Super photo as always, the article on gcaptain is indeed intereseting but having been lucky enough to visit DSME 2 weeks ago during the construction and with John from gcaptain who wrote the article can confirm that welding is done with a machine and by hand for the more complicated sections.
Re the top speed having looked at the log on marinetraffic i can only find a top speed of 24.4 knots that was recorded at 2013-05-29 10:06?
Also re the excess tonnage of the industry I do believe the lines have their part to play in the problems by ordering extra large tonnage, but during the ordering boom no one could forsee the economic problems that the world would face and lines were at that point paying catch up to ever growing cargo volumes.
Now lines need to save money an the only way is by economies of scale and having less larger ships is the one way thay can do this, the gamble is will the europe-far east trades ever recover? with manufacturing being moved away from China will emerging markets grow and require larger tonnage as we are already seeing on the South American trades. It is likely that the triple-e will be a game changer and that is why other lines have and are considering ordering simular vessels, CSCL & UASC, as it is likley only lines with this size vessel will be able survive and make money on this trade in the future, however if cargo volumes grow to previous levels then the gamble will have paid off!...interesting times ahead

The media always get the story right !

Ha Ha !

Thanks for the link, Chris!
"...Brobdingnagian hull..." - how aptly named!
However, some parts of the article are just not correct: "...the sections are welded together by dozens of individual welders."
No, they are not.
Koreans would not be where they are now, if they used manual welding of giant hull blocks.
Also, some comments like "The lifeboats (made in China) are small..."
(No, they should be giant, just like the ship!)
Also, while the vessel's top speed in service may indeed be 23 knots, MMM was making close to 26 kn on her trials, if one believes the AIS tracking...
(But the article was still a very interesting read!)

Details

http://gcaptain.com/maersk-triple-e-detailed/

Which are the exact dimensions of the triple e vessels ??

@ Captain Ted: I used to subscribe to this point of view, that "excess tonnage" of container ships is the main problem of the sector...but now I see things a bit differently. The main idea should be trade volume, and I guess the main players want to be ready when this volume picks up...and it will pick up, eventually.

A beast which I wouldn't want to sail on. Any kind of incident or onboard issue which extends above 'basic' would be a real challenge to deal with the number of crew available.

HMMM BEAST, all what I see is a huge container ship which makes sure that that section of the market stays in economical problems for some more time to come.

Hopefully we will see on of these beasts at Felixstowe

Gosh that is... huge...