In the photo where it looks quite full, the visible edge containers appear to be about 10x24x28 or 6,720 not accounting for missing ones on the top layers. In a photo from today it looked closer to only 6,000. Of course this methodology may be flawed or have some bad assumptions. Like containers below the visible deck layer??!

Pretty sure they would all be above and visible. Here's the ship empty: http://www.shipspotting.com/photos/middle/7/2/1/2892127.jpg

And a good photo to confirm your 28 bow-to-stern number: https://photos.fleetmon.com/vessels/ever-given_9811000_26410...

They hold containers inside, too. Or else the ship would get too top-heavy. https://i.pinimg.com/originals/dd/72/f2/dd72f2e14fa997abad81...

Oh wow. Not enough to double it but this could get it right to around 10,000 forty foot containers or 20,000 TEU.

Which also suggests if they start pushing containers off to lighten the load, they’ll be easy to push, but they’ll need to push off more.

Nice! There do appear to be gaps reducing that 28 a bit, too... So I can't imagine there are 6,720 containers on the ship today.

Thanks for the correction.

Then a week of bombardment. Still impressive.