Modern Equivalent?

[Jak Nazryth]

Is there a modern or even early 20th century equivalent to a 200 ton free trader or far trader?
In other words, is there a modern small "tramp freighter"? Single owner, non-corporate small cargo/passenger ship....
Want to show examples of modern/early 20th century version for a specific adventure.
Any merchant marines out there?

Or... are all cargo vessels these days the massive ocean going mega freighters?

Thanks.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

oops... forgot to add...
Think of the ship "Venture" from King Kong. That or smaller.
Anything more modern?

 

[phavoc]

There are some smaller general cargo and container ships, but they don't do the transatlantic or transpacific runs. They generally pick up cargo to deliver to the smaller ports that you can't reach with the larger ships, or that don't have rail access.

But I'm not aware of any true free trader type shipping line anymore. With the advent of instant communications, there isn't any more "ooh! look at this precious cargo just waiting to be scooped up!" anymore. Everything is scheduled pretty much.

You would be more likely to go back to the mid-late 1800's to find what you are looking for. No telegraph, no radio, no internet. Everything travelled at the speed of the ship delivering the message. Back then you had a wide range of cargo ships, tramp freighters, the bigger clippers ships. That's more like how a Traveller Free Trader would be.

 

[rust]

You might find the book reviewed here interesting:

http://misunderstoodmariner.blogspot.de/2009/08/mariners-in-review-steaming-to-bamboola.html

There are still tramp freighters today, although their number
is declining and they are far more common for example in
Africa or Southeast Asia than on the North Atlantic or the Me-
diterranean.

I think the closest equivalent of a free trader would probably
be the modern ship type known as "mini-bulker", it should not
be too difficult to find some examples on the Internet.

 

[phavoc]

Check out some of these sites for more on freighters and commercial traffic:

Obligatory wiki entry for container ships - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Container_ship

Aaand here's the entry for feeder ships - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feeder_ship

And the one for general cargo ships - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_ship

news articles on shipping - http://www.joc.com/container-shipping/small-container-ships-face-challenges-report-says

Here's a small container ship for sale (holds about 120 40' containers. 1 TEU is equivalent to a 20' container) - http://www.worldoils.com/marketplace/equipdetails.php?id=203&237%20TEU%20Container%20Ship%20For%20Sale%20-%20Feeder%20container%20ship%20for%20sale

An even smaller container ship for sale (holds about 70 40' containers) - http://www.workboatsinternational.com/144-teu-small-container-vessel-stls1421.html

Wanna know how to travel on a freighter? - http://seaplus.com/faq.php

Generally speaking most inter-continental traffic is carried on the bigger ships, with the smaller ones being the feeders. Much like how airlines run hub-and-spoke operations, or railroads run most of their manifest freights from one rail yard to the next.

 

[phavoc]

Oh, and just ran across this old article for GURPS Space which should be of interest:

http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/2space.htm

 

[far-trader]

I was going to say much the same as the previous replies. It's a matter of context and volume.

The modern sea equivalent might be what is called shortsea shipping:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_sea_shipping

One example of which is OCEANX:

http://www.oceanex.com/

More of a "fledgling line" in Traveller terms but the ships are somewhat comparative to free-traders individually.

Some smaller shippers used to offer stateroom passage that sounds like middle passage in Traveller and these ships might be able to reduce crew and free up a couple rooms if they were operating bare bones.

 

[rust]

And here are the data of another example:

http://www.worldoils.com/marketplace/equipdetails.php?id=494&Used%20Mini%20Bulker%20for%20sale%20-%20Used%204500Ton%20dwt%20bulker%20for%20sale

 

[Grazelander]

I spent 25years merchant marine on tramp trading vessels and served as a deep sea master; however the idea that the ship picks the cargo is sadly very outmoded.the vessels are Tramping in the sense they move from one spot charter to another rather than a long term time charter.

Short sea trade is a fairly good analogy but is more akin to subsidized or mail run type shipping as it is on steady regular routes. Known as Feeder routes

I have never been a fan of relating Traveller trading to modern shipping as Traveller is horribly inefficient and not even remotely cost effective, as suggested above a better analogy woul be 18th century shipping or even earlier, think Hanseatic League or Venice in it's heyday.

 

[Elrick]

I always imagined them as similar to the Clyde Puffers that used to trade up and down the West coast of Scotland. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clyde_puffer and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22UGjkSKYbk

Some were privately owned, but most were part-owned by small companies.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Something I find of interest is the size of the ships compared to how big traveller ships seem to be in art.

This ship http://www.workboatsinternational.com/144-teu-small-container-vessel-stls1421.html holds 144 TEUs, a TEU is slightly larger than 2Dtons, call it 300Dtons.

