Round the world with merchant shipping

                                          Suez Canal- biggest man made canal, thousand of ship's crossing the canal daily.

Bulk carriers are the great work horses of the shipping world, carrying world, carrying raw dry cargoes such as coal, iron ore, grain, sulphur, scrap metal in their huge cavernous holds.

The vessels in the top row are called geared bulk carriers, so called because they carry its own cargo cranes - very useful when visiting ports which do not have shore cargo handling equipment.

The vessels in the bottom row are gearless bulk carriers. These ships do not have its own cargo handling gear and hence dependent on shore side cargo loading and discharging equipment. They are normally much bigger in size than the geared bulk carriers.

Bulkers range from about 20,000 Deadweight tons (handy size) through the medium size (Panamax) vessels of up to 80,000 DWT, to the giant (cape size) vessels of over 200,000 DWT. Due to the role use that these vessels are put to, their life -expectancy is less than carrier accidents but the problem is now well under control.