He must have done something right, because this speedy ship, albeit re-engined after the two oil shocks, lasted until 1999, when she was finally disposed of. During her life, her speed and the huge advantages of containerisation helped her to steam further than any cargo ship, a record that has probably never will be broken.
These fast Europe-Far East ships were just a footprint in the sands of time which extended back to the days of sail and the China clippers, with speed their main driver. It was the Blue Riband on the North Atlantic which brought the passengers aboard the fastest ships, and while there may have been no comparative trophy for cargo liners, it was the ability to get the cargo to its destination with expedition, which delighted their customers. Steam turbines, multiple giant diesels, gas turbines, even triple screws – it was the quest for speed that drove the designers of these container ships in the early 70s to experiment with almost anything that would shorten passage times. Competition was about raw speed in those days, not worthy statements about saving the planet.
It didn’t last, of course, the aforesaid oil shocks, the financial crash and the need to appear more sustainable, seems to have finally brought to an end 150 years of questing for speed. But just the other day, listening to Chris Welsh of the Global Shippers’ Forum telling the General Stevedores Council that it now took 40 days for a container to struggle down the logistics chain from Asia to Europe, when not long ago it would take 28 days, gave me a distinct pang of nostalgia for those speedy, powerful ships.
They seemed enormous at the time, but in comparison with today’s monsters, they were just tiddlers – I still have my notes of a 1971 visit to NYK’s Kamakura Maru, which was not even 2,000 teu, but which would run at 28 knots at a pinch and was just one of this astonishing Far East fleet.
Now, it is size that assures survival, at least that is what we are being told, and the reputation of high speed resembling the disgusting habit of smoking, which has become thoroughly anti-social. And it is the sheer size of these ships and the vast loads they dump on the terminal aprons, which contributes to the slow passage of the cargo, in addition to their attenuated passage time at sea. Nobody is going to speed up again, as long as the ships struggle to wash their financial faces and that won’t happen until world trade grows sufficiently to fill them. Chris Welsh suggests that shippers, perhaps realising that things are not likely to improve, have started to source their goods rather nearer, if they have such an option, or reconciling themselves to keeping bigger stocks, just like the old days, before speedy ships and “just in time”.
Are there any alternatives? The Japanese 50 knot “Techno Super Liner” never really got off the drawing board and was only really designed for shortish sea operations around Asia. The Northern Sea Route, much heralded a couple of years ago, only saw a handful of ships making the through transit last year, so has yet to threaten the traditional alternatives. Having to be accompanied by an enormous icebreaker “just in case” might be a disincentive, despite the shorter advertised passage time.
Maybe impatient shippers will just have to take the train, with recent months seeing two weekly services – Rotterdam to Chengdu and Wuhan to Hamburg, starting up. The latter, Nippon Express, offers a 15-18 day transit time. They are somewhat limited in capacity, if you bear in mind that you would need 160 trains to shift the cargo carried by a single 18,000 teu megaship. Don’t all rush at once.
*in his autobiography “There go the ships”.
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