Neptune Atlas

Ships

Ship types and what they carry

·

A merchant ship is not a general purpose box that comes in different sizes. The type is settled by one thing, the physical state of the cargo, and almost everything else follows from it: the shape of the holds, the gear that moves the cargo, the code she is surveyed against, and the market she is chartered in. Read a type name as a statement about which cargoes she can lift at all.

Four states of cargo, and the families that follow

Solid and poured loose. Liquid and pumped. Gas, which travels as a liquid only because it has been chilled, compressed, or both. And everything that keeps its own shape and has to be handled piece by piece. Every merchant ship type is an answer to one of those four.

FamilyWhat she carriesHow the cargo moves
Bulk carrierHomogeneous solids poured loose: iron ore, coal, grain, bauxite, cement, fertiliserShore conveyors and grabs, or her own cranes if she is geared
TankerLiquids: crude oil, refined products, vegetable oils, chemicalsPumped through a manifold. Nothing is handled, which is why a tanker berth looks empty while she works
Gas carrierLPG, LNG, ammonia, ethylene, held as liquid under pressure, refrigeration or bothPumped, into containment that is a designed part of the ship rather than simply a tank
Container shipAnything that fits in a boxGantry cranes into cell guides, almost always on a liner schedule rather than a voyage charter
General cargo and multipurposeBreakbulk, bagged goods, steels, timber, project piecesHer own cranes, on to tweendecks or into box shaped holds
Ro-ro and car carrierAnything with wheels, and anything that can be put on a trailerDriven aboard over a ramp, so the port time is a fraction of a lift-on operation
ReeferChilled and frozen produce, fishPalletised into insulated holds held at a carrying temperature that is itself a contract term
Heavy liftSingle pieces too large or too heavy for any of the aboveHer own heavy derricks, or floated on and off a submersible deck

The distinction most often lost: bulk carrier or general cargo

These two look alike from outside and are not interchangeable. A modern bulk carrier is a single open hold from tank top to hatch, with hopper and topside tanks that make the cargo self trimming. That shape is excellent for ore and useless for anything that must be stacked, separated or kept off the steel.

A general cargo or multipurpose ship keeps tweendecks, removable decks that divide the hold horizontally, and often box shaped holds with vertical sides. That gives her separations for several parcels, a floor to stow bagged cargo on, and usable stowage in the wings that a hopper tank would waste. She pays for it in deadweight and in speed.

The commercial consequence is direct. A cargo of 8,000 tonnes of bagged rice in four parcels for four receivers is a multipurpose ship’s cargo. Offering a self trimming bulk carrier against it is not a keen offer, it is an offer that cannot perform.

The rulebook follows the cargo, not the ship

Type decides which international code governs the loading, and those codes carry obligations that land on the fixture rather than only on the master.

What a register’s type field actually says

Every fleet database carries a type, and it is a vendor classification derived from what a ship reported and what the source recorded. It is not a survey, and its buckets are broader than the trade’s vocabulary.

34,449

Hulls in the register typed simply as Cargo. That single label covers bulk carriers, general cargo ships, container ships and multipurpose tonnage without separating them. Beside it sit 15,458 tankers, 12,288 tugs, 9,619 fishing vessels and 5,649 passenger ships.

Treat the type field as a first filter and never as the answer. The distinctions a broker actually needs, geared or gearless, tweendecker or single deck, box holds or hoppers, grain fitted or not, are on the owner’s particulars sheet and in the class notations. They are not in the type column, and a search that trusts the type column alone will offer the wrong ship politely and confidently.

Where the type lands in a fixture

Size classes are drawn separately inside each family, because the constraints differ. The dry bulk bands run Handysize to Capesize, and the tanker bands run MR to VLCC on a different set of edges entirely. A ship is offered inside her family, against a cargo that suits her cargo gear and her hold shape, at a berth that will take her draught.

So the working order is: what state is the cargo in, which family does that force, what does the parcel size do to the band, and only then which named ships are open. Getting the family wrong at the top makes every later step tidy and pointless.

References

Dry bulk vessel sizesHandysize to Capesize: where the deadweight bands sit, why the boundaries are conventions, and how many hulls are in each. Tanker sizesHandy to ULCC: where the tanker bands sit, and why the coating and the last three cargoes decide suitability, not the deadweight. Reading a ship's particularsWhat each figure on a vessel description constrains, why GRT is a volume, and why draught excludes a ship long before deadweight does. Hull form and resistanceWhat a ship burns is set by the shape she drags through the water, and by how clean it has been kept since the last drydocking.

Neptune Atlas

Neptune Atlas carries the type label as the source wrote it rather than rewriting it into a tidier scheme, so a filter is built on what is actually in the record. Where the source bucket is broader than the trade’s word for the same ship, the record says so instead of guessing. Every paid plan starts with 7 free days. A card is needed to start them, and cancelling before they end costs nothing.

Try 7 days free Ship chartering software for brokers What each plan includes