largest container ships that visit the East Coast. Ships this size will now make regular stops in Wilmington as they do in places like New York, Savannah and Charleston.
“It’s a really exciting moment,” said Bethany Welch, spokeswoman for the port. “It puts us on par with all these other ports.”
The big ship’s visit will allow the port’s new neo-Panamax cranes, installed in 2018 and 2019, to be used to their full capability for the first time. The larger cranes can reach up and over the larger ships, grappling containers stacked 10 high and 22 across, Welch said.
The Hyundai Hope would not have been able to get to the port, Welch said, if Duke Energy hadn’t agreed to elevate a set of powerlines that cross the Cape Fear two miles downstream. The company raised the lines 41 feet last fall, giving ships 212 feet of clearance, she said.
The final step came this spring when the port finished widening its turning basin just upriver of the port, to 1,524 feet, enough room for the larger ships to turn around before leaving. Paul Cozza, executive director of North Carolina Ports, said completing the basin “ushers NC Ports and the Port of Wilmington into the big ship era.”
Container ships provide regular service between ports, making stops the way a bus would along a standard route. Wilmington has received several visits a week from ships capable of carrying 10,000 to 12,000 20-foot containers.
But the completion of new locks on the Panama Canal in 2016 allowed larger ships from Asia to pass through and visit East Coast ports. The new cranes and larger turning basin put Wilmington on the routes for these new or neo-Panamax ships.
N.C. Ports has spent about $250 million on those and other projects, including a larger container storage area and expansion of its berth for container ships. The port can now load and unload two ships the size of the Hyuandai Hope at one time.
The Hyuandai Hope is expected to arrive from New York about 3 p.m. Wednesday and remain in port for less than 24 hours before heading out to Savannah.
This story was originally published May 18, 2020 at 5:08 PM with the headline "The largest container ship to ever visit the Port of Wilmington is due Wednesday."
