You're right about the containers Rascal. The SH3 containers are even larger than the containers of today. While I have seen some shots of liberty ships with crates that seem to be larger than 40 feet, I doubt they would have been common cargo.
As for the release date I found that several ships Iwas going to include needed to be rebuilt - for instance, the ore freighter above has been rebuilt at least twice over the course of the mod. By now I've weeded out all the vessels that I wasn't satisfied with. They're not perfect but IMO the design features are much more realistic than they were before.
@ BBW -
How did you guys manage to get skins for different countries?! I've always wanted to do that. Did you need to edit the DAT files?