WILMINGTON — The 1,200-foot MV Hyundai Hope crept up the Cape Fear River on Wednesday evening through thick sheets of rain before tugboats pushed the container ship back downriver, guiding it to dock beneath four lit-up cranes at the Port of Wilmington.
At that point it became the largest ship to ever dock at the port, a month after North Carolina Ports completed the final phase of infrastructure improvements to accommodate ultra-large container vessels (ULCVs).
According to NC Ports spokeswoman Bethany Welch, there are no larger ships that reach the United State’s east coast. With a carrying capacity of nearly 14,000 20-foot containers, ships that size have been able to traverse from Asia to the East Coast through the Panama Canal since 2016, when the canal’s capacity was doubled.
The ship’s length and width is comparable to three and one-third football fields.
Flying under a South Korean flag, the giant vessel first passed the port at 6:10 p.m. before stopping several hundred feet up the river as the rain began to pour. Two tugboats pushed against the ship’s bow, allowing for a slow U-turn on its way back downriver to dock at the port. Four minutes before 7 p.m., the ship was moored beneath the port’s 150-foot-tall cranes.
Welch said roughly 1,600 to 1,800 containers in total will be unloaded and loaded during the ship’s stay at the port. Imports consist largely of products that will be sold at retail stores like electronics, clothing, home goods, tools, and equipment, according to Welch, while agricultural and forestry products (timber, pork, soybean meals, etc.) will be loaded back onto the vessel.
Before reaching Wilmington, the ship had traveled north from Cartagena, Colombia, to New York. Welch said the ship will now head to Savannah, Georgia, then back north to Charleston before retracing its route to Asia.
“What’s really exciting is — this is the largest ship that is reaching the East Coast. And to think only a few ports along the coast can accommodate a ship of that size is really amazing,” Welch said.
View more pictures of the MV Hyundai Hope docking at the Port of Wilmington here.