Future Container Ships?

beancounter

beancounter

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The Economist his week reviewed a book titled:

"The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger" By Marc Levinson. The final paragraph of the review states:

"As to the future, the author looks to ships that will approach the “Malacca-Max”, the maximum size of a vessel passing through the Strait of Malacca, the shipping lane between Malaysia and Indonesia. Some container ships are already too big to get through the locks in the Panama Canal. The future giants will be a quarter of a mile long, 190-feet wide with their bottoms 65-feet below the waterline. They will be able to carry enough containers to fill a line of trucks 68 miles long."

Perhaps Mirelle can comment on this - as someone who uses the conveyor-belt known as the A14, that line of lorries is a depressing thought... /forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif
 
You've put your finger on it.

Container ships will never get anything like as big as that. 68ft draft is no use to a containership, because a main line container ship has to get to places like Harwich, and also to Hamburg and Antwerp, which lie up shallow rivers.

I am sorry to say that "The Economist" is gruesomely ignorant of shipping matters - it has no correspondent with any knowledge of any part of heavy industry or transport. This shows quite often - it can rabbit on about IT but it knows nothing of real stuff, which is why it completely missed the commodities boom.

As witness:

"Some container ships are already too big to get through the locks in the Panama Canal. The future giants will be a quarter of a mile long, 190-feet wide with their bottoms 65-feet below the waterline. They will be able to carry enough containers to fill a line of trucks 68 miles long."

Well, I manage seven of the couple of hundred containerships in service which are too big to get through Panama, because the Panama Canal is actually pretty small - it was designed to fit the sort of battleships that the US Navy thought it might be needing, around 1900. My outfit has the biggest ships on order so far, though doubtless we shall be surpassed presently.

However, the economics of the matter are that demand for container shipping is reasonably price sensitive, but there are not that many more things to get moved. Our major export to China, by volume, in containers, is waste paper.

The "Malaccamax" is a figment of a few analysts' imaginations; it won't happen for a whole host of reasons, including the crane cycle times required to plumb its holds, the absence of any practical means of powering it and the extent of double handling of cargo needed.

On a slightly more cheerful note, I've just written to the Secretary of State for Transport endorsing Felixstowe Dock and Railway Co's application to double track the branch, which will give us all 48 freight paths a day for 725 metre trains, as opposed to the 22 and a half (I like the half, don't you!) paths for 508 metre trains available now. This will do a little to ease the state of the A14 as the bigger ships come into service.

Don't hold your breath, as even this modest little development will almost certainly require an Enquiry - lawyers have to live, don't they!

If he would see his way to getting on with what is known in railway circles as "F2N" - the Felixstowe to Nuneaton Railway - the rail system could do a great deal more to get box lorries off the A14. This is not a planning application for a new railway - it is just a matter of raising bridges to allow "high cube" (9ft6ins high) containers to reach Nuneaton. Needless to say the Government has no plans to put its hands in its pocket for this. It is playing silly beggars with what-was-until-the-other-day P&O, now Dubai Ports World, over the transport links for their planned container port on the admirably brownfield site of the former Shell Haven.
 
Mirelle, what do China do with our waste paper? Hardly seems cost effective, but I guess that it's probably better than the containers going back empty!
 
I don't know - we just carry the stuff!

Actually, many containers do go back empty. Britain runs a huge container imbalance with China. My own line carries a lot of German car parts out to China, so we empty out in Felixstowe and load up a bit in Hamburg, but we always arrive in Europe full.
 
[ QUOTE ]

On a slightly more cheerful note, I've just written to the Secretary of State for Transport endorsing Felixstowe Dock and Railway Co's application to double track the branch, which will give us all 48 freight paths a day for 725 metre trains, as opposed to the 22 and a half (I like the half, don't you!) paths for 508 metre trains available now. This will do a little to ease the state of the A14 as the bigger ships come into service.

[/ QUOTE ]

That only takes into account the Felixstowe Branch. AS a paying customer on "one" we are already faced with a ridiculous service on the pretext of "extra freight train paths" which the SRA required or them in their franchise bid. They'll have to add freight lines from Shenfield to Ipswich...

Much as I admire getting container traffic off the road, there are thousands of people who will be majorly inconvenienced by a (typically) half thought through idea.
 
May I ask a couple of question please?
Do you in fact have a computer programme to decide where to put the containers for easier access and control the load line?
Do the ships run to various ports loading and unloading on a route that is controlled by where you can find the freight or do you run just specific routes - A to B?
Michael
 
Happy to answer that:

Q1: "Do you in fact have a computer programme to decide where to put the containers for easier access and control the load line?"

