A Brief History of Maritime Shipping

Posted on October 8, 2012 by History In An Hour

The history of maritime shipping stretches

back thousands of years to the times of the
earliest humans, for as long as there have
been people they have wanted to explore
what was beyond the seas. Today, maritime
shipping is just as important as it has ever
been, although the countries benefiting
from these trade routes have shifted
throughout history.

Circa 45,000 BCE

Its believed that as many as 45,000 years ago people living in modern day Australia would have
used boats for travelling and to find food resources. While we know very little about how they
sailed, its fascinating to think that even before the rise of civilisations people were using boats.
3rd century BCE 2nd century CE Early trade routes established

The Arabian Sea, with modern day India to its west and Pakistan to the north, became one of the
first major marine trade routes for early coastal sailing vessels around 4-5,000 years ago. The
primitive vessels that sailed during this period would not have strayed too far from the coast. The
need to transport these goods over desert country and the potential risk of bandits attacking the
travelling caravans meant that travelling by land was potentially as dangerous as travelling by
water.
This area was instrumental in early navigation in fact, its believed that the science of
navigation started around the river Indus, which has its basin in Pakistan. In these early days of
maritime travel ships were able to find their way across the seas using a mariners astrolabe. This
instrument could predict the position of the sun, moon, planets and stars the compass wouldnt
be invented until the 11th century in China.

During this same period Romans were also taking advantage of the opportunities that sailing
presented. The Romans had large commercial fleets and the best of these vessels were capable of
crossing the Mediterranean by sea in around a month. In fact, transporting low-value goods such
as grain and construction materials could be achieved at a sixtieth of the price of doing so by
land.
The Romans expanded their trade routes in the 1st and 2nd century CE by travelling over the
Indian Ocean to South Asia where they were able to trade with the rich Tamil dynasties. The
success of these commercial ships was only made possible by the fact that galleys and triremes
were on hand to stop any potential ambushes by the hands of pirates throughout history the
importance of protecting commercial vessels could not be underestimated.
7th-13th century CE The Arab Age of Discovery
During this period the Arab Empire began developing trade routes throughout Asia, Africa and
Europe. Because only a few rivers in the Islamic regions of the Empire were navigable travelling
by sea was especially important. Rather than keeping close to the coast these advanced Arab

vessels, known as qaribs, could cross oceans thanks to a greater understanding of celestial
navigation, drastically reducing the time needed to transport goods.
15th-19th century CE Age of Discovery
Several centuries later it was time for Europes Age of Discovery, as advances in navigation and
shipbuilding in north-western Europe allowed an increasing number of voyages across the
Atlantic to the Americas. Here new commodities such as tobacco from Virginia and Maryl and
gold and silver from Mexico and Peru were discovered and brought back to Europe.
In turn many of these goods were brought to Asia to be traded. In fact, in the early 1600s many
European countries such as England, France, Denmark and Portugal created East India
Companies. The most successful by far, however, was the Dutch East India Company, which is
considered the first truly multinational company.
The Dutch East India Company had a virtual monopoly on spices in the region with a busy port in
Batavia (modern day Jakarta). However, much more important than the transportation of spices
was the movement of Europeans around a million of them between 1602 and 1796 by the Dutch
company alone into Asia.
The English East India Company meanwhile focused its attention on India, trading in goods such
as cotton, silk, and tea. The power of the East India Companies and the infrastructure they put in
place was a precursor to the colonisation that occurred throughout much of the continent.
Despite the massive success of the East India Companies by the mid-19th century they had all
been dissolved, many of them because of bankruptcy.
19th-21st century modern maritime shipping

In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened, allowing transportation between Europe and Asia without
having to sail around Africa. 45 years later the Panama Canal was opened, linking the Atlantic
and Pacific Ocean and having the time it took for ships to travel between the two options.
These man-made waterways transformed the trade opportunities for many countries and in doing
so reduced trade in others. The Panama Canal for example enabled the West Coast of America
and nations along the Pacific Ocean to increase their trade. Almost 15,000 vessels sailed through
the canal in 2008, up from 1,000 when it first opened, showing that maritime is increasingly
relevant in the 21st century.
Simon Markland
Simon works for VOOVit Excess Baggage and Shipping. VOOVit specialise in shipping excess
baggage and small boxes worldwide.

