Ever notice that Vancouver’s English Bay skyline is constantly littered with those, squat, red-hulled ships? Or maybe not. They’re such an omnipresent feature of our surroundings, that we pay them little heed despite their importance. Each of these modern-day merchant ships, or “Bulk Carriers”, doggedly cross the Pacific laden with Canadian commodities. In recent years, they amount to a ceaseless conveyor belt ferrying coal, potash, grain and softwood lumber to hungry markets in China. So hungry in fact, that softwood lumber imports to China exceeded those bound for the U.S. this spring. Exports to China were up 157 per cent by volume over the same month last year. Each of those sticks of wood was carefully stowed in English Bay’s bulk carriers.
While their economic usefulness to Canada and B.C. is undeniable, I am more interested in how the technology of these ships have evolved into the monsters we see today. Before the advent of steel, steam-powered ships longshoremen loaded the cargo into sacks, stacked the sacks onto pallets, and put the pallets into the cargo hold with a crane.
A lot has changed since then.Today, bulkers make up 40% of the world’s merchant fleets and range in size from single-hold mini-bulkers to mammoth ore ships able to carry 400,000 tons of deadweight tons. A number of specialized designs exist: some can unload their own cargo, some depend on port facilities for unloading, and some even package the cargo as it is loaded. Most the ships loitering outside of Stanley Park are in the “Handymax” class capable of carrying 10,000 tons. They are part of a fleet of over 6,000 similar vessels worldwide.
I’m not sure what their direct contribution to community building is other than that, as we stroll the Seawall, we all enjoy looking out at them. To me and to so many others, they consistently evoke the romance of the high seas and of exotic destinations. No amount of sheer size and technological sophistication can change that.