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Reviews
| Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World. By Brian J. Cudahy. New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 2006. xii+338 pp., tables, appens., notes, bibl., index. $29.95 hb (ISBN 0-8232-2568-2).
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Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World is the history of containerized sea transport from the first experimental voyage out of Port Newark, New Jersey, to Houston, Texas, in 1956 on the freighter Ideal X with 58 trailer truck bodies on deck, as shippers began to seek an alternative to time-consuming, costly, and laborious loading and unloading break-bulk cargo. Box boats are a category of cargo ships known as container ships. Initiated in 1956, they now transport 90% of the world's general cargo in containers versus break-bulk cargo holds.
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The idea of using steel containers easily transported to and from the docks by truck or train and then loaded onto ships (thus eliminating costly manual labor) was conceived by Malcom McLean, an independent trucker from North Carolina. He came up with the idea in 1937 while waiting on stevedores to unload his truck, costing him time and money. He visualized the whole truck being loaded onto the ship. Brown Trailer Company of Toledo, Ohio, implemented a similar method, using tractor-trailers with detached running gear to ship military cargo on barges in 1949. Brown developed a prototype trailer for McLean in 1955, and the trailers were produced in quantity by Brown and Fruehauf Trailer Company of Detroit. In the beginning, the transport ships were converted from old tankers. Later much more specialized container ships were built from the keel up as the concept caught on around the world (getting bigger and faster as practicality dictated). The focus of the book is on McLean (the "father of containerization"), the Pan Atlantic Steamship Company (the first shipping company he acquired in 1955, which became Sea-Land Service, and, eventually, A.P. Moeller Group headquartered in Copenhagen), and one port city (the port of New York, the most important port on the East Coast).
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McLean's new containerized method of shipping revolutionized sea transport and allowed globalization to develop as bigger and faster container ships come into service. In 1988, American President Lines (acquired by Neptune Orient Line of Singapore) put into service "the world's first post-Panamax container ship" (too big to transit the Panama Canal). Today the size of container ships is limited by the depth of the important Malacca Strait in Asia, and the largest ships capable of fitting through are being referred to as Malaccamax. Globalization equalized the transportation chain because, for the first time, small shippers, no matter where in the world they were located, could fill a container and get their products to market just as easily as much larger shipping companies. Computers keep track of the millions of containers on ships and docks, which is a large part of the timesaving aspect of containerization. Containers do not need to be opened between factory and destination. (However, this door-to-door aspect now causes security concerns in the age of global terrorism.) At Malcom McLean's eulogy in 2001, Charles L. Cushing (a friend and business associate) credited him as having "revolutionized and sped up the entire transportation chain and reduced its cost," resulting in "a steady and identifiable increase in the standard of living in the developing countries and elsewhere throughout the world" (p. 205).
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Box Boats is well written and offers interesting insights about a topic important in today's global economy (something people benefit from every day). Organized chronologically, the book includes numerous tables, black and white pictures, extensive notes, and appendices. The tables contain detailed lists of container ship names, dates manufactured, tonnage, and ports of call. The pictures would have been more helpful had they been distributed appropriately in the text instead of being batched into two separate groups. My favorite picture is of the container corner interlocking devices on page 187. This illustrates how the author might have gone into more detail on the construction of the containers themselves (dimensions, metal thickness, major manufacturers, code specifications, and designers). Cudahy provides an abundance of interesting technical data for the ships but not the containers. Those hungry for ship data will be delighted with the details. Perhaps SIA members unrealistically long for detail on every aspect of a subject.
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The book fits into industrial history by showing how a product, using existing technologies (the marriage of World War II transport ships and trucks), spawned a concept that is in use worldwide today, changed the way the world operates, and continues to evolve dynamically.
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| At about the same time Cudahy's book appeared, timed to commemorate the 50-year anniversary of the inaugural voyage of the Ideal X, a second book appeared on the subject of containerization. Economist Marc Levinson wrote The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (Princeton University Press, 2006). Levinson's book claims it is "the first comprehensive history of the shipping container," but, as it turns out, it was first by only a month. Levinson's volume focuses on the economic impact of containerization: weakening organized labor, devastation of traditional ports, changing the economy of shipping so that factories no longer needed to be close to ports, and Asia's huge role in providing products to the world. Brian Cudahy's book is ship-based (most of his other books are about boats, and he is a director of the Steamship Historical Association). Cudahy's focus on the transport ships themselves may serve SIA members' thirst for technical details better, but the two books complement each other well. |
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