Category Class Type

Oil tanker Crude (oil) Carrier CC

Ship Definitions and Hull Tanker
Resistance Very Large Crude Carrier VLCC
Ultra Large Crude Carrier ULCC
Product Tanker
Ship types
Gas tanker Liquefied Natural Gas carrier LNG
Depending on the nature of their cargo,
and sometimes also the way the cargo Chemical tanker Liquefied Petroleum Gas carrier LPG
is loaded/unloaded, ships can be divided
into different categories, classes, and OBO Oil/Bulk/Ore carrier OBO
types, some of which are mentioned in
Table 1. Bulk carrier Bulk carrier
Container carrier
Container ship Container ship
The three largest categories of ships Roll On
Roll Off Ro
Ro
are container ships, bulk carriers (for General cargo
bulk goods such as grain, coal, ores, General cargo ship
etc.) and tankers, which again can be Coaster
divided into more precisely defined Reefer Reefer Refrigerated cargo vessel
classes and types. Thus, tankers can
Ferry
be divided into oil tankers, gas tankers Passenger ship
Cruise vessel
and chemical tankers, but there are
also combinations, e.g. oil/chemical
tankers. Table 1: Examples of ship types

Table 1 provides only a rough outline.

In reality there are many other combi
the risk of bad weather whereas, on the tropical seas is somewhat higher than
nations, such as “Multi
purpose bulk other hand, the freeboard draught for the summer freeboard draught.
container carriers”, to mention just one
example.

A ship’s load lines

Painted halfway along the ship’s side

is the “Plimsoll Mark”, see Fig. 1. The
lines and letters of the Plimsoll Mark,
which conform to the freeboard rules D
laid down by the IMO (International
Maritime Organisation) and local au

thorities, indicate the depth to which
the vessel may be safely loaded (the
depth varies according to the season Freeboard deck
D: Freeboard draught
and the salinity of the water).

There are, e.g. load lines for sailing in

freshwater and seawater, respectively, TF
with further divisions for tropical condi

tions and summer and winter sailing. F T Tropical
D L
According to the international freeboard S Summer
rules, the summer freeboard draught W Winter
for seawater is equal to the “Scantling WNA Winter - the North Atlantic
draught”, which is the term applied to Danish load mark
the ship’s draught when dimensioning
Freshwater Seawater
the hull.

The winter freeboard draught is less

than that valid for summer because of Fig. 1: Load lines – freeboard draught