Because of the ubiquity of shipping containers, we take them for granted in todays society.
But you only need to go back 60 years and we had no shipping containers- no intermodal
transport systems.
How is it that the world knows the name Henry Ford yet not Malcom McLean? Today we are
going to look at the history of shipping containers- what we used before them, how and who
invented them and finally, the impact they have had on globalisation and the world as we
know it today.
Pre-Shipping Containers

For centuries mankind has voyaged across the seas taking not only themselves but food,
cotton, treasure and goods, the likes of which their own country had never seen before. Just
think of the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans and more recently the British!
How did they transport their goods around the world? Well they clearly shipped them, but
without any standardisation it was a slow and difficult process.
Goods would be stored at a port warehouse until a boat was available. When an empty vessel
arrived these goods would be transported from the warehouse to the side of the docked ship.
Goods would typically be loaded into sacks, bales, crates and barrels, and then they would be
loaded by hand onto the ship. As you can imagine this would be a very labour intensive
process. This process was known as break bulk cargo, and a typical ship would have around
200,000 pieces of cargo on-board.

Towards the later part of the second industrial revolution (early 1900s), this lack of
standardisation was becoming a real issue, especially considering how prevalent trains had
now become. Transferring cargo from ships to trains was extremely slow and caused major
delays and blockages within many ports. Larger ships would take around a week to unload
then re-load (Levinson, 2006: The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World
Smaller and the World Economy Bigger).
This was the only way to transport goods and for centuries this process remained unchanged.
Just Who Was Malcom McLean?

There was a great need for a standardised method of transport but for this to be realised a
whole host of industries needed aligning, such as: ships, trains, trucks and port terminals. As
you can imagine, it would require a lot of work and persuasion to make such a feat possible.
This is where you find out exactly who Malcom McLean is.
Malcom McLean was born in 1914 and grew up on a farm in North Carolina. After finishing
school in 1931, he worked for several years to save up enough money to purchase a secondhand truck, and in 1934 he launched his transport business. McLean soon scaled up his
transport business and had five trucks running underneath him.
During a routine delivery of cotton bales in 1937 from North Carolina to New Jersey,
McLean witnessed stevedores loading and unloading cargo, which took hours on hours, and
he contemplated on what a waste of time and money this was.

From 1937 until the start of 1950, McLean focused on his transportation business, which now
had over 1750 trucks and 37 transport terminals. In fact it was the fifth largest truck
transportation business in the whole of America.
It was during this time period that several weight restrictions and levying fees were
introduced to road transportation. It was not uncommon for McLeans drivers to be fined for
heavy loads of cargo.
McLean was now looking for a more efficient way to transport his clients cargo and was
reminded of his experience in New Jersey back in 1937. It was now when he had the idea of
creating a standard sized trailer which could be loaded onto boats in the volume of not one or
two, like with his trucks, but in hundreds. He envisaged revolutionising his transportation
business by removing most of his trucks and using boats to transport the goods to
strategically place trucking hubs.
This would mean that trucks would only be used for short, intrastate, deliveries. Hence
eliminating the weight restrictions and levying fees which had only recently been introduced.
The Birth of a New Era: Intermodalism

McLean, convinced by his idea to create a standardised shipping trailer or container, sold
his trucking business and in 1955 took out a bank loan for $42million. He used $7 million of
this loan to purchase an already established shipping company: Pan-Atlantic Steamship
Company. Pan-Atlantic already had docking rights in many of the eastern port cities which
McLean was targeting and shortly after buying them he renamed it to SeaLand Industries.

McLean then went on to test variations of the container and finally settled on a primitive form
of what we know today as the shipping container. It was strong, standardised, stackable, easy
to load/unload and lockable (which made it theft resistant).
So now McLean had his containers, the final piece of the jigsaw was designing ships which
could hold the containers. He bought the oil tanker, Ideal X, and modified it to hold 58 of his
newly designed containers, in addition to 15,000 tons of petroleum.

