Largest container ship to dock on East Coast arrives in Philly | What this means for local economy

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- The largest container ship to ever call port along the East Coast arrived in Philadelphia and docked at the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal Friday.

The ship, named Marco Polo, can carry more than 16,000 containers.

The vessel is 1,300 feet long. To put it in perspective, the cargo ship is roughly the length of three NFL fields, and if you stood it up, it is taller than the Comcast building.

"This ship is over three times the size of the ships we were at one time able to accommodate," Ryan Mulvey, PhilaPort's Director of Government & Public Affairs, said.

"It's the largest ship to ever call on any ports on the entire Eastern Seaboard," David Cuff, the president of the Pilots' Association for the Bay and River Delaware, said. "Philadelphia being one of them is a huge success for us."

The Philadelphia Fire Department's Marine Unit escorted the ship, which is the largest vessel the port has seen in its 300-year history.

In order to accommodate the ship, Mulvey said crews spent decades deepening part of the Delaware River by five feet, from 40 to 45 feet.

"This ship drafts approximately 41 feet of water, so there's only four feet of difference between the bottom of that ship and the bottom of the river," Mulvey said.

Mulvey said that the process costs hundreds of millions of dollars. He added, "Without the infrastructure improvements that were funded by the commonwealth, and federal delegation support from Congress for the channel deepening, today wouldn't have been a reality."

Because it can carry so much stuff, PhilaPort said the ship will bring an economic boom to the city, including up to 600 jobs to the Greater Philadelphia area.

"From the shippers to the dock workers who are unloading these ships, to the truckers that are moving the goods, to the warehouse men," Mulvey explained.

The shipping service the vessel provides is also estimated to have an economic impact of up to $81 million a year.

Officials say the containers on board will carry everything, from fruit to furniture. During Friday's visit to Philadelphia, crews primarily unloaded containers full of clementines from Morocco.

In the future, the vessel will be used to bring goods from the Asian markets to the U.S., and officials say in the process, it will put Philadelphia on the map.

"It's a huge success for the Delaware River and the whole port community," Cuff said.