Container boxes, seventeen million of them in the world today, are a rather homogenous species. Their width is invariably eight foot, their length always either twenty foot or forty foot; their heights could vary marginally though. Even their colours are from a limited assortment in a beginner’s crayon box. Container capacity is measured in Twenty Equivalent Units or TEUs, the twenty foot and the forty foot containers being worth one and two TEUs respectively. The forty-foot container can carry up to 26,000 kilograms of cargo, just fewer than 270,000 McDonald’s hamburgers.

There are more than five thousand container ships that ply these boxes across the seas today of which fewer than five hundred and fifty are considered as large carriers with capacity of over 7500 TEUs. The largest ships can carry in excess of 19,000 TEUs; they take more than a hundred and seventy-five million dollars to build and fit-in, enough to pay for the girl’s rings for over 33,000 wedding engagements. In 2009, these ships carried more than 1.9 billion metric tons worth of cargo or ninety percent of the world’s trade in non-bulk goods, up from a mere hundred million tons in 1980.ⁱ At this rate, in just three hundred years, the containers will be transporting more stuff than the mass of the moon.

Our ship can carry over eight and half thousand TEUS, that’s equivalent to sailing with over four thousand large trucks stacked on one top of another. She is over three hundred metres in length and her udders can hold over fourteen thousand cubic metres of oil, enough to fill up the fuel tanks of over two hundred cars. She can carry over a hundred million kilogram of cargo, or about thirty four billion condoms. With just a few trips, it can do enough to prevent any human babies being born ever on earth again.

The next day, we are still resting at Singapore port because the gantry cranes are yet to be done with loading the ship. From the bridge, the port looks like an assemblage of basic geometric shapes in primary colours, stacks of cuboidal containers on docked ships and unloading areas, green gantry cranes with massive linear frames and triangle tops, parallel tracks marked on the ground in yellow for the square yellow trucks to tread on. In this hyper-efficient giant industrial landscape, a handful of little men in yellow uniforms and red helmets move around like tiny beetles to give the only hint of life.

The ship leaves well past noon and once the pilot has departed, the master gives us a big grin. The rest of the crew too becomes more relaxed and shed their earlier coldness. Sébastien, the master, is a Frenchman from Normandy, perhaps in his fifties, with a Chuck Norris like face that looks like a wolverine when he laughs. He says, “The times leaving or entering a busy port like Singapore are often the most stressful because if one is not careful, collisions can happen easily with so many ships around. Even though the pilot is on-board, the eventual responsibility lies with me. But that’s what also gives us seaman the kick out of this job, the adrenalin burst. Otherwise, a master’s job today has become very administrative, a lot of paperwork, a lot of email, managing the port and immigration officials, phew.” He gives his wolfish grin again. Now he looks like a surfer who prefers to tuck in his t-shirt.

There are thirty people on board. Half of them are Romanians, there are three Indians and the rest are all French, most of the officers.

Worldwide, an approximate third of seafarers on international carriers comprise of Filipinos. Indians contribute one sixth, the other major nationalities among seafarers being Russians, Ukrainians, Romanians, Turkish, Polish and Greek. The officers, however, come mostly from developed countries. In recent years, the number of Chinese seafarers has been growing but they work mostly on Chinese owned vessels. Romania is an odd country among these, producing so many sailors despite having a coastline of less than two hundred and fifty kilometres, ranking a measly hundred and twenty second among the one hundred and fifty three countries with a coast. Marius had explained before, “We had a large merchant fleet during communist days. When we got into EU, they didn’t want our ships anymore but only our seaman.”

Everyone in the ship look reasonably fit, with all the climbing of stairs, running around the deck, standing for hours at the bridge, and the occasional visit to the makeshift gym and swimming pool. The two extremes for body shapes are Doru, the chief steward, and Sylvain, the chief engineer. Doru is lanky, almost looking like the hunchback of Notre Dame, his calories well burnt with all the running around that a steward’s job involves. He has to be everywhere at the same time, cleaning rooms and common areas, doing laundry, serving food. For lunch and dinner, he has to dress up in formal attire, changing to shorts and t-shirt as soon as the meal hour is over. On the other hand, the Chief Engineer has epitomised himself as the centre of gravity of the ship, having gathered calories over the years sitting all day, watching the gallery of monitors at the engine room.

We go over to the bridge in the afternoon. The sea, free from the silt near the port, is a blue I have never seen before. The helmsman says, “Call me Ismael!”