In Europe, before the formation of the East Indian Trading Company, just a few extra quantities of goods from the East Indies made their way to this continent through a complicated sea trade route. During the late 1590s, the Dutch trading company exchange with East Indies was at the peak, and they perceived it as a threat to the English exchange by Britain merchants. To protect their interest, the English Merchant founded the merchant company known as the merchant of London and traded with East Indies countries. In the 1660s the company was given a trading charter and transformed its name to East India trading company, and the main company objective was to control and protect all the English merchant trade in the East Indies region. The East India Trading company made its first sea voyage in 1601 when the English merchant left London with four ships returned to London in the year 1603 with tonnes of pepper goods. Then other fruitful sea voyage trade followed and one of the most significant and profitable voyages happened in 1612 when the merchants and financiers in this sea trade business realized back the capital they had invested in the sea voyage and an addition 220% profit.
From gaining its first trading charter in the early 17th century, the English East Trading India Company ran and controlled one of the biggest and successful commercial shipping operations in the world and through the help of its trading initiatives during the British colonial era (Lawson, 2014). The East Indian Trading Company was the leading company’s merchant, and it was accountable for shipping cargo goods from the East Indies countries and making its way back to Europe with valuable products which already had a ready and profitable market in this continent.
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To the east, the East India Company became a monopoly merchant company and they strictly enforced this rule to the point that no other shipping company could make its way where the East India Company had already established a trading base. However in the year 1813, the strictly trading rules held by the East India Company were relaxed a little bit, and other maritime trading companies got licensed to trade with some East Indies countries, however, not in all territories. For instance, the East India Company merchant ships were the only one allowed to voyage and trade in Chinese provinces. Unluckily the East India Company trading monopoly came to an end in 1834 when maritime services operations got disbanded; however, the East India Company progressed to trade with its territories in Asia for so many years, and other merchant ships belonging to other European nations began to trade freely with the rest East Indies Countries.
Basically, the people who were in charge of these sea voyages merchant ships were professional career men who spent most of their life working for the company. Besides most of the sea voyages to the east continents were full of uncertainty and lengthy they made good profit and rewards were perfect. They were provided with captains to control the ships and officers to offer protection, and also they were paid appealing wages, and at times they were allowed to ship their own goods through a person account known as private trade. Although, most of the merchant service sea voyages to and from the eastern territories were complicated, risky, tiresome, and long. Given the sea hazards present during this period it’s impressive the East India Company managed to make so many successful maritime sea voyages however many merchant ships had eventful sea voyages, and some were lost in the sea either through capsizing, wreckage or got burnt down by the fire.
Types of International Shipping Services
When dealing with international shipping, there is a lot of jargon and verbiage someone needs to familiarize himself with. Acquiring knowledge on the differences that exist between several types of international shipping services assist someone to save shipment fee in the long run whereby someone chooses the suitable, reliable and sure mode of shipment. Furthermore, it’s essential to understand what kind of goods you are shipping. Since having good knowledge about this subject will protect you from selecting an expensive shipping method or buying products that are not relevant to your specification situation (Lobo, 2010).
International sea freight options are available based on the type of cargo to ensure the safe, efficient and economical transport of goods by sea. The following discussed below are types of international shipment services.
Containerized sea freight services
This type of sea freight involves packing cargo and stowing it in a shipping container for onward transportation using a container ship. This kind of shipment idea for a diverse variety of products and goods, including products that need refrigeration, Containerized shipments can effectively be switched between various type transportation modes such as trains, trucks and ships without the need to handle the contents. Due to this reason, containerization shipment has become one of the most popular types of international shipment since it’s a cost-effective option plus it’s widely available across the world. Smaller container consignments that do not exclusively fill a shipping container are grouped with other freight all kinds shipments; these consignments are combined to fill a shipping container space and the voyage cost associated with the shipping is for and reducing the shipment cost to benefit both consignee and consignor.
Bulk sea freight services
This type of international shipment involves shipping unpacked or loose consignments stored in massive quantities in the hull of a ship for shipment, examples of commodities shipped use this mode includes, crude oil, gravel, coal or grains. The merchant ships which carry this type of cargos are frequently known as bulk carriers, bulkers or bulk freighters.
Roll-on/roll-off sea freights services
This type of international sea freight designated for transportation of wheeled consignment such as trucks, buses and cars motor vehicles can be driven in and out the ship via in-built access ramps, dodging the requirement and expenses of building and maintaining a craning cargo which is a requirement in the sea freight. Although this type of shipment service is limited in nature and commonly depend on the origin of shipment to destination of the consignment. This type of shipment service is also cost effective especially for all vehicles in good working conditions. Generally if the to be shipped is oversized does not match the in-built ramps, in this case, the flat rack shipment is commonly preferred.
Chartering sea freight services
This type of sea freight service involves hiring maritime vessels and crews for a specifically designated sea freight voyage and involves permitting full customization of the sailing route and schedule. The rates for this sea freight are based on varieties factors outlined in the charter party agreement which is the legal contract agreement between the ship-owners and the consigner.
