Car transporter (ship type)

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A car transporter is a special type of RoRo ship .

description

Wallenius Wilhelmsen car transporter Tamesis
Grand Pace car transporter in Rotterdam

From the outside, this type of ship is characterized by a particularly bulky shape. In the hold, it is particularly noticeable that most of the decks are only very low (car height) in order to be able to load the largest possible number of vehicles (mostly cars ). A car transporter usually has two openings / ramps to ensure quick loading and unloading: one on the starboard side and a large angled tail ramp. Due to the high superstructures, there is a risk of large drift , especially in strong winds .

The capacity of the large ships built for overseas service is up to 8500 vehicles like the New Horizon class (199 m length, 36 m width, 71,475 m² loading space on 14 loading decks). Most of the ships have a total length of 200 meters and a width of 32.2 meters, a few are higher, such as the four ships of the "Tamesis class" with 242 meters. Since 2004 there have been plans for 270 meter long car transporters. Smaller ships, some of which can only hold a few hundred vehicles, are generally used in what is known as the “ feeder service ” and transport the vehicles from the major ports.

The loading and unloading of these ships is a labor-intensive matter, as each individual vehicle is brought on or off board with its own power. In the ports, car transporters are often handled at special car terminals such as Oakland , which are specially set up for car logistics . Europe's largest "car port" is Zeebrugge with around 2.8 million vehicles and Bremerhaven with over 2.3 million vehicles. (Status: 2018)

Own the largest fleets of car transporters

development

Johann Schulte , equipped with suspended decks , was handling Volkswagen's handling in Baltimore in 1970
Conventional car envelope in 1969

Before the development of modern car transporters, cars were transported on normal cargo ships. The disadvantages, in addition to the laborious loading with cranes or loading booms, were that the cars could easily be damaged in bad weather between the general cargo loads. The load was secured ("lashing") with the Spanish winch .

As early as 1922, the German shipowner Arnold Bernstein had the former coastal armored ships SMS Odin and SMS Aegir converted initially to transport locomotives from Germany to Russia and Spain. In 1924 the Odin and Aegir were converted again to transport 220 and 320 brand new Ford Model Ts from Copenhagen to Malmö, Oslo and Helsinki. The Aegir was in service until 1930 and the Odin until 1934. In 1925, the same shipowner had a former lighter converted into a motor-driven car transporter - this had a capacity of 80 cars and remained in Bernstein's possession until 1938.

1955 came for the shipping company Wallenius Lines with the Jakara converted for test purposes to the first combined car-bulk transporter and with the two ships Rigoletto and Traviata the first two pure car carriers. In 1958 Blohm + Voss developed hanging decks , with which around 250 conventional cargo ships were equipped to transport cars in the following years. In all of these ships, however, the cars continued to be loaded “conventionally”, that is with loading gear .

At the beginning of the 1960s, the Constantia owned by the Chr. F. Ahrenkiel shipping company in Hamburg was retrofitted with a suspended deck system developed by Blohm + Voss . These were up to five lattice decks suspended on top of each other on wires, which allowed optimal space utilization based on the VW Beetle . The ship was able to load up to 1180 VW vehicles - still with normal general cargo dishes. When these were unloaded in the ports of destination, which were mainly on the east coast of the United States and on the Great Lakes , the ship was converted by the crew in a short time for grain cargo. The lattice decks were pulled up below the main deck, the pontoons from the hatch shaft were stored on deck. The ship could then be loaded with around 17,000 tons of grain for the return voyage to Europe in little more than a day  . This represented a very profitable use of the ship on both routes.

The first "real" car transporters , in which the vehicles were loaded according to the RoRo principle , which is still valid today , were the ships of the Aniara type , which were still equipped with additional loading gear , which were delivered at the end of 1963 by the Swedish Lodose Varv and the 1964 by Trosvik First Pure Car Carrier (PCC) Dyvi Anglia, delivered in Brevik . On July 14, 1966, the Citadel was the first new build in a series of six bulk goods vehicles from the Swedish Oresundvarvet shipyard. Since the 1970s, almost exclusively pure car transporters have been built. The largest car transporter in 2012 was the Tønsberg from shipping company Wilh. Wilhelmsen.

Inland shipping

Car transporter Waterways 3 on the Rhine
Tightly parked Suzuki SX4 on the Danube ship Kelheim at the Melk power plant , Lower Austria (2019)

Car transporters have been used in inland shipping since 1982 . The first ships drove for the Ford plant in Cologne . Your sailing area goes from Wörth am Rhein to Rotterdam , Amsterdam , Antwerp and Vlissingen .

The ships have up to five decks and are loaded and unloaded via a bow ramp , sometimes also via a side ramp. You can transport up to 600 medium-sized cars.

The latest ships, such as Waterways 1, 2 and 3 , have the following dimensions: length 110 m, width 11.4 m and a maximum draft of 3.2 m. They are approved for navigation in the estuary . The decks above the hull are 12.5 m wide. The entire floor space is 3,580 m². The cargo area is 81.3 × 10.1 × 5.2 m in size. Decks two and four are adjustable in height, deck five can be easily dismantled so that it can also be used on waters with lower bridges. The hold is ventilated and the air is renewed 20 times an hour. The wheelhouse can be raised eight meters. These ships are also suitable for the transport of trucks , construction machinery and containers . The largest ship is the Forens with a length of 135 m. Although it only has three decks, it can load up to 550 small trucks. The drive takes place here with two motors with 955 kW each on two five-blade propellers with nozzles. A four-channel bow thruster with 448 kW power is installed in the bow. Two diesel generators each 120 kVA and one with 50 kVA apparent power are installed for the power supply . Since the cargo does not reach the carrying capacity of the ship by far, a draft of 2.5 m is achieved by taking in ballast water, but this can go down to 3.7 m depending on the circumstances.

literature

  • Ralf Witthohn: New designs for versatile RoRo carriers . In: Schiff & Hafen , issue 6/2012, pp. 28–31, Seehafen-Verlag, Hamburg 2012, ISSN  0938-1643

Web links

Commons : Car Transporter  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Kleinort: Largest car carrier delivered · “Höegh Target” comes to Bremerhaven at the end of August · Five more new buildings planned . In: Daily port report of July 14, 2015, p. 13
  2. ↑ https://www.portofzeebrugge.be/en/port/facts-and-figures
  3. ↑ https://bremenports.de/statistiken/
  4. ^ German Motor Ship for Carrying Locomotives. In: The Motor Ship . Vol. 3, No. 31 . Temple Press, London October 1922, pp. 240 .
  5. ^ Bernstein, Arnold: Arnold Bernstein - A Jewish shipowner . Convent-Verlag, Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-934613-18-7 , pp. 160-165 .
  6. ↑ The Jakara at Miramar Ship Index  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) accessed May 20, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.miramarshipindex.org.nz  
  7. ↑ The Rigoletto at Miramar Ship Index  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) accessed May 20, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.miramarshipindex.org.nz  
  8. ↑ The Traviata at Miramar Ship Index  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) accessed May 20, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.miramarshipindex.org.nz  
  9. ↑ The Constantia at Miramar Ship Index  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) accessed May 20, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.miramarshipindex.org.nz  
  10. ↑ The Aniara at Miramar Ship Index  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) accessed May 23, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.miramarshipindex.org.nz  
  11. ↑ The Citadel at Miramar Ship Index  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (English) accessed May 20, 2009@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.miramarshipindex.org.nz