Cargo Ships facts

While investigating facts about Cargo Ships That Take Passengers and Cargo Ships Pollution, I found out little known, but curios details like:

A train company invented a way to ship oil without pipelines; bitumen is converted into a solid product and sealed in plastic made from recyclables. The pucks are designed to be transported in regular container cars by train and loaded onto cargo ships at coal terminals. They float too!

how cargo ships work?

Garfield phones have been washing up on a beach in France for over 20 years. A shipping container fell off the cargo ship in a storm and the locals can do nothing about it.

What cargo ships carry?

In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across answering what cargo ships take passengers. Here are 50 of the best facts about Cargo Ships For Sale Uk and Cargo Ships In Storms I managed to collect.

why do cargo ships sit out at sea?

Henry "Box" Brown escaped slavery in the American south by mailing himself to freedom. He had friends pack him into a small box, and ship him as cargo from Richmond to Philadelphia. He survived, and went on to work as a magician
In 1959, U.S. Postal Service successfully shipped mail using a cruise missile, delivering cargo from New Jersey to Florida in 22 minutes
Wisconsin's only pirate once got the crew of an entire ship drunk then proceeded to throw them all over board. He then took the ship to Chicago and sold all the cargo.
In 1992 thousands of plastic yellow ducks broke free from a cargo ship on the Pacific. They floated halfway around the world for years and were used to study ocean currents.
A WWI submarine U-28 sunk after it was struck by an automobile which flew off a cargo ship it had just torpedoed
Thousands of shipping containers are lost to the sea each year, and that if the containers cargo weight does not exceed 80% of the containers rated capacity, they will float.
A British soldier whose ship was sunk by a U-boat survived for 70 days at sea. After being rescued, he was sent back to England from the Bahamas on a cargo ship. It was hit by 2 torpedoes from a U-Boat as they were approaching the UK. There were no survivors.
Attaching a huge kite on cargo ships can decrease fuel consumption by 30%
Imported wines are often giant "boxed wines" when they're shipped: A huge bag of wine traveling inside a cargo container.
In 1781 a slave ship threw 133 slaves overboard to make an insurance claim for them as cargo.

cargo ships facts — What do cargo ships carry?

Why cargo ships float?

You can easily fact check why do cargo ships sit by examining the linked well-known sources.

More and more people are booking cruises on cargo ships. Passengers like it because they are less crowded, there are less distractions, and you can go on routes traditional cruise ships don't frequent

In 16th and 17th Century Denmark, merchant ship captains had to pay a toll based on the value of the goods on the ship. The value was declared by the captain. The Danish authorities could take the value based toll (1-2%) or opt to buy the cargo for the declared value. - source

On average 10 bulk cargo ocean ships are lost each year due to liquefaction of their cargo - source

The war between Israel and Egypt in 1967 ended up trapping 14 unlucky Cargo Ships in the Suez Canal for eight years. During this period crew members drank so much beer, they speculated there must be five feet of beer bottles on the lake's floor.

As a regular person you can book a room on a cargo ship and travel as a tourist - source

When were cargo ships invented?

Just before the Halifax Explosion, a train dispatcher who saw the cargo ship with the explosives catch fire sent a message saying "Hold up the train. Ammunition ship afire in harbor making for Pier 6 and will explode. Guess this will be my last message. Good-bye boys."

How cargo ships float?

A single cargo ship can produce as much pollution as 50 million cars. There are 90,000 cargo in use (in 2009).

Some cargo ships use parachutes to burn less fuel.

In spring of 1942 German U-boats terrorized east coast of US sinking fuel tankers and cargo ships with impunity and often within sight of shore and in less than 7 months destroyed 22 percent of the tanker fleet and sank 233 ships killing 5,000 ...more than 2X number who perished at Pearl Harbor.

Bunker fuel is the generic term given to any fuel poured into a ship’s bunkers to power its engines. Deep sea cargo ships typically burn the heavy, residual oil left over after gasoline, diesel and other light hydrocarbons are extracted from crude oil during the refining process. It's very toxic

In 2007, United States Naval forces assisted a North Korean cargo ship after it was seized by Somalian Pirates. Both North Korea and the US won the battle, and the US provided medical assistance to North Korea after the incident.

