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Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World
Fifty years ago―on April 26, 1956―the freighter Ideal X steamed from Berth 26 in Port Newark, New Jersey. Flying the flag of the Pan-Atlantic Steamship Company, she set out for Houston with an unusual 58 trailer trucks lashed to her top deck.
But they weren’t trucks―they were steel containers removed from their running gear, waiting to be lifted onto empty truck beds when Ideal X reached Texas. She docked safely, and a revolution was launched―not only in shipping, but in the way the world trades. Today, the more than 200 million containers shipped every year are the lifeblood of the new global economy. They sit stacked on thousands of “box boats” that grow more massive every year.
In this fascinating book, transportation expert Brian Cudahy provides a vivid, fast-paced account of the container-ship revolution―from the maiden voyage of the Ideal X to the entrepreneurial vision and technological breakthroughs that make it possible to ship more goods more cheaply than every before.
Cudahy tells this complex story easily, starting with Malcom McLean, Pan-Atlantic’s owner who first thought about loading his trucks on board. His line grew into the container giant Sea-Land Services, and Cudahy charts
its dramatic evolution into Maersk Sealand, the largest container line in the world. Along the way, he provides a concise, colorful history of world shipping―from freighter types to the fortunes of steamship lines―and explores the spectacular growth of global trade fueled by the mammoth ships and new seaborne lifelines connecting Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
Masterful maritime history, Box Boats shows how fleets of these ungainly ships make the modern world possible―with both positive and negative effects. It’s also a tale of an historic home port, New York, where old piers lie silent while 40-foot steel boxes of toys and televisions come ashore by the thousands, across the bay in New Jersey.
But they weren’t trucks―they were steel containers removed from their running gear, waiting to be lifted onto empty truck beds when Ideal X reached Texas. She docked safely, and a revolution was launched―not only in shipping, but in the way the world trades. Today, the more than 200 million containers shipped every year are the lifeblood of the new global economy. They sit stacked on thousands of “box boats” that grow more massive every year.
In this fascinating book, transportation expert Brian Cudahy provides a vivid, fast-paced account of the container-ship revolution―from the maiden voyage of the Ideal X to the entrepreneurial vision and technological breakthroughs that make it possible to ship more goods more cheaply than every before.
Cudahy tells this complex story easily, starting with Malcom McLean, Pan-Atlantic’s owner who first thought about loading his trucks on board. His line grew into the container giant Sea-Land Services, and Cudahy charts
its dramatic evolution into Maersk Sealand, the largest container line in the world. Along the way, he provides a concise, colorful history of world shipping―from freighter types to the fortunes of steamship lines―and explores the spectacular growth of global trade fueled by the mammoth ships and new seaborne lifelines connecting Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
Masterful maritime history, Box Boats shows how fleets of these ungainly ships make the modern world possible―with both positive and negative effects. It’s also a tale of an historic home port, New York, where old piers lie silent while 40-foot steel boxes of toys and televisions come ashore by the thousands, across the bay in New Jersey.
352 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2006
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October 29, 2017A highly detailed book on how Malcolm McLean, inventor of the shipping container, took his invention to sea. Cudahy traces McLean's shift from trucking to ocean shipping and the impact this shift had on world commerce. The book provides a corporate history of Sea-Land, McLean's ocean shipping company, covering mergers, acquisitions, vessel design innovations, and the economic changes that led to the line's ultimate disappearance into the Maersk shipping line.
Cudahy liberally salts the book with many tables of seemingly inconsequential information, of interest, perhaps, to mostly marine mavens. Although he frequently cites the influence of geographic considerations, there are no maps that would easily display what he spends many words to explain. There are numerous passages in my copy of the book where I have noted "Map!"
Maps would provide more understanding than tables to many readers, but maps cost the publisher money while tables only require typing. We readers lose.
Cudahy cites many of the related issues affected by the shift to containerization. These include the vast increase in the speed of shipping, the lessening of theft and damage of cargo during loading and unloading, labor relations, job losses and changes, and the development of vast wetland areas to construct new facilities. The latter developments, for instance, have shifted the center of longshore activity from metropolitan areas such as New York City to nearby New Jersey.
