27.1.1 Mission

Early phases of modern marine cargo shipping, that is, until late cargo-carrying sailing ships and the beginning of engine-driven vessels in the late 19th and early 20th century, had to live with widely non-homogeneous types of cargo, since there was no technological basis for any specialization, as far as types and/or physical-technical shape of cargoes were concerned. An early development into specialization started with crude oil (the first tank steamship Gl ckauf built in 1886 in England). In the wide field of dry cargoes, it appeared quite logical that an early type of an ocean-going, cargo-carrying ship could only be a multipurpose cargo ship, in the desire to be able to carry all types and shapes of available cargoes.

Figure 27.1 shows a concept for a modern multipurpose cargo ship and Figure 27.2 shows an early version. Cargoes appeared in the traditional stowage category of break bulk, representing a wide, non-homogeneous range of sizes, forms, handling and stowage characteristics, not yet showing any modern tendency toward unitization. Dry bulk shipping, in the sense of homogeneous, loose, unpacked stowage of dry bulk goods, such as coal and grain (analogous to liquid bulk shipping in afore-mentioned tankers) was already practiced in multipurpose holds, even in sailing ships. However, there were some safety problems, caused by shifting cargoes (for example, the famous loss of the German sailing ship Pamir in 1957).

Figure 27.1: Multipurpose Philosophy in Advanced Shortsea Shipping Artist's Impression...