Interesting facts about cargo ships

19th century sailors, including Charles Darwin, dined on Galapagos tortoises. They would flip them on their backs and store them alive in the ship's cargo hold until they were slaughtered for fresh meat.

A "Red Herring" logical fallacy is a point in an argument that misleads or distracts from the issue at hand. E.g. "If the world's 15 largest cargo ships don't burn the low grade fuel, someone will." Doesn't make the low grade fuel any more reasonable for the ships to burn it.

Capesize" are the largest cargo ships and are so large that they cannot use the Suez or Panama Canals and as such must pass either Cape Agulhas or Cape Horn to traverse between oceans.

Cargo ships leave the equivalent of contrails along their route that can be seen from space. Water molecules accumulate on pollutants coming from the exhaust of ships which essentially seeds clouds. These clouds are known as ship tracks.

To cross the canal a toll must be paid. This toll is based on the ship's cargo space. If it is a military ship the toll is based on the weight.

How cargo ships are loaded?

The Texas City Disaster, a mishandled 1947 cargo ship fire that ignited 2300 tons of ammonium nitrate, causing a massive explosion, and killing 581 people. The explosion broke windows 40 miles away, blew 2 planes out of the sky, and caused a 15 foot tidal wave.

White Star Line, the company widely known for the Titanic had at least 5 other disasters with other boats. This includes another flagship hit by an iceberg, a navigation disaster that led to one of their ships sinking on her maiden voyage, & the disappearance of a massive cargo ship.

About the car carrier ship Cougar Ace which almost sank in 2006 while enroute to North America from Japan. It was salvaged, but Mazda executives decided they couldn't trust the integrity of the cargo anymore, so they ordered it all destroyed: 4,703 brand new cars.

About the earliest example of insurance fraud. In 300BC, Hegestratos, a Greek sea merchant, took out an insurance policy against his ship and its cargo. He planned to sink his empty ship, sell the corn and keep the loan. He was caught in the act by his own crew, and drowned trying to escape

Ships that have used ISS as a spaceport include four European ATV cargo spacecraft, four Japanese HTV cargo spacecraft, three SpaceX Dragons, 37 Space Shuttle missions, and 89 Russian spacecraft.

Colonists refused to allow the ships to unload their tea in the harbors in America, and the ships often sailed home with full cargo.

In Guam, there was once over 3000 Brown Tree Snakes per Square Mile. With an abundance of birds (food) and no natural predators, the snakes flourished to those numbers within a few years after the first few were accidentally transported to Guam on a cargo ship.

In WW2, the America branch with the highest casualty rate wasn't the Army Air Force, the Navy, the Coast Guard or even the Marines. It was the Merchant Marine. 1 in 26 sailors on cargo ships and transports died.

In 1983 after a Sea Harrier jet pilot lost contact with his ship he emergency landed on the nearest cargo ship before running out of fuel. He was met with with a frenzy of press and tourists at Santa Cruz, Tenerife days later.

In 1997 a cargo ship lost a container with 5 million Lego pieces of whom many were sea-themed and which are continuingly found on different beaches until today

Other industrial disasters that have occurred include the Halifax ship explosion (with cargo of high explosives) of 1917 that killed 2,000, and the Port Chicago Disaster (munitions explosion) of 1944 that killed 320 people.

Other Spanish explorers arrived between 1522 and 1565, and it became the galleon trade route. Galleons were large ships used for carrying cargo.

In 1990, 60,000 Nikes slipped off a cargo ship in the northeastern Pacific and sailed, in shoe flocks, on the currents.

At any moment there are 5-6 million shipping containers on cargo ships sailing across the world’s oceans. On average, one shipping container is lost overboard ever very hour, amounting to 10,000 containers are lost at sea per year

There is an open research station that is often mistaked for a capsized cargo ship, thanks to it's peculiar design

This is our collection of basic interesting facts about Cargo Ships. The fact lists are intended for research in school, for college students or just to feed your brain with new realities. Possible use cases are in quizzes, differences, riddles, homework facts legend, cover facts, and many more. Whatever your case, learn the truth of the matter why is Cargo Ships so important!