Hamburg Express container ship to dock at Essex port

The enormous Hamburg Express, which measures around 400 metres long, is scheduled to arrive at London Gateway in Thurrock in the early hours of Thursday, November 19.

According to the port schedule, the Hapag-Lloyd vessel is currently due to arrive at 2am and remain at London Gateway until around midday on Saturday, November 21.

London Gateway is a deep-sea container port on the River Thames at Stanford-le-Hope, with a highly automated terminal and direct road and rail links to markets across the UK and beyond.

With a capacity of almost 24,000 standard shipping containers, known as twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU), the Hamburg Express belongs to the ultra-large class of modern container ships.

The vessel has a capacity of approximately 23,660 TEU, measures around 400 metres from bow to stern and is 61 metres wide.

That means the ship is comfortably longer than the 310-metre-tall Shard would be if the London skyscraper were laid on its side.

The Hamburg Express is particularly notable because the Port of Hamburg describes the vessel as the largest container ship ever to sail under the German flag.

Built in South Korea and entering service in 2024, the ship is the flagship of Hapag-Lloyd's Hamburg Express class, a series of 12 huge vessels operating on major routes between Asia and Europe.

The ship is also equipped with dual-fuel technology, allowing it to operate using liquefied natural gas (LNG).

According to the Port of Hamburg, this can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by between 15 and 25 per cent compared with conventional fuel, while the vessels are designed so they could ultimately operate using green methane.

The schedule provided for London Gateway shows the Hamburg Express arriving after travelling from Tangier, with Shanghai listed as the subsequent destination.

At almost a quarter of a mile long, the vessel's arrival will bring one of the biggest classes of container ships currently operating around the world to the Essex coast.