Not quite multi-purpose
Posted on | August 13, 2010 | No Comments
What can you employ a containership for, if charterers are reluctant to take your ocean greyhound to transport boxes around the world.
It may be the wrong size, or a little long in the tooth, too thirsty or breathe out more noxious emissions than any potential employer sensitive to his corporate social responsibility might like.
The trouble is that containerships tend to live rather a long time, despite their fearsome work rate (when they are working) and you might be saddled with this seagoing albatross for many unproductive and unprofitable years, as its value (for all the above reasons) may be a trifle low.
It has holds and it has hatches, it may even have deck cranes, so why, you might ask, cannot this ship be employed to carry general cargo. Ships of this size are needed for cargoes of steel pipes, plates, coils, pare and pulp, even project cargo, let alone all that cargo that cannot be reasonably accommodated in a box. Step forward a shipbroker to fix the same.
This is where you should exercise caution and obtain a copy of the Standard P&I Club’s latest publication which provides a great deal of food for thought about the use of cellular containerships for general cargo.
It’s not that it can’t or shouldn’t be done, but there are important issues involving class, and flag compliance, the ISM Code, while the club itself
will have certain views about the suitability of such a ship for certain cargoes.
Produced by Standard’s Chris Spencer, this useful guide points to a large number of pitfalls that must be considered before a general cargo can be loaded into a boxboat, which is designed and constructed in a very different way to a ship designed from the start to carry
general cargoes.
The tank top, for a start, is designed for point loading of a stack of boxes, one above another in guides. Put a steel coil on this harmless looking stowage, and it might well end up in the double bottom, or at the very least cause expensive indentations.
The pontoon hatches may be effective at preventing green water getting below, but they are unlikely to provide a watertight seal, and any cargo susceptible to water damage is likely to end up as an expensive claim. It is probable that a ship which has been hauling boxes
will have her manuals and ISM documentation designed for this task, and they will not be appropriate, for instance, for the general cargo mode, where different procedures, guidelines and instructions will apply. Get this wrong and the dreaded non-compliance will emerge to
cause endless problems.
And don’t think that you can make a ship watertight with foam and sticky tape. You cannot.
This is a practical and realistic set of advice, which makes the distinction between the occasional voyage with general, as opposed to a charter of a decent length in this new role, in which case it advises getting the ship reclassified.
It is well worthwhile checking it out if you are looking for other options than boxes. You do not want to be like the wretched owner who thought that he could load steel scrap for the final voyage of an old boxboat.
It was indeed the final voyage; it just terminated rather short of the expected destination.
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