Oversized sea freights services
This kind of sea freight services involves the shipment of large sea freight consignment that exceeds the set standards dimension. This kind of transportation involves shipment of commodities such as boats, huge tracts, agricultural equipment, tankers and mining machinery. Oversized shipment service does not provide the same level of efficiency in terms of space when compared to containerized freight. Due to this reason, the shipment cost is high and even increase if the shipment vessel requires an in build crane to hold the goods in transport.
Types of Ships
There are diverse varieties of vessels involved commercial shipping and are categorized based on size, cargo function and construction. Below is a discussion concerning various types of ships that plays a part in offering sea freight services.
General cargo vessels
General cargo vessels are the most common type of maritime vessel which carries dry consignments, the type of vessel are used to transport irregular and lose consignments which are not suitable for container ships. They have extended rigging for winches on each side; the winches are mainly used to unload or load batch. Consignments are sometimes stowed in various holds to speed up the effectiveness of loading and offloading process.
Bulk carriers
Just like the general cargo ship, bulk carriers are equipped with massive hydraulic hatches covering the holds. However, they don’t have overhead rigging. They are used mostly to carry commodities such as wood chips, grains, and ore most of the products can be poured down into a hold. Bulk carries vessel will mainly load and off-load commodities at special port terminals for whatever kind of goods they may be, Sometimes the cargo holds is thoroughly steam cleaned by ship laborer when the vessel is set to transport a different consignment rather than the one which was previously unloaded. The average size of a bulk carrier vessel is about 800 feet long.
Container ship
These types of maritime service vessels are designed to hold huge steel containers, the size of the containers is usually about 20 feet or 40 feet long, and eight feet tall and eight feet wide. Loading and off-loading of containers in these ships are done by massive cranes to and from the trucks some types of bulk ships are designed in a way that when the bow opens up the barges which hold containers are pulled out together (Pryor, 2017). It’s important to note that container ships are only designated to ports which have container terminals.
Auto Carriers
The auto carrier ships are designed to carry motor vehicles; they are massives maritime vessels which are nothing more than floating parking garages. This kind of ships house between two to four thousand motor vehicles and during offloading the built-in ramps are lowered out from the side of the vessel, and the motor cars are driven off from the ship. The size of an average auto carrier ship is about six hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide and over one hundred feet tall.
Tankers
Maritime tanker vessels are more kind of an oil drum with an engine, although most of the tankers transport crude oil, there are other tankers designed to carry various type liquefied gas and chemicals. Tankers are identified by the huge volume of piping forward of the bridge to the main deck. The piping are used to load and offload consignments. Tankers are designed in various sizes the biggest ones are known as supertankers with a length size nearly to a quarter of a mile, and the width is longer than a standard football stadium. Across the globe there only a few ports where supertankers can dock and hence most of the supertankers are loaded and off-loaded from pumping situated at the ocean offshore.
Fishing vessels
In today’s world, the fishing industry is growing due to the high demand for white meat, to meet the demand; massive fishing vessels have been designed. There are several different types of fishing vessels in the world. Fishing boats they are about ninety feet’s long with refrigeration on board to prevent fish from going bad. Processors these type of vessels not only catch fish but they have a processing factory on the deck where fish are entirely processed.
Passenger ships
In the 20 th century, passenger ship was commonly used work to travel from one place to another by many people to voyage across the globe. However, in the 21 st century passenger ships are usually used as cruise ships for holiday sea voyage pleasure. Cruise ships offer a luxury treat along with beautiful sight to watch the skies and around the water. Moreover, cruise ship are like five-star hotel floating on the sea which mainly focuses on give customers a pleasure sea experience rather than reaching a destination on or before time.
Ferryboats: These types of ships are used in places where bridges cannot be built, and they ferry people and goods across short distances on the same route to and from.
Containerization
Containerization is a commercial method of shipping consignment by placing them in large steel containers. Containerization has been a significant cargo transporting technique which was incepted in the mid-20th century. Initially, rail and road containers alongside with sealed and secured boxes of standard sizes were most used. However, the year 1960 was a game changer in the maritime shipping commercial business; this is the year when containerization became a crucial component in maritime shipping and became prosperous due to the construction of new cargo ship specifically designed to carry containers (Coşar, 2018).
Container ships carry containers consignments below, and above the deck furthermore, containers are easy to load and off-load which makes the possibility for a vessel to make the regular trip since the time lost at the port is minimized. Shipping cargo using containers is one area that offers shippers an opportunity to leverage the shipping cost not only in downstream transportation and logistics functions but also in unexpected upstream supply chain planning function.
Containerization helps transporters to utilize consignment stacking efficiency successful building out space while respecting constraints such as orientation, crushing factors and stacking roles. Containerization also helps shipping companies to transport goods in different weight categories where light and heavy consignment can be shipped together to utilize the available container space and resulting to increased resources maximization and just fewer containers needed to transport similar volumes of commodities.
