Until the dramatic economic dowturn in late 2008, the Containership or "Boxship" had been the great success story of the last 40 years. General cargo was historically carried in general, dry cargo vessels, without any particular specialisation. Cargo loading and unloading was always a slow, labourious task, due to the varying shapes, sizes, weights and fragility of the numerous cargoes being carried on any one vessel. The idea of standardising the carrying box, or container at 20 feet long (the TEU = 20 foot equivalent unit) was a breakthrough that allowed for vessels to be designed to carry these standard sized boxes, and for dockside equipment also to be designed to lift , stack and store these specific shapes.
In 1937, a New Jersey truck driver named Malcolm McLean, sitting in his truck at the New Jersey Docks suddenly had a novel idea. Instead of large numbers of stevedores having to manually load cargo, why not create a standard shaped box into which goods can be handled in a standard way ? His idea took 20 years before the first container transit was undertaken (with his own money, because no shipowners would listen to his idea) In 1969 Malcolm McLean retired as a multi-millionaire !!!
So, from a "back of the fag-packet" idea was born the container ship. Initially, these were small vessels of up to 10,000 DWT, carrying no more than a few hundred TEU, but have grown in size as the success and economies of these vessels have become more obvious. Today's container ships are being built to take 13,000 T.E.U., such as the EMMA MAERSK.
As well as the Twenty foot container, many goods need larger boxes, so there is a larger standard sized container, the FEU (Forty Foot Equivalent Unit). On board a modern containership, the complex method of loading the TEU and FEU in
an order that will facilitate offloading at the other end is now largely computerised. As if specially designed to give Chief Officers a headache, a modern development is the "high box", a standard container in length and width, but 9' 6" high (instead of the standard 8'). Refrigerated containers ("reefer containers") have become very popular for the carriage of meat and fruit. Due to their flexibility of usage, these reefer containers are gradually destroying the need for specialised "reefer" ships, whose numbers are declining due to their business being taken over by these reefer containers.
The containers are anchored by "twist locks", which simply twist round to lock the 8 corners of the container to the neighbouring container. The outside of the whole stack is then further fixed with lashing poles diagonally from corner to corner.
These vessels are built for speed, and can reach upwards of 28 knots, moving cargoes around the world. Globally storing and returning empty boxes has become an industry in itself !
Through-transport or inter-modal transport, means that these containers can be offloaded from a ship, and rapidly loaded onto trains or onto container lorries for onward transport to the place of delivery. Recently, this has led to serious security concerns.
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