WHEN the the first purpose-built container ships appeared, they seemed enormous to those of us who were sailing on the general cargo ships of the time. While a large cargo liner built in the 1960s may have been about 8,000 gross register tons (grt), the ships heralding a new era just half a decade later were as much as three times that.

The six Encounter Bay-class ships introduced into the Europe-Australia route by UK-based Overseas Containers Limited in 1970 were 27,000 grt and could carry a then-mind-boggling 1,900 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) at 24 knots, powered by steam turbines.

And how things have moved on since then.