If a time traveller were to arrive in our world from, say, 1514 — a neat half-millennium away — what single feature would strike them most? What could they use on their return to try and explain the sheer weirdness of the future? A crowded mega-city? A hospital? An international airport? A computer? What about this — a container ship, a fifth-of-a-mile of steel transport travelling thousands of miles across unknown oceans filled with 150 tonnes of New Zealand lamb, 138,000 tins of cat food, 12,800 MP3 players and any amount of the paraphernalia for which the frenetic people of the 21st century work so hard to be able to afford?
In fact, you don’t need to come from the Tudor period to be amazed by the scale and extravagance. It is a strange version of a traditional marketplace that sends a ship to another continent to deliver milk and cheese, only to fill up with milk and cheese for the journey home, or to unload 300 tonnes of German timber to forested Canada, along with five tonnes of Polish grass and moss and 350 tonnes of seaweed from the East African coast.
Horatio Clare, in his acutely observed and surprisingly moving book, recounts two journeys on Maersk container ships.
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