Vessel Tracking Website Beckons Armchair Seafarers

Let's face it:  I'm a transportation geek--if you haven't noticed already!  On my regular walk downtown to work, during inclement weather or when I am running late, I sometimes take the MAX light rail one stop within Portland's Fareless Square.  Earlier this week, I first noticed Tri-Met's Rail System Map, and managed to miss my stop while studying it!      

My interest does not wane at the water's edge.  I have long been fascinated with the newspaper port calendar that describes the local movements and moorings of ships, ocean-going tugs, and barges.  Local editor and writer Brian Doyle, eloquently explained our common interest in an Oregonian essay earlier this year.  But like most paper publications, port calendars now have online, real-time competitors.   Vessel-tracking websites display information transmitted by Automatic Identification System (AIS) radio transponders.  AIS is a short-range, coastal tracking system in which all passenger ships and all but the smallest cargo vessels must participate per international convention.  There are a number of websites that provide AIS-based geographical information systems (GIS),  most of which charge for their most interesting services.

"The Box" and "The Colombo Bay" Offer Complementary Perspectives on Containerized Shipping

Among the many life-changing twentieth-century inventions, one of the simplest is often overlooked: the shipment of freight in metal containers with standard dimensions and attachment mechanisms. Before trucking entrepreneur Malcom McLean conceived of containerized shipping, it had certainly been tried in different forms.  McLean's innovation, however, was an intermodal system of ships, trains and trucks, all of which could handle containers that remained intact for their entire journey.  In 1955, McLean sold his trucking company and used the proceeds to purchase a steamship line and a terminal company in order to establish the first containerized shipping service.  On April 26, 1956, a converted World War II tanker sailed from Newark, NJ for Houston carrying 58 containers along with its standard liquid cargo.