Container ship

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ZIM Container ship in Istanbul

The Colombo Express, one of the largest container ships in the world, owned and operated by Hapag-Lloyd of Germany

Container ships are cargo ships that carry all of their load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. They form a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport.

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[edit] History

The earliest container ships were converted tankers, built up from surplus T2 tankers after World War II. In 1951 the first purpose-built container vessels began operating in Denmark, and between Seattle and Alaska.

The first container ship in the United States was the Ideal-X ^[1], a T2 tanker, owned by Malcom McLean, which carried 58 metal containers between Newark, New Jersey and Houston, Texas on its first voyage, in April 1956.

Today, approximately 90% of non-bulk cargo worldwide is transported by container, and modern container ships can carry up to 15,000 Twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU). As a class, container ships now rival crude oil tankers and bulk carriers as the largest commercial vessels on the ocean.

[edit] Construction

The "Zrin" container ship has self-unloading capability

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

Container ships are designed in a manner that optimizes space. 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 notwithstanding, 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. The world's largest container ships, the M/V Emma Mærsk and her sisters, have a capacity of 15,200 containers.^[2]

In 2008 the South Korean shipbuilder STX announced plans to construct a container ship capable of carrying 22,000 TEU,^[3] and with a proposed length of 450 metres and a beam of 60 metres.^[4] If constructed, the container ship would become the largest seagoing vessel in the world.^[5]

[edit] Shipyards

Container fleet in 2006

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
Nantong COSCO KHI Ship Engineering, Nantong, China

[edit] Risk

Container ship "Rita" loading at Copenhagen with crew on deck.

The transit of these containers entails a great deal of risk.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

In March 2007, a London based container ship capsized in Antwerp, Belgium while loading^[6].

Maneuvers in coastal waters and ports managed in the wheel house may be dangerous, as evidenced by a container ship hitting the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge on November 7, 2007.^[7]

It has been estimated that container ships lose over 10,000 containers at sea each year.^[8] Most go overboard on the open sea during storms but there are some examples of whole ships being lost with their cargo.^[9] When containers are dropped, they immediately become an environmental threat—termed "marine debris".

Modern loading instruments (like MACS3 with BELCO, SEALASH and DAGO modules) assist to reduce the risks, caused by incorrect stowage of container cargo.

[edit] Specifications

A container ship loading freight at the Mundra Port in India.

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.^{[citation needed]}

[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 deadweight (DWT), be 400 meters long, more than 50 meters wide, have a draft of nearly 15 metres, and use more than 85 MW (113,987 hp) 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 (134,102 hp) for 25.5 knots. This is most likely the limit before a major restructuring of world container trade routes.^[10] 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	Maximum TEU	GT	Owners	Flag
2006	Emma Mærsk	7	397.7 m	56.4 m	15,200	151,687	Maersk Line	Denmark
2009	MSC Danit	6	365.50 m	51.20 m	14,000	153,092	Mediterranean Shipping Company S.A.	Panama
2009	MSC Beatrice	6	366 m	51 m	14,000	151,559	Mediterranean Shipping Company S.A.	Panama
2008	CMA CGM Thalassa	1	346.5 m	45.6 m	10,960	128,600	CMA CGM	Cyprus
2005	Gudrun Mærsk	5	367.3 m	42.8 m	10,150	97,933	Maersk Line	Denmark
2002	CLEMENTINE MAERSK	6	348.7	42.6 m	9,600 ^[11]	96000	Maersk Line	Denmark
2006	COSCO Guangzhou	4	350 m	42.8 m	9,450^[12]	99,833	COSCO	Greece
2006	CMA CGM Medea	3	350 m	42.8 m	9,415^[13]	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

[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 intermodal container. Thus a 40-foot container is 2 TEU, etc.

Rank	Port	Country	TEUs (thousands)^[14]	+/- from 2004	% change from 2004
1	Singapore	Singapore	23,192	1,863	8.73
2	Hong Kong	Hong Kong SAR	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	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