The book was written to mark the 50th anniversary of Macleans first container ship, the Ideal X, a converted World War II era tanker, in April of 1956. Over the intervening half-century, numerous competitors adapted the new technology, which McLean made freely available to all. Much additional technology developed. leading to ships capable of carrying close to 10,000 containers, or TEUs, 20 or 40 foot-long trailer equivalent units. McLean's first ship, the Ideal X carried "fifty-eight brand-new trailer trucks."
Cudahy touches upon the military benefits of the new shipping technology. McLean impressed military officials during the Vietnam war by showing that use of containers would stop much pilfering of existing break bulk cargo and its subsequent transfer to enemy Vietnamese. He also cites how high speed ships developed by McLean were acquired by the U.S. Navy, modified, and used to support operations in former Yugoslavia and in the Mideast conflicts.
The author offers projections on what the future might hold, looking forward from 2006. Now, a decade later, many of these projections as to size and speed of the box boats have already been realized. As he noted then, however, more change is likely even now. This book gives one a firm grounding (apologies to mariners) in the ocean shipping industry in the age of the container.
Cudahy liberally salts the book with many tables of seemingly inconsequential information, of interest, perhaps, to mostly marine mavens. Although he frequently cites the influence of geographic considerations, there are no maps that would easily display what he spends many words to explain. There are numerous passages in my copy of the book where I have noted "Map!"
Maps would provide more understanding than tables to many readers, but maps cost the publisher money while tables only require typing. We readers lose.
Cudahy cites many of the related issues affected by the shift to containerization. These include the vast increase in the speed of shipping, the lessening of theft and damage of cargo during loading and unloading, labor relations, job losses and changes, and the development of vast wetland areas to construct new facilities. The latter developments, for instance, have shifted the center of longshore activity from metropolitan areas such as New York City to nearby New Jersey.
The book was written to mark the 50th anniversary of Macleans first container ship, the Ideal X, a converted World War II era tanker, in April of 1956. Over the intervening half-century, numerous competitors adapted the new technology, which McLean made freely available to all. Much additional technology developed. leading to ships capable of carrying close to 10,000 containers, or TEUs, 20 or 40 foot-long trailer equivalent units. McLean's first ship, the Ideal X carried "fifty-eight brand-new trailer trucks."
Cudahy touches upon the military benefits of the new shipping technology. McLean impressed military officials during the Vietnam war by showing that use of containers would stop much pilfering of existing break bulk cargo and its subsequent transfer to enemy Vietnamese. He also cites how high speed ships developed by McLean were acquired by the U.S. Navy, modified, and used to support operations in former Yugoslavia and in the Mideast conflicts.
The author offers projections on what the future might hold, looking forward from 2006. Now, a decade later, many of these projections as to size and speed of the box boats have already been realized. As he noted then, however, more change is likely even now. This book gives one a firm grounding (apologies to mariners) in the ocean shipping industry in the age of the container.
November 6, 2013
I read this as Bill Gates recommended it. I looked forward to a comprehensive discussion of....how container ships changed the world. Instead, I got an exhaustive account of one company and its evolution. It was all about the acquisitions and mergers of the company, and how they had to work around regulations. (That laast bit was mildly interesting, as I learned about the various evolution in government regulation of shipping.)I tried to skim, hoping the author would finally get to the actual subject, but no. It was mind-numbingly dull, with tables and tables of lists of ships the company had. Not one table showing, oh, the growth of the number of container ships, or the rise of tonnage shipped in this manner. Cudahy's writing style is also painfully dull, even when he tried to interject anecdotes about the man responsible for this industry.
October 25, 2021
Goes into the dynamics of the industry, Focusing on these often ignored beautiful Vessels, Containerships and Containershipping. How it has in fact changed the world,sometimes depending on who you ask for the worst or better. Mostly for the better as far as getting something faster and across the world, But at the same time there is no American Containershipping line left(Only domestic) Sea-Land Was Gobbled Up By Maersk. APL is owned by NOL. This book goes into detail and is a good read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews