Container ship

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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 intermodal freight transport.

Contents 1 History 2 Construction 3 Shipyards 4 Risk 5 Specifications 6 Future 7 Largest ships 8 Busiest ports of call 9 See also 10 References 11 External links

[edit] History

The earliest container ships were converted tankers, built up from surplus T2 tankers after World War II. The first container ship was the Ideal-X ^[1], a converted T2, owned by Malcom McLean, which carried 58 metal containers between Newark, New Jersey and Houston, Texas on its first voyage, in April 1956. On 26 november 1955 a ship called Clifford J. Rogers also transported containers ^[2]. Modern container ships are purpose-built and as a class are second only to crude oil tankers and bulk carriers as the biggest cargo ships on the oceans.

[edit] Construction

Container ships are designed so that no space is wasted. Capacity is measured in Twenty-foot equivalent unit (TEU), the number of standard 20-foot containers measuring 20 × 8.0 × 8.5 feet (6.1 × 2.4 × 2.6 metres) a vessel can carry. This not withstanding, most containers used today measure 40 feet (12 metres) in length. Above a certain size, container ships do not carry their own loading gear, so loading and unloading can only be done at ports with the necessary cranes. However, smaller ships with capacities up to 2,900 TEU 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, near the engine room. Container ships now carry up to 15,000 TEU (approximately equivalent to 35 100-car double-stack intermodal freight trains) on a voyage.

[edit] Shipyards

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

• Odense Steel Shipyard, Denmark
• Hyundai Heavy Industries, South Korea
• Samsung Heavy Industries, South Korea
• Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering Co., Ltd, South Korea
• IHI, Kure, Japan
• Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Nagasaki, Japan
• Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding, Shanghai, China

[edit] Risk

As of the new M/V Emma Mærsk they can carry up to 15,200 containers^[3]. , 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 and unloading of containers. The risks involved in these operations affect both the cargo being moved onto or off the ship, as well as the ship itself. Containers, due to their fairly nondescript nature and the sheer number handled in major ports, require complex organization to ensure they are not lost, stolen or misrouted. In addition, as the containers and the cargo they contain make up the vast majority of the total weight of a cargo ship, the loading and unloading is a delicate balancing act, as it directly affects the centre of mass for the whole ship. There have been some instances where a poorly loaded ship has capsized at the pier as a result.

Maneuvers in the port managed in the wheel house may be dangerous, as evidenced by a container ship hitting the San Francisco Bay Bridge on November 7, 2007. In open sea, storms can cause 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. Although pirates usually limit themselves to robbing the crew; mainly due to the difficulty of finding a suitable anchorage where a container ship can be unloaded without being noticed. Even changing the name of the vessel would be difficult as ships are quite distinctive in appearance.

It has been estimated that container ships lose over 10,000 containers at sea each year. ^[4] Most go overboard during a storm, but there are some examples of whole ships being lost, as in the MSC Napoli. When containers are dropped, they immediately become an environmental threat - termed "marine debris".

[edit] Specifications

Cargo too large 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.

[edit] Future

Economies of scale have dictated an upward trend in sizes of container ships in order to reduce costs. One limit on ship size is the "Suezmax" standard, or the largest theoretical ship capable of passing through the Suez Canal, which measures 14,000 TEU. Such a vessel would displace 137,000 metric tons of deadweight (DWT), be 400 meters long, more than 50 meters wide, have a draft of nearly 15 metres, and use more than 85 MW (113,987hp) to achieve 25.5 knots, specifications met by the Emma Mærsk.

Beyond Suezmax lies the "Malaccamax" (for Straits of Malacca) ship of 18,000 TEU, displacing 300,000 DWT, 470 meters long, 60 meters wide, 16 meters of draft, and using more than 100 MW (134,102hp) for 25.5 knots. This is most likely the limit before a major restructuring of world container trade routes.^[5] 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 propeller needed for transmitting this power, which would be about 10 metres in diameter, and weigh 130 tonnes. One has since been built for the Emma Mærsk by Mecklenburger Metallguss GmbH in Waren, Germany. 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 supertankers.

