The biggest container ship built in the U.S. will now be serving Guam.

Matson Navigation welcomed the arrival of the new vessel that dwarfs the capacity of the current cargo boats calling here.

The Kaimana Hila is one of two Matson container ships that are the largest in the U.S. They're part of a new trend toward super-sized cargo vessels. Matson Vice President and General Manager Bernie Valencia said it can carry more than 3,200 20-foot containers or about 900 more than the boats that currently serve Guam.

"The ship is 854 feet long, so that's equivalent to almost three football fields, or nine basketball courts," Valencia said. "I also talked about the Transamerica building in San Francisco. So this ships is as long as the height of the Transamerica building in San Francisco.

Along with much greater capacity, the boat is also faster, more fuel-efficient, and better for the environment, Valencia said.

"This ship was built with a lot of environmental standards and a lot of environmental technology that will be needed in the future, so we have double hull tanks, more efficient hulls," she said. "In the future, if and when LNG is available on Guam, we have the ability to add LNG tanks to the ship and we also have dual fuel tanks where we can run LNG."

It's now part of Matson's 5-vessel weekly rotation along with four of the current smaller boats, so the Kaimana Hila will call here about every five weeks.