BBC Launches Shipping Container on Global Odyssey

Travel Blog  •  Jim Benning  •  09.08.08 | 11:27 AM ET

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It’s a fascinating project that the news organization is calling “The Box.” Explains the BBC’s business editor: “We have painted and branded a BBC container and bolted on a GPS transmitter so you can follow its progress all year round as it criss-crosses the globe. The Box will hopefully reach the US, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Africa and when it does BBC correspondents will be there to report on who’s producing goods and who’s consuming them.” Readers can follow its progress on a map. It’s now in Southampton, apparently waiting to be shipped out.

The BBC project is named after the 2006 book The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, by Marc Levinson.

It sounds like a good read. From the publisher’s promotional material:

In April 1956, a refitted oil tanker carried fifty-eight shipping containers from Newark to Houston. From that modest beginning, container shipping developed into a huge industry that made the boom in global trade possible. The Box tells the dramatic story of the container’s creation, the decade of struggle before it was widely adopted, and the sweeping economic consequences of the sharp fall in transportation costs that containerization brought about.

I love these projects that try to tell the story of globalization through the prism of a single object or a few objects, be it some simple clothing items  or a humble french fry.

The Box should be fun to follow, assuming all goes according to plan.

Notes the BBC: “We are keeping our fingers crossed the Box does not fall overboard (it happens)...”

I guess if it does happen there’s a story to be told about the creation of the first media-branded artificial reef, no?

Tags: Global Village, News and Briefs


3 Comments for BBC Launches Shipping Container on Global Odyssey

Larry Bleiberg 09.08.08 | 3:01 PM ET

Thanks for the post. I imagine I’ll waste too much time checking this out over the year.

I just finished “The Box,” and have to say it one of the geekest reads I ever enjoyed. The history is great: a renegade truck-company owner invented the container industry in 1956 when he sailed a ship, the Ideal X, from Newark to Houston.

Slowly, after fights with labor, U.S. and international regulators, train companies, and port commissions, the container won and has changed the way we all live.

Wonder if the BBC Box will be making a stop at a Wal-Mart near me?

Jim Benning 09.08.08 | 3:42 PM ET

Thanks for the report on the book, Larry. Glad to hear you enjoyed it.

It’s definitely going on my reading list now. But then, I’m a sucker for wonkish, geeky globalization books. (It sounds like this book successfully transcends the genre.)

Larry Bleiberg 09.15.08 | 11:25 AM ET

Have another suggestion. Just digging into “The Colombo Bay” by Richard Pollack. It recounts the writer’s voyage on a container ship in the days following 9/11.

It was referenced in “The Box” and may be more compelling to those who aren’t seeking an economic history book.

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