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Main article: Merchant ship

Container ship in Istanbul

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.

Container fleet in 2006

The earliest container ships were converted tankers, built up from surplus tanker T-2's after World War II. The first container ship was the Ideal-X,^{[citation needed]} a converted T-2 tanker, owned by Malcom McLean, which carried 58 metal containers between Newark, New Jersey and Houston, Texas on its first voyage, in April 1956. Now container ships are all purpose-built and as a class are second only to crude oil tankers and bulk carrier's as the biggest cargo ships on the oceans.

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

Container ships are designed in such a manner that no space is wasted. Their capacity is measured in TEUs (Twenty-foot Equivalent Units), the number of 20-foot containers (each 20x8½x8½, or 6x2.6x2.6m) a vessel can carry, even though the majority of containers used today are 40 feet (12m) 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 TEUs are often equipped with their own cranes.

Informally known as "box ships," 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 TEUs (approximately equivalent to 35 100-car double-stack intermodal freight trains) on a voyage.

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

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

Container ship "Rita" being loaded at Copenhagen; note crew standing on deck, and stacks of containers on shore.

As of the new M/V Emma Mærsk they can carry up to 13,400 containers, 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. Allthough pirates usually limit themselves to robbing the crew.

Cargo too big 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. Moreover due to the growth of the containers transit, companies must manage container ship risks.^[clarify]

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 TEUs. Such a vessel would displace 137,000 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 TEUs, 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.^[1] 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.

Main article: List of largest container ships

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

Nautical Portal

• The Container Ships Category

1. ^ Propulsion Trends in Container Vessels, MAN B&W, 19 January 2005 (accessed 16 November 2005)
2. ^ Lloyd's Register (6 July 2006). World's largest container ship delivered to Lloyd's Register class. Press release.
3. ^ Kyunghee Park (9 March 2006). Around Asia's markets: Glut dims prospects for cargo shippers. Bloomberg News.
4. ^ CMA CGM (02 Oct 2006). CMA CGM MEDEA, one of the world’s largest container ships. Press release.
5. ^ [1]

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

Wikimedia Commons has media related to:

Container ships

• http://www.containership-info.net.tc - containership-info and vessel data base

v • d • e General Types of Modern Merchant Ship
Dry Cargo Ships:	Bulk carrier · Container ship · Reefer ship · RORO Ship
Tankers:	Petroleum tanker · Chemical tanker · Coastal trading vessel
Passenger ship:	Cruise ship · Cruiseferry · Ferry · Cable layer · Tugboat · Dredger · Barge
Panamax · Capesize · Seawaymax · Handymax · Handysize · Aframax · Suezmax · Malaccamax · VLCC · ULCC