11. Ship to shore
The book arrives
The journey is almost over ...
If a book is printed in a European country, it will come to Britain by lorry. The journey by road will take a few days.
But, Journey of a Book was not printed in Europe. It was printed in China, and it travelled to Britain by sea. It could have come by plane, but that would have been far too expensive.
Boxes of books were placed into a large metal shipping container.
The container was taken to the port of Shanghai, on the east coast of China.
Container ship
At the port, the container was loaded onto a container ship called the Ever Conquest. It was just one of thousands of containers on this massive ship.
When the ship was ready, it left Shanghai and sailed to the ports of Ningbo and Yantian, China, to collect more containers. Then it set sail on the long journey from China to Europe.
After about six weeks at sea, the Ever Conquest reached Hamburg, Germany, where some containers were unloaded. Then it went to Rotterdam, Holland, where more containers were taken off. Last of all, it sailed to Felixstowe. This is a port on the east coast of England – Britain's largest container port.
At Felixstowe, the last of the containers were unloaded. Among them was the container with the boxes packed with Journey of a Book. The container was checked by customs officials, and when that was done the boxes of books were taken by lorry to a warehouse.
And finally ...
The journey of this non-fiction book was almost over. All that was left to do was send copies to bookshops for them to sell, to libraries for them to lend out, and to schools for teachers and, most of all, children to use.
Top image © Markus Reiche