Largest ship ever to dock on the East Coast gearing up before moving onto next stop

The CMA CGM Marco Polo, the largest ship ever to dock on the East Coast, remains in the Port of Elizabeth.

News 12 Staff

May 21, 2021, 10:26 AM

Updated 1,435 days ago

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The CMA CGM Marco Polo, the largest ship ever to dock on the East Coast, remains in the Port of Elizabeth.
The ship is as long as 3 1/2 football fields, with nine tiers stacked on top of the deck. Inside the ship is everything from clothes to holiday decorations.
The ship also holds as many as 16,000+ shipping containers, while most ships carry 9,800. This is seen as a major accomplishment in engineering, history, and transportation of goods. 
“We're getting to see it from our high school campus right now, so that's pretty exciting,” says John Rickard, assistant principal at Bayonne High School. “We do see a lot of big boats over there all the time, but this one is massive and we're just excited here in Bayonne to have it visit us."
Linda Beninghove, of Bayonne, says the ship was coming from Halifax when she started tracking it last week.
“Ever since they raised the roadway on the Bayonne Bridge, it's really been very interesting to me,” says Beninghove. “It's a massive project, it's a feat of engineering, they raised the roadway and they also made sure that the channel was deeper so that they could accommodate these large container ships. I've been tracking the ship ever since I first heard about it last week."
There's a lot of work being done today before it moves on to its next stop. The ship arrived Thursday morning and is currently in the port unloading freight until it makes its next move.