[edit] Largest ships

Main article: List of largest container ships

Ten Biggest Container Ship Classes, listed by TEU capacity

Built	Name	Sisterships	Length o.a.	Beam	Maxium TEU	GT	Owners	Flag
2006	Emma Mærsk	6	397.7 m	56.4 m	15,200	151,687	Maersk Line	Denmark
2005	Gudrun Mærsk	5	367.3 m	42.8 m	10,150	97,933	Maersk Line	Denmark
2006	Xin Los Angeles	6	336.7 m	45.6 m	9,600 [6]	107,200	CSCL	Hong Kong
2006	COSCO Guangzhou	4	350 m	42.8 m	9,450[7]	99,833	COSCO	Greece
2006	CMA CGM Medea	3	350 m	42.8 m	9,415[8]	99,500	CMA CGM	France
2003	Axel Mærsk	5	352.6 m	42.8 m	9,310	93,496	Maersk Line	Denmark
2006	NYK Vega	2	338.2 m	45.6 m	9,200	97,825	Nippon Yusen Kaisha	Panama
2005	MSC Pamela	5	336.7 m	45.6 m	9,178	90,500	MSC	Liberia
2006	MSC Madeleine	1	348.5 m	42.8 m	9,100	107,551	MSC	Liberia
2006	Hannover Bridge	2	336 m	45.8 m	9,040	89,000	K Line	Japan

[edit] Busiest ports of call

For more details on this topic, see List of world's busiest container ports.

Note: "TEU" stands for "Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit," i.e. a 20 foot shipping container. Thus a 40 foot container is 2 TEU, etc.

Rank	Port	Country	TEUs (000s)[9]	+/- from 2004	% change from 2004
1	Singapore	Singapore	23,192	1,863	8.73
2	Hong Kong	People's Republic of China	22,427	443	2.02
3	Shanghai	People's Republic of China	18,084	3,527	24.23
4	Shenzhen	People's Republic of China	16,197	2,582	18.96
5	Busan	South Korea	11,843	413	3.61
6	Kaohsiung	Taiwan (Republic of China)	9,471	0	0.00
7	Rotterdam	Netherlands	9,287	1,006	12.15
8	Hamburg	Germany	8,088	1,085	15.49
9	Dubai	United Arab Emirates	7,619	1,190	18.51
10	Los Angeles	United States of America	7,485	164	2.24

[edit] See also

• Containerization
• Container Ships Category
• Intermodal freight transport
• Merchant ship

[edit] References

1. ^ Levinson, Marc: "The Box", pg. 1, Princeton University Press, 2006
2. ^ Dutch wiki article [:nl:Clifford J. Rogers (schip)]]
3. ^ Emma Maersk (PDF)
4. ^ Janice Podsada (19 June 2001). Lost Sea Cargo: Beach Bounty or Junk?. National Geographic News. Retrieved on 2008-04-08.
5. ^ Propulsion Trends in Container Vessels, MAN B&W, 19 January 2005 (accessed 16 November 2005)
6. ^ Lloyd's Register (6 July 2006). "World's largest container ship delivered to Lloyd's Register class". Press release.
7. ^ Kyunghee Park (9 March 2006). Around Asia's markets: Glut dims prospects for cargo shippers. Bloomberg News.
8. ^ CMA CGM (02 Oct 2006). "CMA CGM MEDEA, one of the world’s largest container ships". Press release.
9. ^ AAPA World Port Rankings 2005

• The world in a box — from The Economist magazine, 16 March 2006

[edit] External links

• Containership info and vessel database
• All technical details and service information of more than 4000 containerships
• Photos of container ships by German photographer Marc Steinmetz
• photographs of containerships

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