Even though aircraft now carry many of the world’s passengers, shipping is still a vital link between countries, particularly for carrying cargo. The biggest vessels are called bulk carriers. They include oil supertankers, some of which are more than 450 metres long. Container ships carry general cargo stored in large steel boxes stacked up like building blocks. These can be unloaded directly on to trucks.
The River Rhine rises in Switzerland and runs along the border between France and Germany, then on through Germany and the Netherlands, meeting the North Sea near Rotterdam. It is one of Europe’s most important industrial waterways. As well as barges carrying cargo, river boats take tourists along the river to see the vineyards and ancient castles on its banks.
Ships cross the oceans on fixed routes called shipping lanes. The world’s busiest shipping lanes link Europe and North America with the Middle East and East Asia. Ships go through the Suez and Panama Canals to shorten their journeys, although supertankers, being too large for the Suez Canal, still travel around the southern tip of Africa.
Modern cargo ships are much larger than vessels of the past, and big, efficient ports with docks (enclosed areas of water) are needed so that their cargoes can be loaded and unloaded as quickly as possible. Some ships take cargoes inland along large rivers and man-made waterways called canals.
Two major canals, cut through narrow necks of land, provide much shorter routes between ports. They are the 165-kilometre Suez Canal in Egypt, linking the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea, and the 82-kilometre Panama Canal, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Canals often link natural waterways and provide a transport route across a continent. The Main-Danube Canal, for example, allows the movement of goods between Eastern and Western Europe. The United States and Canada have more than 41,000 kilometres of waterways linked to the St. Lawrence and Mississippi rivers and their tributaries. The St. Lawrence Seaway connects the Great Lakes, and the cities of Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland and Toronto among others, with the Atlantic Ocean.
Cargo on inland waterways in industrial countries, for example, the River Rhine in Germany, is usually carried by barges which are towed by tugs. Sometimes several barges are strapped together. Barges carry cargoes along the Rhine to and from the port of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, the world’s busiest port. Antwerp in Belgium is the largest inland port in the world. Even though it is 89 kilometres from the open sea, ships of all types load and unload cargoes there.
Picture Credit : Google