A Brief Introduction Of General Cargo Ship

A Brief Introduction Of General Cargo Ship 

A general cargo ship is a type of dry cargo ship.  It mainly packs all kinds of machinery and equipment, building materials and daily necessities into bundles and ships them in boxes. It is the most widely used type of transport vessel.

General cargo ships usually have double bottoms to ensure safety after stranding. In order to avoid damage caused by overloading and safety during transportation, multi-layer decks are usually used. This type of ship is generally provided with 3 to 6 cargo holds, each of which has a cargo hatch with a boom or crane at both ends. Since the quality of a single piece of groceries is light, the lifting weight of the boom is relatively small, generally 2 to 20 tons. For heavy-duty general cargo ships, most of them are equipped with tower cranes with a lifting capacity of 60-150 tons. The cabin of a general cargo ship is mostly located in the ship or at the stern. The former is conducive to adjusting the trim of the ship, the latter can increase the cargo volume, but it is easy to generate a large longitudinal bending moment when it is idling, which is harmful to the longitudinal strength of the ship.The general cargo ship usually also has a stern tank to prevent seawater from entering the cabin after the collision, and can be used to store fresh water to adjust the trim of the ship.

The general cargo ship has the following characteristics:

1. The payload of it cannot be very large. Usually, the total load capacity of a ocean-going cargo ship is 10,000 to 14,000 tons, the offshore is about 0.5 million tons, and the coastal area is below 0.3 million tons. Due to insufficient supply, mixed goods, slow loading and unloading, and long port stoppage, it is uneconomical for the cargo load of the cargo ship to be over-constructed.

2. For the convenience of tally, it generally has 2 to 3 decks. The one with a capacity of 10,000 tons, with 5 to 6 cargo holds. The position of the nacelle is mostly in the middle or tail type.

3. This ship usually have a tower and a bridge on the upper part of the cabin.

4. Many 10,000-tonne general cargo ships often have deep tanks due to ballast requirements, and deep tanks can also be used to load some liquid cargo (such as animal and vegetable oils).

5. They are generally equipped with lifting equipment, most of which are mainly booms, and also equipped with hydraulic rotary cranes.

6. Most this type of ships have one hatch in each cargo hold, but a few general cargo ships use double-row hatches as needed for loading and unloading cargo.

7. Unscheduled general cargo ships are generally low speed ships, and the high speed is not economical for general cargo ships. The speed of the ocean-going general cargo ship is 14-18 kn, the endurance is more than 12,000 nautical miles; the speed of the near-foreign cargo ship is 13-15 kn; the speed of the coastal general cargo ship is 11-13 kn.

8. General cargo ships usually contain a main engine, single propeller, single rudder.

The main disadvantage of the general cargo ship is that the various groceries carried need to be packed and bundled for loading and unloading. It has the disadvantages of troublesome loading and unloading operations, long time, high labor intensity, easy damage to goods, low loading and unloading efficiency, long cargo cycle and high cost. If the various groceries are pre-installed in a uniform container and then shipped in a ship, the above shortcomings can be overcome.