By Annika Weber, Friends of the San Juans Summer Intern
Hello! My name is Annika. I’m from Seattle, and this summer I’m working with Friends’ Marine Protection and Policy Director, Lovel Pratt, on Salish Sea protection. I’m also helping with summer events and learning how to write grants. I’m a history major, so Lovel suggested I contribute some context that I find interesting. I appreciate that history brings me into contact with a variety of past lives who remind me that I don’t need to act as expected. I’ll be discussing container shipping because there’s a new container port being proposed just north—Roberts Bank Terminal 2—and many of the items we have in our homes probably arrived by container ship.
To start off, who’s read Moby Dick?
When it was first published in 1851, not many cared. It was long, winding; it went on tangents about biology and whaling techniques. Herman Melville died in 1891, and most likely, he hadn’t created anything that would last longer than him.
However, in the early 20th century, there was a burst of interest in Moby Dick. Petroleum took hold as the dominant energy source, and people sought reminders of the supposed “good old days” of whale oil, the “wholesome” kind of (apparently white) (male) American labor, and adventure on the ocean. Ishmael understood that Nantucket was being replaced. Mainland New Bedford could connect to the railroads, and Nantucket whalers left to make their fortune on California gold.
Ishmael’s Ocean
Ishmael sees the sea as something different from the land; sailing is for the kinds of people who won’t be restricted by routine, necessity, or law. On land, he might feel responsible for his family, occupation, or (theoretically) democratic politics. At sea, Ishmael—and not all sailors, by any means—can extend the ideas behind Western Expansion to their extreme. He imagines it is just him, his mates, and the dictatorial Captain Ahab against the ocean and the enemy whale. His family is whoever happens to share a boat with him; what binds them together is the survival of the vessel. As the whalers try to escape their dependence upon the earth, they extend empire and draw the world into a ship—a model of restricted political membership that tries to replace the planet with a human design.
The Birth of the Box
Now, I want to jump in time, to the early 1950s United States. Trucking magnate Malcolm McLean wanted to avoid traffic between commercial centers. He thought trucks should drive up ramps and deposit trailers directly aboard boats. At the time, workers sorted hundreds of thousands of “crates, bags, barrels, and bales” into warehouses and onto pallets. It was great for longshore unions and bad for corporate profits. McLean started the company SeaLand to implement his vision. Companies that once developed close to their biggest markets could now afford to disperse, including to decolonizing countries where it was cheapest to build.
As more lines moved to containers, the Navy requested that the International Organization for Standardization create one system to keep up efficiency. It launched the Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit, and SeaLand offered its patents royalty-free.
Shipping sustained the public-private partnerships that linked trade with war and profit with political power. As the Vietnam War drew on, Robert McNamara, the Secretary of Defense, invited shipping representatives to Washington to see how they could work together. When Vietnamese longshoremen opposed containers, the military floated a U.S.-owned barge across the Pacific, complete with container-ready equipment. The military’s motivations were racist—a U.S.-controlled port would avoid “Vietnamese corruption and inefficiency,” perhaps surrounded by “model” communities for American expats.
Containers and the Salish Sea
In 2023, of the 4,700 entering transits for oceangoing ships in these waters, 4,000 were container or passenger boats. Container ships carry millions of gallons of propulsion fuel. While logistics companies circulate glossy images that make the ships look “clean,” they are anything but—and that’s just the transportation part.
Since 2015, Friends has opposed the proposed Roberts Bank Terminal 2, a new overwater terminal within a mile of the U.S.-Canada border and within the lands and waters of dozens of sovereign nations, including tribes with treaty-protected rights here in the United States. It would add an additional 520 vessel transits per year (Friends of the San Juans Comments on Roberts Bank Terminal 2, 2015). The goal? To accommodate Ultra-Large Container Vessels that carry up to 24,000 twenty-foot equivalent units—much larger than anything we usually see. A port’s capacity serves as a measure of progress.
Ishmael’s experience of a world adrift, detached from law and labor, but really intertwined with both, is mirrored by container shipping—except, make Captain Ahab the logistics industry. No manifests; routes are dictated by computer algorithms and operators on land.
We can make our voices heard
Still, despite efforts to shield the sea from landed attention, mega ports require public investments; they require land, dredging, docks, and inland transportation systems, along with the potential for further dispossession of Indigenous land and threats to ecological and community health. An “apolitical” or even invisible ocean allows states to hide very political cross-border impacts. So, we pay attention, and we can make our voices heard.
If anyone is interested in talking more about container shipping and Roberts Bank Terminal 2, please email me.
