THE biggest ship ever to sail the Thames arrived at the south Essex superport.

The United Arab Shipping Company’s Barzan docked at DP World London Gateway and unloaded more than 4,000 containers.

The Barzan, one of the largest container ships in the world, has the capacity for 18,800, twenty-foot containers.

Measuring 400m in length, the ship is longer than London’s Shard – the tallest building in westernEurope – is high.

The Barzan can carry a gross tonnage of 195,636.

The port is no stranger to large ships since it opened in 2013. Until now, the largest vessel seen on the Thames was the Maersk Munkenebo, which docked at the port in February.

The Munkenebo can carry up to 18,200 containers.

Before that, in October 2014, the Maersk Edith visited, with its capacity of 15,000 containers.

The Barzan’s visit is a huge coup for the port, which hopes to attract further shipping lines to the £1.5billion complex.

Last month, the port opened the first distribution centre on its logistics park, which it hopes will revolutionise the shipping and distribution sector in the UK.

London Gateway is in talks with delivery giant UPS over the running of another centre at the park.

Two berths and eight giant quay cranes operate at the port, with a third berth due to be open by the middle of next year.

The cranes measure 137m when erect, and until recently were the tallest in the world.

The Stanford-le-Hope site is the largest port of its kind in Europe.