Two giants of the shipping industry are eyeing the port of Baltimore for a major new East Coast cargo terminal.

But if Baltimore fits the companies' plans, port officials will have to figure out how to fit the company's ships into Baltimore.

Maersk Inc. and Sea-Land Service Inc., two steamship lines considering the port as a site for a new cargo hub, sail the largest containerships afloat.

Some of the ships are 1,138 feet long -- longer than aircraft carriers -- and 140 wide, the equivalent of 17 tractor-trailers placed side-by-side.

Park one of those ships fully loaded at the Dundalk Marine Terminal today and it would slice five feet into the mud.

Longshoremen would have to unload it one side at a time because the cranes reach only three-quarters of the way across.

Officials at the Maryland Port Administration are confident Baltimore can accommodate the mammoth vessels if the shipping lines come here, and are well into planning how. But it will take many millions of dollars and a few engineering headaches to accomplish.

"It's quite a project," said James White, the port authority's acting executive director. "But we're in a pretty good position to make it work."

Maersk and Sea-Land, two of the world's largest shipping lines, share space on each other's ships as part of an alliance that operates all over the globe.

Last week the companies picked Baltimore as a finalist, along with New York and Halifax, Nova Scotia, for a new East Coast base of operations.

The alliance could bring more than 550,000 cargo containers a year to Baltimore, tripling the amount of containerized cargo moving through the port.

But the port would have to make room. At least 20 of the companies' vessels are "post-Panamax" class -- too big to fit through the Panama Canal, where the locks are 110 feet wide and 39 1/2 feet deep.

Only two of those vessels sail in the Atlantic Ocean, but the companies expect to sign a 25-year lease for their new terminal. And over the life of that deal, they expect the ships to grow bigger.

The shipping industry has too much capacity on most routes -- too many ships sailing less than full -- so some observers wonder whether lines will keep building bigger ships. But the reasoning behind the larger vessels is a simple one: They save the shipping lines money.

With a minimum crew of 13, the post-Panamax ships can move as many as 3,300 truck-sized cargo containers. Standard vessels with the same size crew typically move half that.

The added capacity lets shipping lines take advantage of surges in international trade without adding vessels to their routes. And the big ships ease the burden of shipping empty containers because they can carry so many. Containerships leaving the United States are typically packed with empty boxes headed back to Asia to be filled.

"We can capitalize on market peaks and we can reposition more equipment. The economies of scale are effective," said Tom Boyd, a spokesman for Maersk. "If you were to look out over a 25-year plan, we believe large ships will be carrying more and more cargo."

The ships are little more than giant bathtubs filled with cargo boxes. The containers can be stacked four or five high on the deck -- lashed down with steel clamps -- and stacked as deep as 10 down inside the hull. The bottoms of the ship are flat with bulb-shaped bows to reduce drag and allow for speeds of 25 knots or more.

The crew is housed in a box-shaped superstructure near the stern, which, when the vessel is fully loaded, is nearly encased in cargo containers.

The Regina Maersk, which toured the East Coast last summer, is in the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest container vessel afloat -- but only because a new edition hasn't been published since the last summer's commissioning of the Sovereign Maersk, which is 96 feet longer.

The Madison Maersk and others of its class, at 1,139 feet long, are almost 50 feet longer than a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Their 12-cylinder, 75,000 horsepower diesel engines -- bigger than most houses -- are the largest in the world.

Baltimore gets some oversized ships carrying coal and ore, but the Maersk and Sea-Land super ships would be the largest vessels to call at the port's public container terminals.

And while ships rarely come to Baltimore fully loaded -- the city is usually in the center of a ship's scheduled East Coast route -- that could change if the port becomes a central hub for two major shipping lines.

The city's main shipping channels from the Atlantic Ocean into ++ the Patapsco River are 50 feet deep -- just enough to accommodate a fully loaded supership.

'Not a big deal'

"As far as the pilots look at it, this is not a big deal," said Capt. Mike Watson, president of the Association of Maryland Pilots. "As far as getting in from Cape Henry to Dundalk, that'll just be a routine passage."

But taking the ship from the main channel into the Dundalk

Marine Terminal will require substantial renovations.

The depth at the piers is 42 feet; it would need to be 50. And that process would require more than just dredging because the steel bulkheads shoring up the banks don't extend that deep. They'd have to be lengthened or replaced, lest the entire dock slide into the river.

The gantry cranes at Dundalk have been extended to reach across a ship 13 cargo containers wide -- farther than the reach for which they were designed. Extend them much farther and they would topple into the water. They likely will have to be replaced with as many as 16 new ones, capable of reaching out 22 containers or more.

As recently as two months ago, some officials in the port suggested privately that the large vessels would never call on Baltimore.

Because of its geographic position up the Chesapeake Bay, the city has long been considered an out-of-the-way destination for containerships, most of which operate a passenger liner service that promises weekly calls in port.

And while most major shipping lines are adding the larger ships to their fleet, most vessels in the international trade are Panamax class or smaller.

But with the favorable nod from Maersk and Sea-Land, some local officials wonder whether the shipping industry's post-Panamax trend isn't working in Baltimore's favor.

Nearly all steamship lines are sharing vessels and consolidating their cargo on fewer, larger ships. A trip up the bay might be more cost-effective for one ship carrying a few thousand containers, as opposed to several ships carrying a few hundred.

"We have talked to some of the steamship lines who say their engineers are working on ships that are even twice as large as the big ones now," said White. "Hopefully, we're in a position to benefit from that."

Pub Date: 12/20/98