The container ship MSC Marie, 366 meters long and 51 meters wide, crossed the canal from the Mexican port of Manzanillo in the Pacific to a port in the Panamanian Caribbean. For its passage, it paid a toll of more than 1.3 million dollars.
1.2 million ships. The MSC Marie has become the “largest cargo-carrying vessel ever to transit the interoceanic waterway,” the Panama Canal Authority said in a statement, noting that the previous record was held by the Ever Max, with a capacity of 17,312 containers, which passed through the canal in 2023.
The Panama Canal, 80 kilometers long, was opened by the United States on August 15, 1914. Since then, more than 1.2 million ships have passed through it. The waterway was widened in 2016 to accommodate larger and deeper ships. By transiting Panama, ships travel from the Pacific Ocean to the Caribbean Sea in about eight hours, without having to go all the way to Cape Horn.
© Agence France-Presse
