MSC Daniela
18/12/08
Their appearance gets worse. The only positive thing is at least the bridge is amidships.
Lloyds List Thursday 18 December 2008
MSC DANIELA, with a nominal 13,800 teu, joins the list of giant containerships, perhaps at just the wrong time, writes Craig Eason.
The vessel is the first to feature a split engine room and accommodation design that brings the bridge forward on the vessel, leaving more container space aft that can be stacked higher.
The giant boxship is the largest of its kind classed by Germanischer Lloyd. It was built at Samsung Heavy Industry shipyard, Korea.
Measuring 366 m in length and with a breadth of 31.8 m the vessel will be able to fit into the new Panama Canal locks when they are completed, something the Maersk E-class, even with a lower nominal 11,000 teu, can not do.
However, the vessel joins the MSC fleet just as operators feel the pinch of the economic downturn, dropping services and capacity, and even putting some vessels into lay-up.
MSC’s mega-boxship goes to top of the class How the vessels compare
Lloyds List by Craig Eason Tuesday 23 December 2008
AS REPORTED in Lloyd’s List last week, Mediterranean Shipping Co has taken possession of its largest containership to date.
The post-panamax MSC Daniela has the capacity to carry 13,800 teu. This is over 2,500 teu more than the published capacity of Emma Maersk, which gained so much attention when it was launched two years ago.
MSC Daniela is the first of eight being built by Samsung Heavy Industries in Korea for the shipowner.
But despite the increased nominal capacity, MSC Daniela is 32 m shorter, narrower by 5.2 m and of a similar depth to Emma Maersk.
Classed by Germanischer Lloyd, the vessel has seven main cargo holds and deck connections for 1,000 40 ft reefer containers.
The most visible difference between the two is that MSC Daniela has a ‘twin island’ configuration. While leaving the engine room area aft, the narrow accommodation and bridge housing has been brought forward.
Safety of Life at Sea regulations stipulate how far forward of the vessel the sea must be visible from the bridge. On the majority of containerships with the single superstructure much further aft, the result is a tapering of container stack heights to achieve this. By bringing the bridge further forward, this leaves the majority of the stacks, which are now aft of the bridge, able to be loaded higher.
The vessel has also been built using a higher-tensile steel, allowing plate thickness to be reduced to give a more lightweight construction. Germanischer Lloyd said the design allows less bending and increased hull stiffness.
The vessel’s fuel tanks, in keeping with the latest regulations, are fitted inside a protected area beneath the deck house. The aft engine room also means a shorter propeller shaft and therefore more of the potential 98,280 bhp from the 12-cylinder MAN B&W engine transferred to the propeller — a six-bladed Mecklenburger weighing 93.8 tonnes in front of a Becker-type rudder.
The split accommodation and engine rom will mean further distances for the engineers to go when alarms sound during unmanned periods, and also more systems cabling between the two areas.
Germanischer Lloyd said the vessel’s design requires less ballast water, and it has been designed to have ballast treatment fitted.
Notably, with less width and length than Emma Maersk and AP Moller-Maersk’s other E-class vessels, MSC Daniela, while still being post-panamax by today’s scale, is designed to be able to traverse the Panama Canal when the new locks are completed. The new lock’s chambers will be 427 m long, 55 m wide and 18.3 m deep.
Germanischer Lloyd said that containerships can be built with larger capacities, but added that the market, rather than technology, was the driving force in this decision.
MSC Daniela vs Emma Maersk
Delivery: 2008 2006
Built: SHI, Korea Odense, Denmark
Owner: MSC AP Moller-Maersk
Length overall: 366 m 398 m
Beam: 51.2 m 56.4 m
Gross tonnage 150,350 170,974
Main engine MAN B&W 12K98MC-C (98,280 hp) Wärtsilä 14RT-Flex96c, 80,080 kW (109,000 hp)
Auxiliary power 4 x STX 7L32/40 5 x Caterpillar 8M32
Claimed teu capacity 13,800 11,000