Here today, gone to Maui

Clic sur l'image pour l'agrandir
The Matson cargo ship Maui, homeported in Honolulu, at the Port of Oakland. The cargo cranes hovering overhead look for all the world like origami birds.

The cargo crane was invented in Oakland in 1958. In fact, the very first one is still in operation - at the foot of 7th Street at the Port of Oakland. The Port of Oakland took to the cargo crane and containerized shipping like (forgive "Louis" for this) a duck to water. Shippers, seeing the advantages, also quickly adopted containerized shipping. Across the Bay the Longshoreman's Union in San Francisco, always a "Union Town", bitterly fought the move to containerization. Well, the Longshoremen in San Francisco both won - and lost. Big time. The Longshoremen kept containerization out of San Francisco for years. So shippers moved across the Bay to Oakland. The Port of Oakland thrived and became one of the most important and busiest ports on the West Coast. Shipping volume in San Francisco dried up like a raisin. Containerization was finally allowed in San Francisco, but the damage had already been done and the Port of San Francisco has never recovered - and hundreds of jobs in San Francisco were lost because of Union intransigence. Ironically, many of the Longshoremen in San Francisco who so bitterly contested containerization wound up working at the Port of Oakland as shipper after shipper moved across the Bay.

Related: The Matsons and Filoli