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 54% 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.
Gas carriers is a small readership base — normally about 295 readers a day, so a few hundred extra makes a large multiple.
Readers here means readers of the Wikipedia article on each vessel type — the same source as the Research signal, not news coverage — so an incident can dominate the news without moving this panel. 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.
How the coverage sounded
Coverage ran 22% negative overall.
Each article is scored on a five-step scale from strongly negative to strongly positive; the bar is the share of coverage at each step.
Sample of the headlines
- 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
- Registered in a single underlying series only — one vessel-type article, news term or social query — and never moved the Index itself.
- The coverage panels count only articles matched to this incident specifically.
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/