Maritime transport

Maritime transport (or ocean transport) or more generally waterborne transport, is the transport of people (passengers) or goods (cargo) via waterways. Freight transport by watercraft has been widely used throughout recorded history, as it provides a higher-capacity mode of transportation for passengers and cargo than land transport, the latter typically being more costly per unit payload due to it being affected by terrain conditions and road/rail infrastructures. The advent of aviation during the 20th century has diminished the importance of sea travel for passengers, though it is still popular for short trips and pleasure cruises. Transport by watercraft is much cheaper than transport by aircraft or land vehicles (both road and rail), but is significantly slower for longer journeys and heavily dependent on adequate port facilities. Maritime transport accounts for roughly 80% of international trade, according to UNCTAD in 2020. Maritime transport can be realized over any distance as long as there are connecting bodies of water that are navigable to boats, ships or barges such as oceans, lakes, rivers and canals. Shipping may be for commerce, recreation, or military purposes, and is an important aspect of logistics in human societies since early shipbuilding and river engineering were developed, leading to canal ages in various civilizations. While extensive inland shipping is less critical today, the major waterways of the world including many canals are still very important and are integral parts of worldwide economies. Particularly, especially any material can be moved by water; however, water transport becomes impractical when material delivery is time-critical such as various types of perishable produce. Still, water transport is highly cost effective with regular schedulable cargoes, such as trans-oceanic shipping of consumer products – and especially for heavy loads or bulk cargos, such as coal, coke, ores or grains. Arguably, the Industrial Revolution had its first impacts where cheap water transport by canal, navigations, or shipping by all types of watercraft on natural waterways supported cost-effective bulk transport. Containerization revolutionized maritime transport starting in the 1970s. "General cargo" includes goods packaged in boxes, cases, pallets, and barrels. When a cargo is carried in more than one mode, it is intermodal or co-modal.

Description

A nation's shipping fleet (variously called merchant navy, merchant marine, or merchant fleet) consists of the ships operated by civilian crews to transport passengers or cargo from one place to another. Merchant shipping also includes water transport over the river and canal systems connecting inland destinations, large and small. For example, during the early modern era, cities in the Hanseatic League began taming Northern Europe's rivers and harbors. Similarly, the Saint Lawrence Seaway connects the port cities on the Great Lakes in Canada and the United States with the Atlantic Ocean shipping routes, while the various Illinois canals connect the Great Lakes and Canada with New Orleans. Ores, coal, and grains can travel along the rivers of the American midwest to Pittsburgh or to Birmingham, Alabama. Professional mariners are known as merchant seamen, merchant sailors, and merchant mariners, or simply seamen, sailors, or mariners. The terms "seaman" or "sailor" may also refer to a member of a country's martial navy. According to the 2005 CIA World Factbook, the total number of merchant ships of at least 1,000 gross register tons in the world was 30,936. In 2010, it was 38,988, an increase of 26%, across many countries. As of December 2018, a quarter of all merchant mariners were born in the Philippines.

Liners and tramps A ship may also be categorized as to how it is operated.

A liner will have a regular run and operate to a schedule. The scheduled operation requires that such ships are better equipped to deal with causes of potential delay such as bad weather. They are generally higher powered than tramp ships with better seakeeping qualities, thus they are significantly more expensive to build. Liners are typically built for passenger and container operation though past common uses also included mail and general cargo. A tramp (trader) has no fixed run but will go wherever a suitable cargo takes it. Thus a ship and crew may be chartered from the ship owner to fetch a cargo of grain from Canada to Latvia, the ship may then be required to carry a cargo of coal from Britain to Melanesia. Bulk carriers and some cruise ships are examples of ships built to operate in this manner.

Ships and watercraft

Ships and other watercraft are used for maritime transport. Types can be distinguished by propulsion, size or cargo type. Recreational or educational craft still use wind power, while some smaller craft use internal combustion engines to drive one or more propellers, or in the case of jet boats, an inboard water jet. In shallow-draft areas, such as the Everglades, some craft, such as the hovercraft, are propelled by large pusher-prop fans. Most modern merchant ships can be placed in one of a few categories, such as:

Typical in-transit times A cargo ship sailing from a European port to a US one will typically take 10–12 days depending on water currents and other factors. To make container ship transport more economical, ship operators sometimes reduce cruising speed, thereby increasing transit time, to reduce fuel consumption, a strategy referred to as "slow steaming".

History Maritime transport began in prehistory: around 4000 BCE, when people living in river-valley and coastal societies, such as in Mesopotamia, developed basic watercraft to move people, food and goods along waterways. Over millennia, the invention of sails and refined hull-building techniques enabled increasingly complex seafaring, laying the foundations for ancient maritime trade routes and long-distance commerce. For much of history, maritime trade relied on relatively simple ships transporting bulk cargo or loose goods ("break-bulk" cargo), loaded and unloaded manually at ports. With the rise of global trade in the 20th century, this labor-intensive method became a bottleneck for efficiency. From then onward, standardised containers and purpose-built container ships replaced much of the older trade methods, boosting the speed, scale, and reliability of international maritime freight and enabling interconnected global supply chains of today.

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