On the 26th of April 1956 Ideal X left New Jersey, heading for Houston. The success of his
design was reinforced when the company was taking orders before the ship even docked in
Houston to take goods back to New Jersey. This was mainly due to McLean being able to
offer 25% discount off the price of conventional cargo transportation at the time. Also
because the containers were lockable, it stops goods from being stolen during transit.
The Expansion of Shipping Containers

Following the success of Ideal Xs maiden voyage, McLean ordered the first ever ship
specifically designed to carry containers: Gateway City.
Gateway Citys first voyage was in October 1957, and went from New Jersey to Miami.
Incredibly it only required two groups of dockworkers to unload and load the cargo. The
cargo could be moved at a staggering 30 tons per hour, unheard of at the time.
Standardisation
At this point, McLean was using 33 foot containers- opposed to the 20 and 40 foot containers
which we see today.

However there was still the issue of a lack of standardisation with regards to the containers
size and corner fittings. This standardisation was needed so containers could be stacked
effectively. Also trains, trucks and other transport equipment required a standard sized
container so each method of transport could be built to a single size.
During the Vietnamese war the US government were looking for a way to ship goods more
efficiently and were pushing for standardisation. McLeans SeaLand Industries were still
using 33 foot containers whereas industry rival Matsons were using 24 foot containers.
McLean agreed to release his patent of the revolutionary shipping container corner posts
(vital to its strength and stacking) and several standards were agreed.

January 1968: ISO 338 defined the terminology, dimensions and ratings.

July 1968: ISO 790 defined how containers should be identified.

October 1970: ISO 1897 defined the recognised sizes of the containers.

As a result of these standards we now have the 20 foot and 40 foot shipping containers (see
our blog post on shipping container dimensions for more information). In fact 20 foot
containers, called Twenty foot Equivalent Unit (TEU), went on to become the industry
standard for referencing cargo volume.

Resistance
The final stage to shipping containers spreading worldwide was the resistance at ports due to
the widespread redundancies caused by containers.

As we spoke about earlier on in the article, traditionally, the process of loading cargo required
lots of port workers to physically manhandle all of the goods into position. However with
containers these workers were no longer required, which caused outrage with the dockside
unions. During the early 1970s many union workers went on strike, disrupting the shipping
industry and shipping containers rapid expansion.
However, due to the huge financial savings of containerised shipping, these union workers
were paid severance agreements and shipping containers growth sky-rocketed.
As a result, by 1970, SeaLand Industries had 36 container ships, twenty-seven thousand
containers and connections to more than 30 ports in America.
McLean then sold the company to R.J. Reynolds for $160 million.
For more information on Malcom McLean click here.
Shipping Containers: Legacy

It took a mere 10 years for the first every international container ship voyage. In April 1966,
Sea-Lands Fairland sailed from the US to the Netherlands with a whopping 236 containers
on-board.
From here container ships saw a massive expansion, and in 1968 container ships had the
capacity to carry around 1,000 TEUs- this was exceptionally large at the time.
Many now claim containers have been the single largest driver in globalisation over the last
60 years.

The cost to ship cargo has dropped more than 90%.

In 1956 cargo cost $5.86 per ton to load whereas now it only cost around $0.16 per
ton.

In 1966 around 1% of countries had container ports, this rose to 90% by 1983.

Malcom McLean has been awarded Man Of The Century by the International
Maritime Hall of Fame.

Pre-containers, cargo could be loaded at around 1.3 tonnes per hour. This increased
to over 30 tonnes per hour by 1970.

In 2011 the shipping ports of America received $1.73 trillion worth of goods.

Around 90% of every purchased item has been shipped inside a container.

There are more than 17 million shipping containers in the world, which make over
200 million trips per year.

A sweater can now travel 3,000 miles for 2.5 cents by sea.

There are more than 6,000 container vessels currently in service.

The largest shipping in the world, MSC Oscar, has a TEU of 19224: source.

Wow, how about that! I bet you didnt know that the humble shipping container experienced
such an interesting beginning! Who knew that what we are now using to build our homes
with changed the world so much
Let me know in the comments below if you have any incredible facts about Shipping
Containers in the 21st Century !