Introduction
Transportation of passengers and goods on waterways.
From prehistoric times shipping has had a major influence on human social development. Water routes, unlike roads, did not need building, and the difficulties and dangers were less than those offered by mountains, marshes, and enemy tribes. Therefore many early civilizations developed on navigable rivers or on the coasts of warm seas.
HistoryCommercial shipping probably began in the Mediterranean Sea where the merchants of Phoenicia owned ships and traded widely. Many of their practices were adopted by Ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Later, in the Middle Ages, the merchants of Venice carried on and further refined these practices. Even today, commercial shipping practices associated with
marine insurance and the carriage of goods can still be traced to those early roots.
From the 15th to the 18th centuries, deep-sea shipping was closely linked to colonial trade especially that of the Spanish Empire, the Portuguese Empire, the Dutch Empire, and the British Empire, and to the growth of the great enterprises like the Hudson’s Bay Company and the East India Companies
Nineteenth CenturyMany of the developments that characterize the modern shipping industry began in the 19th century.
In 1818 the Black Ball Line initiated the first scheduled service with the sailing of the James Monroe from New York to Liverpool. The following year the Savannah crossed the Atlantic Ocean, using steam propulsion for much of the way, and in 1838 the British vessel Sirius made the first crossing entirely under steam. A decade later ship design and construction was revolutionized by naval architectural innovations introduced by Isambard Kingdom Brunei in the Great Western, Great Britain, and Great Eastern.
The completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 opened up new trade routes and the possibility of regular shipping services between Europe and the East. Around the same time, the sailing vessel Elizabeth carried the first mineral oil cargo and a few years later, in 1886, the first modern ocean-going tanker Glückauf entered service.
During the last years of the 19th century, many large and luxurious passenger liners were built to meet the growing demand for international travel, both by the rich and by emigrants seeking new lives. The steam turbne, invented by Sir Charles Parsons in 1884, enabled some passenger vessels to achieve speeds in excess of 20 knots.
Twentieth CenturyIn 1912 the Danish vessel Selandia became the first sea-going ship with a diesel engine. Today most merchant ships have diesel engines, usually connected to a single propeller. Steam propulsion has now almost disappeared, and nuclear propulsion, installed experimentally in the Savannah, Otto Hahn, and Mutsu, has been abandoned for merchant ships, although it is still widely used in warships.
Since World War II, merchant ships have become generally larger, faster and more specialized. Many tankers of more than 200,000 tonnes deadweight have been built. The Batillus, one of the largest built in the 1970s, was more than 600,000 tonnes deadweight. Bulk ore carriers of more than 100,000 tonnes deadweight are common. Today most manufactured goods are transported by ships specially designed to carry standard containers. The largest, like the Emma Maersk, are around 397 m (1,300 ft) long and are capable of carrying more than11,000 containers.
Shipping Scenery
Shipping is a highly competitive industry serving the needs of international trade. It is truly international, both in the nature of its business and in the way it is organized. Shipping companies usually operate in one or more of the following principal sectors: the dry bulk, oil, and liner trades.
During the 19th century and until the middle of the 20th century, most of the world’s merchant fleet operated under the British flag or the flag of one of the long-established maritime nations like Norway, France, Germany, and Japan. However, nowadays the flag flown by a ship is not always a good indicator of the country in which it is beneficially owned.
Many ships now fly flags of convenience. This arrangement provides their owners with a variety of economic benefits, including protection against corporate taxes in their home states. Thus much of the world’s merchant fleet is now registered in so-called open-registry states, even though the owning companies are probably based in Europe, America, or South East Asia. Panama, Liberia, Malta, and Cyprus are currently among the most important open-registry states.
The world’s merchant fleet consists of nearly 100,000 vessels, of which cargo-carrying ships account for roughly half. The rest are employed in non-trading activities like fishing, supporting the offshore oil industry, and providing general maritime services, such as towage, dredging, and surveying.
The composition of the world’s fleet today is very different from that of the 1940s. In those days a typical dry cargo ship was probably a 10,000 tonne deadweight general-purpose vessel, like the Liberty ships built in large numbers during World War II. They could have been used to carry either bulk cargoes or general cargoes. A typical tanker of that period was probably around 15,000 tonnes deadweight, like the many T2 standard vessels built in the United States during World War II.
Today, the situation is radically different. New types of cargo-carrying ships, many of them highly specialized and very large, have been introduced to meet the needs of expanding and more diverse international trade. Their aggregate capacity continues to expand year by year.
As ships have become bigger, they have also become more complex. Automation and other technological developments, particularly in computers and communications, have had a profound effect on the way ships are operated. Crews have become smaller, labour productivity has increased greatly, and many traditional navigation and seafaring skills no longer have a place in the operation of modern vessels.
