The largest container ship ever to call on a U.S. East Coast port tied up at the Port of Charleston this weekend, the last U.S. stop on its first East Coast voyage.

The COSCO Development arrived Saturday at the South Carolina State Ports Authority’s Wando Welch Terminal in Mount Pleasant. The ship is 1,200 feet long and 158 feet wide and can carry up to 13,092 twenty-foot equivalent units, or TEUs, the industry’s standard measure of container volume, according to the authority, known as SC Ports.

SC Ports expected to move about 3,300 containers on and off the ship, which it said would be a record for crane moves handled by the port.

“The deployment of 13,000 twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) vessels to East Coast ports marks a new era in the global container shipping industry,” Jim Newsome, the authority’s president and CEO, said in a statement Saturday. “It is a truly exciting day to see our new super post-Panamax cranes working a ship of this size, and we are proud to be the last Southeast port of call.”

The ship reached Charleston Harbor on Saturday morning after calls in Virginia and Georgia and was scheduled to sail from Wando Welch on Sunday once it had been unloaded and filled with export containers, FITSNews reported.

Why being last matters

The COSCO Development runs on the OCEAN Alliance’s weekly South Atlantic Express service, which connects Charleston with Hong Kong, Yantian, Ningbo and Shanghai through the Panama Canal, the authority said. The service uses 11 ships of 11,000 to 13,000 TEUs, the authority said in April.

Newsome said in April that the port had “worked aggressively for years” to handle ships of this size as the last Southeast port of call. Being last lets exporters load their goods in Charleston before the ship returns to Asia, he said.

“It’s ironic to say, but this is a case in which we’ve worked very hard to be last,” he said in a pre-arrival statement quoted by The Daniel Island News.

Before Charleston, the ship called at the Port of Virginia early in the week and at the Port of Savannah on Thursday, The Associated Press reported. In Savannah, the ship had to make its 39-mile trip up the Savannah River at high tide to make sure it would fit, and dockworkers planned to load and unload about 5,600 containers with six cranes, the AP reported.

The COSCO Development is also the largest ship to pass through the Panama Canal since the canal’s expansion opened last June, according to the AP. Its arrival shows shippers are not waiting for East Coast ports to finish deepening their harbors before sending bigger ships, the news service reported.

Eighteen of SC Ports’ 24 weekly container services now use ships that were too big to fit through the Panama Canal before the expansion, the authority said.

Getting ready for bigger ships

The port has been spending to keep up. SC Ports said the visit comes ahead of several projects meant to let it handle ships of 13,000 to 14,000 TEUs: a project to deepen Charleston Harbor to 52 feet, scheduled to begin construction this fall; a project to strengthen the wharf at Wando Welch Terminal paired with investments in bigger cranes; and construction of the Hugh K. Leatherman Terminal in North Charleston.

The wharf work at Wando Welch is a $44 million project to be finished within the next year, the authority said in April. Two new super post-Panamax cranes are coming from Chinese manufacturer ZPMC to join two cranes of that size already working at the terminal, the authority said.

The Port of Virginia is one of only four East Coast ports with 50 feet of water at low tide, the AP reported. Savannah’s $973 million harbor deepening started in 2015 and won’t be finished for about five more years, the news service reported.

Gov. Henry McMaster tied the visit to the deepening project.

“We will continue to work with everything we have to make sure our harbor is deepened to 52 feet to further allow big ships to call Charleston, which will take our state to a level of prosperity we have never seen,” McMaster said in the authority’s statement.

State Sen. Larry Grooms, chairman of the Review and Oversight Commission on the State Ports Authority, said in the statement that Saturday’s call was “the first of many significant milestones ahead for our port system.”

Record months

The big ship arrives on the heels of record-breaking container volumes at the port in March and April, the authority said. SC Ports handled 192,411 TEUs in March, the strongest month in its history, according to the authority. The port handled nearly 2 million TEUs in 2016, also a record.