Chapter 1 Examples of ship types

Ship Definitions and Hull Resistance

Ship types Category Class Type

Depending on the nature of their cargo,

and sometimes also the way the cargo Tanker Oil tanker Crude (oil) Carrier CC
Very Large Crude Carrier VLCC
is loaded/unloaded, ships can be di-
Ultra Large Crude Carrier ULCC
vided into different categories, classes Product Tanker
and types, some of which are men-
Gas tanker Liquefied Natural Gas carrier LNG
tioned in Table 1.
Chemical tanker Liquefied Petroleum Gas carrier LPG

The three largest categories of ships OBO Oil/Bulk/Ore carier OBO

are container ships, bulk carriers (for Bulk carrier Bulk carrier
bulk goods such as grain, coal, ores, Container ship Container ship Container Carrier
etc.) and tankers, which again can be Roll On - Roll off Ro-Ro

divided into more precisely defined General cargo ship General cargo
Coaster
classes and types. Thus, tankers can
Reefer Reefer Refrigerated cargo vessel
be divided into oil tankers, gas tank-
Passenger ship Ferry
ers and chemical tankers, but there are
Cruise vessel
also combinations, e.g. oil/chemical
able 1
tankers.

Table 1 provides only a rough outline. rules, the summer freeboard draught The winter freeboard draught is less
In reality there are many other combi- for seawater is equal to the “Scantling than that valid for summer because of
nations, such as “Multipurpose bulk draught”, which is the term applied to the risk of bad weather whereas, on the
container carriers”, to mention just one the ship’s draught when dimensioning other hand, the freeboard draught for
example. the hull. tropical seas is somewhat higher than
the summer freeboard draught.
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
laid down by the IMO (International
D
Maritime Organisation) and local au-
thorities, indicate the depth to which
the vessel may be safely loaded (the
Freeboard deck
depth varies according to the season D: Freeboard draught

and the salinity of the water).

TF

There are, e.g. load lines for sailing in F T Tropical

D L
S Summer
freshwater and seawater, respectively,
W Winter
with further divisions for tropical condi- WNA Winter - the North Atlantic
Danish load mark
tions and summer and winter sailing.
Freshwater Seawater
According to the international freeboard
F g. 1 Load l nes freeboard draught

6 Basic Principles of Ship Propulsion