SIMPLICITY AND SAFETY CONCERNS MARK BULKER CARRIER EVOLUTION

摘要

Bulk carrier design has been traced back to the 1852 when the steam-powered coal carrier John Bowes went into service. But until the end of the Second World War, it was the Great Lakes that saw most of the world's bulk carriers, supplying steel mills with iron ore. It was there that the first self-unloader, went into operation, in 1902. It was the discovery and exploitation of commercially viable high purity mineral deposits in Australia, Brazil and elsewhere, as well as the growth in the thermal coal market, that drove the bulk carrier's development. Before that, cargoes would usually be bagged at the port and the sacks stacked on pallets and carried aboard by crane. It was a time-consuming operation that clearly had no future once international bulk trades developed.