Thats not much bigger than a subsidised trader if you convert the small craft to cargo. Or its about the same capacity as the 500Dton frontier trader or cargo haulers.

Its 82m by 15m by 6m which means its 530Dtons plus the aft housing and bridge. That’s probably about 600Dtons. The size of a subby liner.

Its odd but I look at deck plans and never think of the subsidised liner as being something big enough that you can do jogging laps around it and yet this ship has enough deck space for a good game of football.

 

[Grazelander]

Capt.Jonah - from that picture you can also see that the vessels NRT or net tonnage, basically it's cargo earning space is over 1000 tons and by the time you add in the weight of steelwork, fuel etc, she is a lot larger than a 600 disp subby.

It has always bothered me that in Traveller we are shipping cargo in just a few hundreds of tons. The reason that the old traditional tramp traders were displaced by unitization and container shipping was inefficiency is shipping such small quantities.

Additionally the number of such small vessels in the 3I would be staggering if they were truly the mainstay of trade.

 

[far-trader]

Additionally the number of such small vessels in the 3I wouldn't staggering if they were truly the mainstay of trade.

I suspect that is a typo and you meant "...the number of such small vessels in the 3I would be staggering if they were truly the mainstay of trade."

And so they would be, IF they were truly the mainstay of trade. They aren't though. They are bottom feeders making a living off the scraps left over after the huge container freighters and luxury liners have taken the bulk of trade and passengers. Still, the number of small vessels is staggering in total. The actual impact on trade and passage is not.

 

[Grazelander]

Additionally the number of such small vessels in the 3I wouldn't staggering if they were truly the mainstay of trade.

I suspect that is a typo and you meant "...the number of such small vessels in the 3I would be staggering if they were truly the mainstay of trade."

And so they would be, IF they were truly the mainstay of trade. They aren't though. They are bottom feeders making a living off the scraps left over after the huge container freighters and luxury liners have taken the bulk of trade and passengers. Still, the number of small vessels is staggering in total. The actual impact on trade and passage is not.

Corrected my typo..... Thank you

I understand that there are supposedly these larger vessels in the background of the 3I however there has always been very little evidence of such vessels in any published sources. Very few merchants designed or shown more than a couple of thousand tons. Very small still really.

Here on a high population world today we have tens of thousands of small ships and a few thousand large vessels supporting ocean trade on just one planet surface, to support the civilizations on less than ideal planets will require millions of late vessels never mind the bottom feeders.

 

[Easterner]

Oh just for interest. A 200ton FT is 1000t displacement equal of a surface ship.


http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/shipyard/tonnage.html

 

[Captain Jonah]

Capt.Jonah - from that picture you can also see that the vessels NRT or net tonnage, basically it's cargo earning space is over 1000 tons and by the time you add in the weight of steelwork, fuel etc, she is a lot larger than a 600 disp subby.

I'm talking Displacement volume. Dead weight tons are not volume. Mass to displacement is between a third and a fifth. A ship with a listed mass of some 3000tons is going to be roughly between 600Dtons and 1000Dtons.

The cargo volume is 144 TEUs, a TEU is slightly more than 2Dtons in volume so the cargo capacity is roughly 300Dtons, the ships description lists 1000 odd tons of cargo which is mass and only of use in Gurps :lol:

 

[Grazelander]

I'm very aware of the difference between displacement and deadweight tonnages. However net and gross tonnage are actually volume measurements. A gross ton is considered to be a volume of 100 cubic ft. Displacement in the real world is considered to be in a sea water relative density of 1.025 not the liquid hydrogen used in Traveller.

I would suggest try fitting the 144 TEU's into a scale drawing of the cargo hold of the A2 trader. Each TEU'S measures 20x8x8 ft.

Comparing the two is like apples and oranges

 

[F33D]

Oh just for interest. A 200ton FT is 1000t displacement equal of a surface ship.


http://www.freelancetraveller.com/features/shipyard/tonnage.html

Thanks. Good reference. Just for comparison. A Sea Wolf class nuc sub is equivalent to a 653 ton Trav ship...

 

[Grazelander]

Great link and good comparisons.

 

[Hans Rancke]

I understand that there are supposedly these larger vessels in the background of the 3I however there has always been very little evidence of such vessels in any published sources. Very few merchants designed or shown more than a couple of thousand tons. Very small still really.

That's because most of the material is aimed at supporting the adventures of the typical player character. Very few campaigns deal with characters employed by megacorporations and sector-wide lines or even subsector-wide and interface lines. A couple of subsector-wide lines have been mentioned (Oberlindes, Akerut), and they do have ships in the 1000-5000T range. Larger ships have been mentioned in throwaway references, though I can't recall any of them off-hand.


Hans