Yes, in fact the IT demands of containerised shipping are very substantial.

There are really four issues to be thought about:

1. What is in the container?

How heavy is it, does it contain cargo that needs refrigeration, is the cargo hazardous and if so how must it be stowed in relation to other hazardous cargoes (eg - we don't put an oxidising agent anywhere near a fuel, we don't put chemical reagents anywhere where a leak might bring them in contact with something that might produce a toxic gas, etc, and we try to stow them all so they can be got at fairly easily)

2. Where is the container going? Its very expensive to unload and reload a container so as to get to cargo stowed beneath it (a "restow") so containers are stowed according to port of discharge, always minding point no 1.

3. What are the requirements of the ship's own stability, stress and load line
limitations? Basically, a big containership is a huge, open, shallow barge, with no real deck, just big "pontoon" hatch covers, that can be lifted off across the whole width of the ship, so its a "U" girder, not a "box" girder like a tanker, and it has to be kept shallow so as to get into ports near big cities - unlike big tankers and bulk carriers which go to remote terminals.

4. What are the requirements of the ship's own lashing system? The amount of lashing up required matters as it costs - but the G forces imposed on the lashings will vary as the ships own stability varies during the voyage, as fuel is used and containers are loaded and discharged.

These are just the IT requirements involved in stowing the ship. The Line also needs to prepare and issue the cargo documentation - waybills and Bills of Lading - for each parcel of cargo (one container may contain many such items!) prepare and issue the Customs Manifest with full details of all the cargo - this must be available long before the ship arrives - and provide arrangements for the discharge, on-carriage by road or rail and return of the empty container. These days we also offer each customer a cargo tracking system so they know where each consignment is and can adjust their inventory accordingly.

Q2 - "Do the ships run to various ports loading and unloading on a route that is controlled by where you can find the freight or do you run just specific routes - A to B?"

There are fundamentally two sorts of merchant ship - "liners" and "tramps".

"Liners" are like buses - they follow an advertised route, to a timetable. These days the timetables are quite precise - customers like to know that a ship will, for example, accept the last cargo for loading at, say, Felixstowe for, say, Savannah, at 10.00 on every Tuesday. This lets the customers plan their inventories accurately.

Containerships are all liners, but other ship types - roll-on, roll off, heavy lift, conventional, even some tankers - the type known as "parcel tankers" may be liners. Large gas carriers carrying liquified natural gas usually work in shuttle services from load port to dischsarge port on a fixed schedule and may be thought of as liners.

Tramp ships are like taxis - you book ("charter") the whole ship, either by the voyage or by the day, and she goes where you want her to go, full of your own cargo. Bulk carriers - moving iron ore, coal, grain, scrap, fertiliser, salt, sugar, tapioca, aluminium ore, etc - and tankers - moving crude oil, refined oils (either "clean" (white) or "dirty"(black) gas carriers moving LPG, ammonia, ethylene, etc, chemical tankers, "reefer" (refrigerated) ships carrying fruit, fish, etc. and most heavy lift ships (carrying very large objects, like oil rigs, power station equipment, dented Navy ships, etc) are "tramps"

The above is a huge over-simplification but it gives you an idea.
 
one monster you might be interested in, Cosco Guangzhou all 350m of her, has just passed 20nm north of Cap de la Hague on her maiden voyage at 23kn heading for rotterdam.
 
Mirelle hi,

Thank you for that - really interesting- I did not understand at all the difference between Liners and Tramps - I often wondered if a container ship arrived at a port and just took a load to the another port en route.

So in this modern age - who make the stowage decisions? The first officer or the computer at HQ. Also who sets the course - the Captain or the computer back at base?

Michael
 
"So in this modern age - who make the stowage decisions? The first officer or the computer at HQ?"

Neither! In reality, for big ships, it's the computer in the terminal at the port of loading - using the ship's data and the discharge information supplied by the Line, but the C/O will run a check to make sure that the ship's stability, stress and lashing gear parameters are being met. Smaller ships, using their own gear to load and discharge in small ports (if these run to the big ports where their cargo is transhipped they are known as "feeder" ships - think of them as the branch line trains of the system) will make their own stowage decisions with the C/O running the ship's loading computer.

"Also who sets the course - the Captain or the computer back at base?"

