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But
what was he to do? The ship had taken the
consignment on in Yokohama then went on
to Hong Kong, where it picked up furniture,
necessitating the cameras to come up so
the furniture could go down otherwise one
would crush the other. Then off to Busan
where the stowage of heavy machine parts
required everything on deck again so heavy
machine parts could go in at the bottom
before the rest was re-stowed. And then
off to Vancouver where the camera consignment
- half of it because the rest of the Nikon
shipment was going to Oakland, was taken
off to be railed Toronto, where a local
Toronto trucker took it to the importer.
So
weeks, even months after they were loaded
in Yokohama, the Toronto importer finds
10 cameras missing. But who dun it? The
Tokyo warehousemen, the Japanese trucker,
the Yokohama docker, the dockers in Hong
Kong, Busan and Vancouver, or was it the
Canadian railway freight handlers or the
Toronto trucker?
All
had means, motive and opportunity to do
the dirty. But because the suspect list
was so large and spread out and investigation
would be so costly, thieves were virtually
immune from detection unless caught red-handed.
But
then came Sea-Land and its copiers. No longer
did cargo move in boxes and bails. Now it
moved in sealed containers. True, there
were problems with truck hijackings when
whole containers were taken away in one
swipe. But as eye-catching as these events
were, this were no match for the dull carnage
of constant bleeding from constant pilferage.
These
developments combined to trump the old rule
of thumb of shipping that 50 per cent of
costs came from intermodal transfer, that
is, moving it the short distance from ship
to shore, from dock to truck or railcar
- as everyone knows who has ever moved house
knows - it's not the miles that cause the
blood, sweat and tears it's those few feet
that cost the most.
But
with containers all that changed. Instead
of five gangs of dockers moving 20 tons
every hour from ship to shore on a break
bulk ship, three longshoremen moved 20 tons
every three minutes.
And
that changed that 50 per cent intermodal
cost figure, which descended further to
five per cent in extreme cases. Movement
towards those extremities was brisk, too.
From 500-TEU ships, came 1,000 TEUers, to
2,500 TEU, and then to 4,000 TEU, pausing
briefly at this point because the Panama
Canal could take no bigger.
But
the Suez Canal knew no such limits and both
Asia and northern Europe had deep water
and the ships got bigger, reaching 14,000
TEU in 2007 and with 18,000 TEUers now afloat
and 20,000-TEUers on the drawing boards.
Even
by the mid-'80s it was clear that what was
then known as the "third world"
and now called "emerging markets"
was thirsting to supply the needs of the
developed world better and more cheaply
than its tariff-protected domestic industries.
But
what made this possible was the container
because it was best suited to mass and massive
production. Thus factories became enormous
and increasingly Chinese, as China had a
huge reservoir of cheap labour, and could
operate at such a scale that unit costs
plunged and imports could be made available
to the poor worldwide.
Chinese
workers flocked to coastal cities to earn
what for them were good wages. In 1984,
Hong Kong's next door neighbour was little
more than a few high-rises surrounded by
a larger number of low-rises and the remnants
of a fishing village. Today, Shenzhen is
a metropolis that is bigger than Hong Kong.
And
all of this was brought about by the container,
which was brought about by Sea-Land and
the veterans who were partying at the Hong
Kong's Maritime Museum.
Of
course, being first is no guarantee of being
the last man standing and certainly not
the stormy shipping business. Malcom McLean
sold out but retained a seat on the JJ Reynolds
board. He then fell out with his fellow
directors and left the enterprise altogether.
There
was also a problem of Sea-Land not going
along with the ISO standard, adopted by
everyone else in the now burgeoning container
trade. While all were working with containers
in increments of 10 feet with TEUs and FEUs,
Sea-Land stuck with its iconic 35-foot box
because it matched American truck lengths.
While
this has been long abandoned, it stood in
the way of securing a large South American
reefer fruit trade, contributing to the
loss of 100 per cent market share to something
quite insignificant as a Maersk unit today.
Largely
unappreciated is the social impact of containerisation.
It's presence in the poorest parts of the
world signals economic and social progress
because wherever there are container terminals
there are consumer goods that people buy
they could not buy before because of the
economies of scale provided containerisation.
Without the box technology, shipping would
be too expensive to move cargo to faraway
poor people with the big ships, the cranes,
the big factories, which when combined made
it all possible.
In
the 1950s, they were an American phenomenon.
In the '60s, they became an Atlantic phenomenon
and in the 1970s and soon after, a Pacific
phenomenon with Sea-Land and the Vietnam
War, latching itself onto the burgeoning
trade with the Far East.
Throughout
the '80s and '90s, containerisation established
beach heads in the more civilised parts
of the developing world first with combi
geared ships with deck cranes and then with
purpose built terminals with quay cranes.
Now
Angola, which back in the 1970s had an average
life expectancy of 35, has a busy container
terminal bringing consumer goods at prices
people can afford. There are other lands
yet to be conquered by the box that changed
the world, but they are getting fewer. And
as containerisation advances, poverty recedes
And
these true revolutionaries, now in their
seventies, partying at the Hong Kong Maritime
Museum can truly say: "We saw it happen."
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