A merchant ship, merchant vessel, trading vessel, or merchantman is a watercraft that transports cargo or carries passengers for hire. This is in contrast to pleasure craft, which are used for personal recreation, and naval ships, which are used for military purposes. They come in a myriad of sizes and shapes, from inflatable dive boats in Hawaii, to 5,000-passenger casino vessels on the Mississippi River, to tugboats plying New York Harbor, to oil tankers and container ships at major ports, to passenger-carrying submarines in the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

. Many merchant ships operate under a "

flag of convenience Flag of convenience (FOC) refers to a business practice whereby a ship's owners Ship registration, register a Merchant vessel, merchant ship in a ship register of a country other than that of the ship's owners, and the ship flies the civil ens ...

" from a country other than the home of the vessel's owners, such as

Liberia Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the West African coast. It is bordered by Sierra Leone to Liberia–Sierra Leone border, its northwest, Guinea to Guinea–Liberia border, its north, Ivory Coast to Ivory Coast–Lib ...

and Panama, which have more favorable maritime laws than other countries. The Greek merchant marine is the largest in the world. Today, the Greek fleet accounts for some 16 per cent of the world's tonnage; this makes it currently the largest single international merchant fleet in the world, albeit not the largest in history. During wars, merchant ships may be used as auxiliaries to the navies of their respective countries, and are called upon to deliver military personnel and

materiel Materiel or matériel (; ) is supplies, equipment, and weapons in military supply-chain management, and typically supplies and equipment in a commerce, commercial supply chain management, supply chain context. Military In a military context, ...

History

Definitions

The term "commercial vessel" is defined by the United States Coast Guard as any vessel (i.e. boat or ship) engaged in commercial

trade Trade involves the transfer of goods and services from one person or entity to another, often in exchange for money. Economists refer to a system or network that allows trade as a market. Traders generally negotiate through a medium of cr ...

or that carries passengers for hire. In English, the term "Merchant Navy" without further clarification is used to refer to the British Merchant Navy; the United States merchant fleet is known as the United States Merchant Marine.

Name prefixes

Merchant ships' names have a prefix to indicate which kind of vessel they are: * CS = Cable Ship/ Cable layer * LNG = Gas carrier transporting liquefied natural gas * LPG = Gas carrier transporting liquefied petroleum gas * MFV = Motor Fishing Vessel * MS = Motorship * MSV = Motor Stand-by Vessel * MT = Motor Tanker or Motor Tug Boat * MV = Motor/Merchant Vessel * MY = Motor Yacht *NS = Nuclear Ship * RMS = Royal Mail Ship * RRS = Royal Research Ship * RV = Research Vessel * SS = Steam Ship * SV = Sailing Vessel (although these can be sub coded as type of sailing vessel)

Merchant ship categories

The UNCTAD review of maritime transport categorizes ships as: oil tankers, bulk (and combination) carriers, general cargo ships, container ships, and "other ships", which includes "liquefied petroleum gas carriers, liquefied natural gas carriers, parcel (chemical) tankers, specialized tankers, reefers, offshore supply, tugs, dredgers, cruise, ferries, other non-cargo". General cargo ships include "multi-purpose and project vessels and Roll-on/roll-off cargo".

Cargo ship

A cargo ship or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year; they handle the bulk of international trade. Cargo ships are usually specially designed for the task, often being equipped with cranes and other mechanisms to load and unload, and come in all sizes.

Bulk carrier

A bulk carrier is a ship used to transport bulk cargo items such as iron ore, bauxite, coal, cement, grain and similar cargo. Bulk carriers can be recognized by large box-like hatches on deck, designed to slide outboard or fold fore-and-aft to enable access for loading or discharging cargo. The dimensions of bulk carriers are often determined by the ports and sea routes that they need to serve, and by the maximum width of the Panama Canal. Most lakes are too small to accommodate bulk carriers, but a large fleet of lake freighters has been plying the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes spanning the Canada–United States border. The five lakes are Lake Superior, Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Lake Huron, H ...

and St. Lawrence Seaway of

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

for over a century.

Container ship

A container ship is a cargo ship that carries its cargo in standardized containers, in a technique called containerization. These ships are a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport.

