Ian Kumekawa at Literary Hub:
On a spring day in 1989, a container ship arrived in New York harbor from Eemshaven, a deepwater port in the Netherlands. The Vessel, named the Bibby Resolution, belonged to a well-established Liverpool shipping line, one whose founder had invested in the Atlantic slave trade two hundred years before. But while the company that owned it had a history that went back centuries, the ship itself was unmistakably a product of the late twentieth century.
The Vessel was assembled out of standardized parts developed for streamlining oceanic trade. It was a global polyglot: manufactured in Sweden, it had a British owner and an international crew. In the decade since its launch, it had been registered in four different countries. At the time it moored in New York, the Vessel was listed in the Bahamas, though it had never physically been close to Bahamian waters. Like other container ships, the Bibby Resolution was a creature not so much of a single country but of a global economic order.
The Bibby Resolution was an unusual container ship.
More here.
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