MAERSK McKINNEY MOLLER's arrival at APM Terminals' facility at Maasvlakte I on Friday, August 16 was the "grand finale" to the week of the giants, which attracted plenty of airtime on national Dutch TV and radio and plenty of copy in all leading papers and provided a reason for a party on the shoreline.

A fenced, private area included a rostrum and a platform with a popular Dutch TV star personality as master of ceremonies and interviewing port authority, Maersk Line, APMT and Rotterdam municipality top brass. "We had one thousand admission tickets to give away, and already a day and a half after the special internet page had gone live, 1600 applications had come in," Miranda van der Meijden, Maersk Line's Benelux trade and marketing director told WorldCargo News.

Hours in advance of the vessel's arrival, thousands of day trippers and ship spotters from the Netherlands, Begium and Germany had sought the best spots on the Maasvlakte II seafront and the Hook of Holland pier to watch the world’s biggest container ship enter its first European port on its maiden trip from Asia. Named after Arnold Maersk Mc-Kinney-Møller, the son of the group’s founder, who died last year aged 98, the ship with probably the lomgest name in the group’s history arrived on time, surrounded by a small fleet of tugs, port patrol ships, VIP boats, media boats and so on.

APMT Rotterdam says it set a new terminal productivity record on the vessel with berth productivity of 215 gross moves per hour and crane productivity of 37.1 gross moves per hour. Right on schedule the vessel left the Maasvlakte I terminal headed for NTB Bremerhaven, where she called on Sunday and today (Monday, 19 August) she was steaming for DCT Gdansk, to be followed by calls at Aarhus and Gothenburg.

Meanwhile, the second of the 20 Triple-Es ordered with Daewoo of Korea, MAJESTIC MAERSK has entered service. The following eight sister ships from the first order for 10 ships will be named MARY MAERSK, MARIE MAERSK, MADISON MAERSK, MAGLEBY MAERSK, MARIBO MAERSK, MARSTAL MAERSK and MAYVIEW MAERSK.

While all attention was focused on the glamorous 399m x 59m "blue behemoth," three other "leviathans" were in port. The 380m long by 69m wide TI EUROPE was moored at Dolphins 80 in the Calandkanaal. This white tanker is the largest oil tanker in the world still in operation, with a 420,000dwt. The VALE RIO DE JANEIRO called at EMO on the Mississippihaven. Measuring 362m long by 65m wide, the vessel is the largest iron ore vessel in the world, succeding the 343m long x 63.5m wide BERGE STAHL, which was also in port last Friday, at the EECV terminal.