Transportation: Barges That Cross the Ocean

Every business student learns in one of his first classes that shipping by water is the cheapest but also the slowest way to move goods. Only those who go on to become freight managers discover that the longest delays nowadays do not occur at sea. Dock congestion around the world has become so common that general cargo ships spend about half their time in port loading, unloading or just waiting—even when the docks are not shut down by a longshoremen’s strike.

Shipbuilders are now trying to speed things up by building vessels designed to carry loaded barges across the ocean. The idea is to bypass completely the crowded docks at deepwater ports. Cargo would be loaded on the barges at an inland U.S. river port and unloaded at another—which could be on a U.S. river system or in Europe or Asia. The arrangement is an outgrowth of the trend toward shipping goods overseas in factory-loaded containers. It overcomes several drawbacks inherent in containers, however, notably their need for costly special dock facilities.

Three types of barge-carrying ships are being developed. The Acadia Forest, the first of 13 LASH (for “lighter aboard ship”) vessels now being built at a cost of about $21.5 million each, is due to be put into operation by Central Gulf Steamship Corp. next month. The vessel will be able to carry 39,000 tons of cargo aboard 73 barges. Under plans devised by Jerome Goldman, a New Orleans marine architect, the barges will be hoisted out of the water by a giant shipboard crane and stored vertically in 14 bays on the LASH.

The SEEBEE of Lykes Corp. will carry only 38 barges, but they will be twice as large as the LASH barges. An elevator will descend from the SEEBEE’s stern to a point below sea level, then lift two barges at a time to one of three deck levels, where they will be stored horizontally. General Dynamics is scheduled to deliver three SEEBEES to Lykes in late 1971 at a total cost (including 266 special barges) of $111 million. The third barge ship, the Stradler, designed by New York Engineer Frank Broes, will be a catamaran that will cradle ten barges between its twin hulls. The motorized barges, each holding 12,000 tons of cargo, will sail in under their own power through a bow door, sail out through a stern door. Broes’ Stradler Ship Co. is negotiating to buy a shipyard to build these vessels.

Central Gulf and Lykes officials predict that their barge-carrying ships will pare the round-trip time on transatlantic voyages by half, to 30 days. Since transfers of cargo between barges and oceangoing ships will be eliminated, they also expect the vessels to cut shippers’ breakage and pilferage costs, and to reduce the heavy investments many shippers must now make in warehouses and dock facilities.

A Role in Space. The advent of the new ships could turn many inland cities—Memphis, Nashville, Tulsa and Little Rock, for example—into ports where ocean cargo can be handled. Even towns on shallow rivers could get a crack at foreign commerce, since the average draft of a barge is only eight feet. Tulsa officials already plan to spend $20 million in the next two years to build a port to be named Catoosa, from which they expect to ship oil field machinery destined for Europe. Arkansas grain distributors, who export 40% of the 100 million bushels of grain that the state produces annually, plan to switch from rail to barges in order to get the grain to New Orleans for the start of the ocean voyage. Some residents of northern Alabama even foresee a role for the barge ships in the U.S. space program. If a projected canal is built, they expect space vehicles made by Wernher von Braun’s team at Huntsville to be floated by barge to Mobile, Ala. for ocean shipment to Cape Kennedy.