Tanker

A tanker is a ship designed to transport liquids in bulk. Tankers can range in size from several hundred tons, designed to serve small harbours and coastal settlements, to several hundred thousand tons, with these being designed for long-range haulage. A wide range of products are carried by tankers, including: *

hydrocarbon In organic chemistry, a hydrocarbon is an organic compound consisting entirely of hydrogen and carbon. Hydrocarbons are examples of group 14 hydrides. Hydrocarbons are generally colourless and Hydrophobe, hydrophobic; their odor is usually fain ...

products such as oil, LPG, and LNG * chemicals, such as ammonia, chlorine, and styrene monomer *

fresh water Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salt (chemistry), salts and other total dissolved solids. The term excludes seawater and brackish water, but it does include ...

* wine Different products require different handling and transport, thus special types of tankers have been built, such as chemical tankers,

oil tanker An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk cargo, bulk transport of petroleum, oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quant ...

s, and gas carriers. Among oil tankers, supertankers were designed for carrying oil around the Horn of Africa from the

Middle East The Middle East (term originally coined in English language) is a geopolitical region encompassing the Arabian Peninsula, the Levant, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, and Iraq. The term came into widespread usage by the United Kingdom and western Eur ...

; the FSO '' Knock Nevis'' being the largest vessel in the world, a ULCC supertanker formerly known as ''Jahre Viking'' (Seawise Giant). It has a deadweight of 565,000 metric tons and length of about . The use of such large ships is in fact very unprofitable, due to the inability to operate them at full cargo capacity; hence, the production of supertankers has currently ceased. Today's largest oil tankers in comparison by gross tonnage are ''TI Europe'', ''TI Asia'', ''TI Oceania'', which are the largest sailing vessels today. But even with their deadweight of 441,585 metric tons, sailing as VLCC most of the time, they do not use more than 70% of their total capacity. Apart from pipeline transport, tankers are the only method for transporting large quantities of oil, although such tankers have caused large environmental disasters when sinking close to coastal regions, causing oil spills. See , '' Erika'', '' Exxon Valdez'', '' Prestige'' and for examples of tankers that have been involved in oil spills.

Coastal trading vessel

Coastal trading vessels are smaller ships that carry any category of cargo along coastal, rather than trans-oceanic, routes. Coasters are shallow-hulled ships used for trade between locations on the same island or continent. Their shallow hulls allow them to sail over reefs and other submerged navigation hazards, whereas ships designed for blue-water trade usually have much deeper hulls for better seakeeping.

Passenger ship

A passenger ship is a ship whose primary function is to carry passengers. The category does not include cargo vessels which have accommodations for limited numbers of passengers, such as the formerly ubiquitous twelve-passenger freighters in which the transport of passengers is secondary to the carriage of freight. The type does however include many classes of ships which are designed to transport substantial numbers of passengers as well as freight. Indeed, until recently virtually all ocean liners were able to transport mail, package freight and express, and other cargo in addition to passenger luggage, and were equipped with cargo holds and derricks, kingposts, or other cargo-handling gear for that purpose. Modern cruiseferries have car decks for lorries as well as the passengers' cars. Only in more recent ocean liners and in virtually all

cruise ship Cruise ships are large passenger ships used mainly for vacationing. Unlike ocean liners, which are used for transport, cruise ships typically embark on round-trip voyages to various ports of call, where passengers may go on Tourism, tours k ...

s has this cargo capacity been removed. A

ferry A ferry is a boat or ship that transports passengers, and occasionally vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A small passenger ferry with multiple stops, like those in Venice, Italy, is sometimes referred to as a water taxi or water bus ...

is a

boat A boat is a watercraft of a large range of types and sizes, but generally smaller than a ship, which is distinguished by its larger size or capacity, its shape, or its ability to carry boats. Small boats are typically used on inland waterways s ...

or ship carrying passengers and sometimes their vehicles. Ferries are also used to transport freight (in lorries and sometimes unpowered freight containers) and even railroad cars (in the case of a train ferry).

References

{{Authority control Merchant navy Ship types Maritime transport Freight transport