BIMCO put global container fleet capacity at 8,000 TEU below the 34 million mark at the start of September. Forty-six ships totalling 286,000 TEU were scheduled for delivery during the month, so the threshold fell within days of the count being taken. The round number matters less than the rate behind it. The fleet has added 10 million TEU in five and a half years, a 42% expansion, against the previous 10 million TEU increment, from 14 million to 24 million, which took more than ten and a half years to arrive.

The future of ocean shipping might look surprisingly old-fashioned. After decades of relying almost entirely on engines, fuel and increasingly sophisticated onboard technology, the shipping industry is taking another look at something sailors have depended on for thousands of years: wind. Maersk is preparing to put that idea to work on a modern container ship, agreeing to install a 35-meter rotor sail on one of its 8,700-TEU vessels. Developed by Anemoi Marine Technologies, the rotor sail is expected to be installed by mid-2027 and tested while the ship continues its normal commercial operations.

A modern container ship arrives at the breakwater doing four or five knots and immediately becomes the least maneuverable object in the harbour. That’s the part people miss when they watch the process. The ship isn’t being helped along. It has effectively stopped being able to steer itself, and three small boats are now doing the job its 60,000-kilowatt main engine can’t. The reason is that a rudder is a wing.

The number that produced the slowdown headlines was an export gain of roughly 24% year on year in July, down from about 27% in June. Customs also reported the trade surplus narrowing to $112.5 billion from $125.6 billion, with imports up 27.5% against a 36% jump the month before. Both prints came in ahead of what analysts expected. In almost any other year, a 24% export print would have been the story by itself rather than the evidence of decline.

The headline everyone will carry is the 7% move and the beat: underlying EBITDA of $3.0bn for the second quarter against a company-compiled consensus of $2.12bn, revenue up 20% year-on-year to $15.8bn, EBIT of $1.6bn versus $845m, group EBIT margin at 10.0%. The number that actually describes the year is buried in the guidance table. Maersk has now raised full-year underlying EBITDA three times — $4.5-7bn on 7 May, $8-10bn on 29 June, $10.

A mid-size container ship with working bow thrusters, a competent master and a pilot on the bridge does not, on a calm afternoon, need two tugs to leave a harbour. It takes them anyway. The reason is not seamanship. It is that the port’s marine services regime priced a low-probability failure and decided the shipowner would pay for it on every movement, every day, whether the wind blows or not.

Every physical object in the historic centre of Venice arrived by hull. Bread, cement, hotel linen, restaurant deliveries, scaffolding, refuse going the other way, the coffin at a funeral. There is no road network behind the facade doing the real work. The canal in front of you is the road network, and the moored boats in this frame are the freight fleet at rest. The system has three legs. Goods reach the edge of the lagoon by road at Mestre and Marghera, transfer to flat-decked motor barges at the port or at Tronchetto, and then run into the city by water.