Container ship

Container ship in Istanbul

Container ships are cargo ships that carry all of their load in truck-size containers, in a technique called containerization. They form a common means of commercial ocean transportation, known as Intermodal.

History

The first container ships were converted tankers, built up from surplus tanker T-2's after World War II. The first container ship was the Ideal-X, a converted T-2 tanker, owned by Malcom McLean, which carried 58 metal containers between Newark, New Jersey and Houston, Texas on its first voyage, in April 1956. Now container ships are all purpose-built and as a class are second only to crude oil tankers as the biggest cargo ships on the oceans.

Construction

Container ship "CMA CGM Balzac" in the port of Zeebrugge Belgium.

Container ships are designed in such a manner that no space is wasted. Their capacity is measured in TEUs (Twenty-foot equivalent units). This is the number of 20-foot containers that a vessel can carry. The majority of containers used today are 40 feet in length. Above a certain size, container ships do not carry their own loading gear. Hence loading and unloading can only be done at ports with the necessary cranes. However, smaller ships with capacities up to 2,900 TEUs are often equipped with their own cranes.

Informally known as "box boats," they carry the majority of the world's dry cargo, meaning manufactured goods. Cargoes like metal ores or coal or wheat are carried in bulk carriers. There are large main line vessels that ply the deep sea routes, then many small "feeder" ships that supply the large ships at centralized hub ports. Most container ships are propelled by diesel engines, and have crews of between 20 and 40 people. They generally have a large accommodation block at the stern, directly above the engine room. Container ships now carry up to 15,000 containers on a voyage.

Shipyards

Large container ships (over 7,000 TEUs) have been built in the following shipyards:

• Odense Steel Shipyard, Denmark
• Hyundai Heavy Industries, South Korea
• Samsung Heavy Industries, South Korea
• Daewoo Heavy Industries, South Korea
• IHI, Kure, Japan
• Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Nagasaki, Japan

Risks

Container ship "Rita" being loaded at Copenhagen; note crew standing on deck, and stacks of containers on shore.

As they can carry up to 15,000 containers, the total value of cargo per vessel can reach $300 million. The ceaseless transit of these containers (at any given time, between 5 million and 6 million units) entails a great deal of risk.

Some of the risks are linked to the loading of containers. Each ship carries many containers, and complex organization is required to not lose or misroute containers. Outside of container manifests, there is no way to know the contents of each container. Containers are usually loaded by a portainer. There must be as little vibration of the loaded container as possible. Thus the operator has to be well-qualified and experienced to operate the crane efficiently.

Maneuvers in the port managed by the control tower may be dangerous. In open sea, storms can cause the loss of containers. The great value of merchandise on these vessels makes them a target for hijackers. Well-organized piracy remains a threat in places such as Indonesia.

Also, containers are often used to smuggle contraband.

Specificities

Cargo too big to carry in containers can be handled using flat racks, open top containers and platforms. There are also container ships called Roll On/Roll Off (RORO), which utilize shore-based ramp systems for loading and unloading. ROROs are usually associated with shorter trade routes, as they are unable to carry the volume of crane-based container vessels. However, due to their flexibility and high speed, ROROs are frequently used in today's container markets. Moreover due to the growth of the containers transit, companies must manage container ship risks.

Future

The trend is for bigger sizes of container ships to reduce costs by economy of scales. In years to come, the limit will be the Suezmax ship of 14,000 TEUs. Such a vessel needs to displace 137,000 DWT, be 400 meters long, more than 50 meters wide, have a draft of nearly 15 metres and more than 85 MW to achieve 25.5 knots. The new containership Emma Maersk does now reach this limit.

The next step will be the Malaccamax ship, with 18,000 TEUs, of 200,000 DWT, 470 meters long, 60 meters wide, 16 meters of draft, with more than 100 MW for 25.5 knots. This should be the limit before a major restructuring of world container trade routes. The biggest constraint of this design, the absence of a capable single engine, has been overcome by the MAN B&W K108ME-C.

The ultimate problem was the absence of a manufacturer capable of producing the 10-meter in diameter, 130-tonne propeller needed for transmitting this power, but one has been built for the Emma Maersk since. Other constraints, such as time in port and flexibility of service routes are similar to the constraints that eventually limited the growth in size of the supertankers.

Largest ships

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Notes

• The size of a container ship is defined throughout the world in terms of TEU capacity. The exception is the Maersk Line. It does not quote the TEU capacity, but instead the maximum load capacity in terms of filled TEUs with an average 14 tonne total weight. This value is always less than the raw TEU capacity. These values are noted in the table above.
• Information on true container ship capacities is commercially sensitive and may be several thousand TEUs higher.
• This list is updated as large ships are completed.

References

• Propulsion Trends in Container Vessels, MAN B&W, 19 January 2005 (accessed 16 November 2005)
• The world in a box — from The Economist magazine, 16 March 2006

External links

• http://www.containership-info.net.tc - containership-info and vessel data base
• http://www.containerhandbuch.de/chb_e/stra/index.html Container ship handbook in English and German, excellent detail of the varieties of ships and their uses
• ship-photos.de: Categorized ship photos.
• Shipping Containers Provider of shipping containers

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