The 2/O is the Navigating Officer and he will draw up courses for the Master's approval. However, in the case of a ship in liner service, the owning company will have very well established routeings which the ship will be expected to follow, within reason. These company routeings have existed since long before computers and containers; one legendary British company (Blue Funnel Line) insisted on them, in the days before radio, so that if one ship on a service broke a tailshaft, etc, a sistership would see her and be able to tow her!

There is usually a "computer back at base" but it will be a great big Kray in e meteorological office, not the owners' office, since most ships are now "weather routed" to save try to save fuel and heavy weather damage. Since you don't get to command a ship without a good deal of knowledge and experience of weather, the routeings can be very controversial where the Master disagrees.

The commonest cases where these "computers back at base" have a controversial say in the matter occur in the case of North Pacific routeings, where the Great Circle track from the Kuro Shio takes you much further North than most Masters like to go. The Pacific is not at all "pacific"`in those latitues in the northern winter!
 
Much as I would prefer to travel on "One", their service is so inconvenient for me that I drive from Suffolk to London four days a week, so you have my sympathy.
 
Nah, she's Greek! She is a chartered-in ship, owned by Captain Costacopoulos, of Costamare, and built for him at High and Dry. Our next owned ones will be 10,000 TEU.
 
That is a bit of a puzzle to me.

There are many small(er) container ships, up to perhaps 2,000 TEU, which have their own cranes, equipped and able to handle a container. The SWL at the hook would typically be 35 or 40 tons (the effective SWL would be less, due to the spreader). These ships will berth at a large terminal such as Felixstowe with their own gear swing out to starboard (assuming the ship is berthed portside-to) so that the ships' gear will not obstruct the operations of the shore gantry cranes.

Very few mobile cranes can handle containers efficiently. I cannot think of a case of loading cranes onto a container ship to discharge her, although of course bulldozers, JCBs, etc are routinely loaded aboard bulk carriers to assist in discharging them.

A tanker just pumps her cargo out with her own main cargo and stripping pumps, whilst cruise ships and cattle carriers rely on the cargo walking off...mind you, I could tell you the story of the elephant that did that and caused a dock strike...
 
Its stuck in my memory because it was something I hadn't seen before...... these weren't the typically cranes that you'd see on a small ship, but more like the shore gantry cranes, and were being loaded onto what appeared to be a purpose built mounting on the port side of the boat..... maybe it wasn't containers on board?
 
I don't know the answer.

These days, Felixstowe, like everyone else, buys its cranes from ZPMC (the Zhenhua Port Machinery Company) in China. ZPMC have their own ship which they use to deliver ready-assembled shore gantry cranes, which are loaded on rails down the deck and unloaded over a sort of double bowsprit arrangement. Very impressive to see. But that does not sound like what you describe.
 
Talking of which...

Just in from Reuters:

" Reuters has reported that the 5,551 teu Hyundai Fortune has indeed gone down
120 miles east of Aden after being devastated by a series of fires and
explosions which ripped through the after part of the vessels from yesterday

An unidentified Yemeni news agency has also confirmed the ship has sunk, but
Hyundai Merchant Marine sources continue to say they are still awaiting
information from the scene at the eastern approaches to the Gulf of Aden

All 27 crew, who include 22 Koreans and five Chinese, have been rescued and
landed in Aden. One crew member, the third officer, has been hospitalised
suffering from "severe burns"

The ship was some 60 miles offshore when the explosions occurred, basically
ruling out any form of likely terrorist attack in waters where just over
three years ago, the vlcc Limburg was attacked by terrorists

Another factor stacking up against terrorist attacks centred on the strong
presence of Dutch naval vessels in the area, operating under Task Force 150,
and indeed it was one of these warships that played a leading role in the
initial rescue operations

The cause of the explosions is expected to continue to remain a mystery for
some while, but there have been continued concerns over safety onboard
containerships carrying certain IMO 1.1 labelled cargo from China,
particularly centring on stowage within a container, or onboard stowage of
cargoes such as calcium hypochlorite, barbeque charcoal, thiourea dioxide,
expandable polymeric beads, bagged ferro silicon and fireworks - all exports
from China

The vessel was deployed on the Asia/Europe Express (AEX) service of the New
World Alliance, and was the first to carry Grand Alliance on the service as
part of the co-operation agreement recently signed between the two groups
 
Mirelle,

thanks for, as ever, a fascinating series of responses. I guess the book being reviewed will probably not be top of your reading list...?
 
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