Thursday 16 September 2021 · below the Index · spike
Ever Ace maiden voyage to Suez Canal
The Ever Ace, sister ship of the Ever Given and the world's largest container vessel, completed its maiden voyage and arrived at the Port of Felixstowe in mid-September 2021, with subsequent reporting on its planned transit through the Suez Canal. The spike reflects public curiosity about the vessel and broader shipping industry developments including LNG carrier projects, freight rate negotiations, and net-zero shipping targets.
Peak 60.0 on Thursday 16 September 2021. The shaded band is the incident window.
Where the attention came from
Public curiosity-led, both over the window and on the peak day. Social here is X alone — Bluesky only joins the series from July 2024 — so its level isn't directly comparable with today's series, though its share of this incident is real.
Bar = share of the extra attention over the whole window; the tick marks the share on the peak day alone, where the two differ.
How unusual it was
This was above 55% of all days since 2020, and the highest since Friday 10 September 2021.
How far it spread
Stayed in one vessel type — 1 of 6 vessel-type groups drew clearly more readers than usual.
Bars start at 1× — normal readership for that vessel type, the weeks before the incident. Grey = no clear lift. "Over time" shows each group's daily readers through the window; "All 12 articles" breaks the six groups back into their members.
How it was framed the frame glossary →
Lead frame: freight markets. Trade press was 5% of in-scope coverage — the story had left the trade press and gone mainstream. (Historical coverage is scored on headlines only.)
Acting, or acted upon
In 3% of coverage shipping was the thing acted upon rather than the actor; 0% of it was strongly negative in tone.
What the coverage said
- Felixstowe arrival of largest container ship Ever Ace caught on dronebbc.co.uk · 2021-09-13
- The world's biggest container ship, the Ever Ace, is continuing its maiden voyage this week and soon heading for the Suez Canalyahoo.com · 2021-09-13
- The world's biggest container ship, Ever Ace, continuing its maiden voyage, heading for Suez Canal soonbusinessinsider.co.za · 2021-09-13
- Port Of Felixstowe Welcomes World's Largest Container Ship 'Ever Ace'marineinsight.com · 2021-09-13
- World's largest container ship Ever Ace leaves Felixstowe | Hellenic Shipping News Worldwidehellenicshippingnews.com · 2021-09-16
- World's largest cargo ship Ever Ace arrives in the UK packed with Christmas giftsthe-sun.com · 2021-09-13
Gold rule = a national or international outlet, not a trade title.
- social = X only before Bluesky (2024-07-01); not comparable with today's series
- tier C: only a Wikipedia article, GDELT sub-vocabulary term, or social per-term query fired — not yet confirmed as a real maritime incident (Phase C naming/is_maritime_incident does that).
- naming step found more than one plausible cause in the headlines (alternatives: ['Ever Ace maiden voyage arrival', 'LNG carrier development projects', 'Shipping industry freight rate and net-zero policy discussions']) — attribution.confidence is low; label may be an honest compound
- coverage scored on title only (no excerpt) — measured ~8pp frame precision cost vs title+excerpt (docs/HANDOVER-incidents.md §2.3)
- coverage filtered to articles matching this incident specifically (66/315 kept) — see coverage.filter.terms
Maritime Attention Index, incident: Ever Ace maiden voyage to Suez Canal, peak 60.0 on 16 September 2021. maritimeattentionindex.com/incidents/2021-ever-ace-maiden-voyage-to-suez-canal/