Security Concerns
Maritime security is often referred to the protection offered to maritime ships, ports, employees, employers and its ports from any threats and maintains a good sea order. Several security issues which arise from the idea of maritime security include criminalities such as trafficking of people, the transit of illegal goods piracy and armed robbery, illegal fishing or pollution. The strategic Agenda of security has developed over the years since the early 21st century. When specific worries over maritime terrorist assaults on ports and ships sparked interest over maritime security. Since then numerous countries and international security ports have developed the maritime security strategies to over protection. Frequent piracy in the coast of Somalia, West Africa, and Southeast Asia has prompted the acknowledgment of devastating effects which arise from maritime insecurities to economic growth, human security and to the environment.
Piracy is an act of criminal violence which happens in the ocean which is performed by through a boat where pirate men, hostage another vessel on the sea. It is believed that piracy is an old act of sea terrorism and has evolved over the century. Currently, piracy attacks occur at the sea-shore where the local government in collaboration with authorities fails to man its shores. One of the most recent notable piracy attacks has been happening on Somalia shores since 2000. On 2008 Somalia pirates held massive attacks on merchants ship in the India Ocean which steered to the privatization of maritime security where shipping companies began to hire private maritime securities to guard their ship, consignment and crews from attacks (Cordner, 2018).
The Economics of Shipping by Ocean
Cost-effectiveness
Shipping consignment through water is the cheapest and cost effective mode of transport per ton of the cargo ferried by a maritime ship. For example, the seaborne transport method is just 10-15% of the cost incurred when transporting goods using road transport.
Space
Commercial maritime ships are designed in various sizes, so there is no space limitation. So if the goods are shipped using a bigger ship, then the shipment cost will be lower and vice versa. This criterion is one of the most important ones when it comes to transporting commodities especially raw materials which are in large quantities.
Carbon footprints
Sea transport is one of the least polluting modes of on; this is particularly important on shipping goods using containers. Global companies like Wal-Mart, Starbucks pays close attention to green shipping and very concerned about the emission released to the atmosphere by their carriers.
Safety
Shipping goods using the maritime mode of transport has a sound safety record in terms of spills, accidents and collision. Implementation of regulation, public opinion and fines has made maritime sea transport to become the safest mode of transportation.
Accessibility
Water covers three-quarter of the word land size. Water allows the shipment of goods to remotely located nations in the world.
Projected Trends in Maritime Shipping Industry
Digital censoring
Is a new technology for monitoring ship operation and performance, currently, this technology has become firmly increasing, and it’s sophisticated. The future commercial ship will have an entire inbuilt sensory network to measure and detect all the elements of operation such as have a fault, identifies various areas which requires maintenance and repair (Huang et al., 2018).
Bigger mega ships
Due to advancement if commercial sea freight and technology, design of new structure and material will lead to the creation of even larger mega-ships especially within the container maritime shipping industry. These bigger ships will carry thousands on containers. Most manufacturers will seek to take advantage of these vessels as a way of cutting transport cost down and also increase their production quantity to utilize the container space efficiently.
Greener shipping
Across the globe there growing constant pressure to lower the level of carbon footprint among the world commercial trading shipping fleets and positively increase in the future. A whole host, maritime ship technology, is being analyzed including, more streamlined bodies, low carbon fuels, perfect body coating and air cushions to reduce friction and efficient propeller design.
Robotic automation
The use of robots to improve performance and lower cost has to turn out to be quite common in the 21st century. In the shipping industry, robotic usage is immensely increasing to assist with almost all tasks. Supply chain activities like loading, packaging, inspecting, delivering, off-loading can be performed by robot smoothly. Since robots work effectively without making any mistake, the robotic garget will also be able to navigate the ship. Currently new model of robot knows as mini-robots are connected with the ship sensory system to analyze data in a vessel. In years to come, the little manpower will be required onboard the ship.
Conclusion
International shipping merchant business began from Europe all way back in the15th century, despite the challenges this industry have grown tremendously, primarily due to the revolutionary of containerization this mode of transport has gained a lot of recognition all over the world. Container shipping has changed this industry significantly not only has it led to its remarkable growth but also has lowered the consignment shipment cost. Presence of ports, large shipping vessels together with protection policy have favored shipment of goods across the globe.
References
Coşar, A. K., & Demir, B. (2018). Shipping inside the box: Containerization and trade. Journal of International Economics, 114, 331-345.
Cordner, L. (2018). Indian Ocean Maritime Security Strategic Risk Assessment. In Maritime Security Risks, Vulnerabilities and Cooperation (pp. 103-124). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Huang, Y., Rashidi, T. H., & Gardner, L. (2018). Modelling the global maritime container network. Maritime Economics & Logistics, 20(3), 400-420.
Lawson, P. (2014). East India Company, The: A History. Routledge.
Lobo, A. (2010). Assessing the service quality of container shipping lines in the international supply chain network–shippers' perspective. International journal of value chain management, 4(3), 256-266.
Pryor, J. H. (2017). Types of ships and their performance capabilities. In Travel in the Byzantine world (pp. 33-58). Routledge.
