A bulk carrier is a large single deck ship, which carriers unpackaged cargo. The cargo is simply poured, tipped or pumped into the holds or tanks of the ship. The dry bulk carrier has been one of the largest growing types of ship outside the tanker fleets. The main cargoes…
Ro-Ro ships include car ferries, specialist vehicle carriers and general cargo vessels having Ro-Ro capabilities. They are expensive to build (a 15 000 dwt size costs twice the price of a conventional ship of the same size) and there is a considerable amount of wasted space, but their productivity is…
The concept behind containerisation is the packing of cargo into uniformly sized boxes (containers) and then designing all carrying vehicles (road, rail and ship)for the swift and efficient transport of these “boxes”, ideally from “door to door”. In order to make this feasible, it was necessary that an internationally accepted…
General cargo ships have not changed very much in the past 50 to 60 years. They remain multi-deck vessels of between 6 and 15 000 tons and are capable of loading dry cargo in either packaged or bulk form. Except that the superstructure has been moved aft, there is little…
Before World War 2, the main means of international passenger travel was by sea. It was also the main means of getting post (letters, documents, parcels, etc) from one continent to another. Hence the name “mail ship”. After the war, with the rapid development of aircraft, sea travel was replaced…
Introduction. There are many different types and class of vessels that make use of South African ports, ie naval vessels, fishing craft, trawlers, dredgers, cable layers/repair vessels, ocean research vessels, tugs, etc. In this section however, we will be looking at the commercial types only – namely: Passenger ships. General…
