World's largest cargo ship arrives in British port for the first time

The CSCL Globe is longer than the Shard is tall and arrived in Felixstowe in Suffolk yesterday

Onlookers watch from a harbour wall as the largest container ship in world, CSCL Globe, docks during its maiden voyage, at the port of Felixstowe in south east England (Reuters)

The world’s largest cargo ship has arrived at a British port for the first time.

The CSCL Globe is more than 400m long and carries around 19,000 containers on each voyage.

It is longer from bow to stern than the Shard skyscraper in London is tall.

The ship arrived at the port of Felixstowe at around 12.30 GMT yesterday. Spectators on the Suffolk shoreline watched the ship dock.

Registered in Hong Kong, the CSCL Globe left on its maiden voyage from the port of Qingdao in China in mid-December 2014.

It displaces 186,000 tonnes of water and was constructed by the South Korean shipbuilder Hyundai Heavy Industries.

The ship is owned by China Shipping Container Line, commonly known as CSCL, and was ordered in May 2013 along with four other similar capacity ships at a cost of around £463 million

China Shipping Container Line is part of China Shipping Group, China’s state-owned shipping company, which is directly administered by the State Council of the People's Republic of China.

The vessel breaks the previous record for the largest ship at Felixstowe, which was won by the 18,000-container Maersk Triple-E in November.

The giant ship isn’t expected to hold the title for long: an even larger vessel, the MSC Oscar, is set to dock in Felixtowe sometime in the next few months, according to BBC News.

The Oscar is capable of carrying 120 more containers, the standard measurement of container ship size, though it is actually slightly shorter in length than the CSCL Globe.

Two new deep-water berths were opened in Felixstowe’s port in 2011 at a cost of £300m.