If this is true and it is a staggering proposition, given that the Pacific Mail Steamship Company made just a dozen sailings a year, taking 33 days then the subject deserves a chapter, not just the briefest of mentions.
Half the container fleet runs like a bus network with regular sailings at set times.
In Europe, after the invention of printing by movable type, it was not long before printed handbills, flyers, broadsheets, and posters were affixed to walls and fences and even signboards carried by people, by which they advertised an assortment of goods and services, public executions, sailings and dockings, and the like.
The American interest was reflected in increased trade (the old system of convoyed fleets was abandoned for individual sailings), the creation of privileged trading companies (1725), and the founding of new naval arsenals at Ferrol and Cartagena (1726).
In the whole of March 1915, during which 6,000 sailings were recorded, only 21 ships were sunk, and in April only 23 ships from a similar number.
So it wasn't until the creation of the Kingdom of Belgium and the establishment of the Red Star Line's regular sailings to the New World in 1873 that Antwerp got back its maritime mojo.
In Scotland ferry sailings for the Outer Hebrides were cancelled and services were also affected on Bute and Lewis.
Additional sailings are planned today to deal with the backlog.
Yet getting British families to visit Mickey at Walt Disney World in Florida has never been especially difficult, and with two new ships on their way and itineraries for 2010 that include sailings from Dover to the Baltic, there aren't too many reasons why they should not sail with him too.
In Scotland, the ferry operator Caledonian MacBrayne has added extra sailings to Arran and Skye because of heavy demand.
After a ferry hit part of the Cairnryan terminal in south-west Scotland, Stena Line decided to cancel all of its sailings from there to Belfast until at least 7 30pm on Thursday.
