Malcolm McLean passed away on 25 of 3,375 conrainerships with a capacity May 200 1 at the age of 87 with little of 7.2 million TEUs. They are divided fanfa re. The H arvard Business School into fo ur distinct categories: "feeder" has acknowledged him as one of the ships, those that carry less than a tho ugreatest business leaders of the twentiesand T EUs and are designed to shuttle th century. Tho ugh his nam e m ay not co ntainers to and from small ports to larger ports; "handy-size" vessels of one be as well known in the m aritime field as such innovato rs as Robert Fulton , to three tho usand TEUs; "Panam ax" Sam uel C unard, Ismbard Ki ngdo m ships of up to four tho usand T EUs; and finally, "post-Panam ax." Their imBrunel, Do nald McKay, o r H enry J. Kaiser, it is clear th at his co ntribupact on the world's trade is significanr. tion to the industry was extrao rdinary. In 1983 the total US foreign oceanBorn in the sm all rural town of M axborne commerce was 694.4 million to n, No rth Carolina, he was a product metric tons; ten years later, this had of the D epression . Yet this truck driincreased to 884.4. Ten years after that, ver reinvented ocean shipping, and his it had magnified to 1,167.9 million m evision of co ntain erizing cargo has tric tons, nearly do ubling in just twenty transformed the world's oceans into a years. Growth of this m agnitude is only true global highway. .t possible through the use of conrainers. Befor e contain eri za tion , a typical Malcolm Mclean (1914-2001) Salvatore R. Mercogliano is an assistant freighter could handle only 10,000 tons and took nearly two weeks to load/ unload. In 2004 the po rt of professor of history at the United States Military Academy at West Los Angeles/Long Beach alone acco unted fo r 8.6 million con- Point. H e earned a BS in Marine Transportation from SUNY Maritainers, or thirty-six percent of the mo re than twenty-three time College and worked for seven years as a deck officer in the mermillion containers that moved in and out of the United States . chant marine, in the employ of the Military Sealift Command. H e That translates to over 23,000 conrainers per day, with each T EU went on to East Carolina University for an A1A in Marfrime I listory capable of carrying up to twenty tons of cargo-equal to loading/ and Nautical Archeology and earned a PhD in Military and Naval H istory from the University ofAlabama. offioading approximately for ty-fi ve freigh te rs daily.
(background p hoto) ''Panamax" ships are built to the
dimensions of the Panama Canal locks. SEA HISTORY 114, S PRING 2006
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