Introduction

For at least the past 4,000 years, shipping has been fundamental to the development of civilization. On the sea or by inland waterways, it has provided the dominant way of moving large quantities of goods, and it continues to do so over long distances. From at least as early as 2000 BCE, the spice routes through the Indian Ocean and its adjacent seas provided not merely for the first long-distance trading, but also for the transport of ideas and beliefs. From 1000 BCE to the 13th century CE, the Polynesian voyages across the Pacific completed human settlement of the globe. From the 15th century, the development of trade routes across and between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans transformed the world. The introduction of the steamship in the early 19th century produced an increase of several orders of magnitude in the amount of world trade, and started the process of globalization. The demands of the shipping trade generated modern business methods from insurance to international finance, led to advances in mechanical and civil engineering, and created new sciences to meet the needs of navigation.

The last half-century has seen developments as significant as anything before in the history of shipping. Between 1970 and 2012, seaborne carriage of oil and gas nearly doubled (98 per cent), that of general cargo quadrupled (411 per cent), and that of grain and minerals nearly quintupled (495 per cent) (UNCTAD, 2013). Conventionally, around 90 per cent of international trade by volume is said to be carried by sea (IMO, 2012), but one study suggests that the true figure in 2006 was more likely around 75 per cent in terms of tons carried and 59 per cent by value (Mandryk, 2009). Not only has the quantity of cargo increased, the average length of voyages has also increased: between 2000 and 2013 the estimated amount of international seaborne shipments measured in ton miles increased by 65 per cent from 30,648 to 50,506 billion ton miles, while the total amount of international cargo rose by only about 50 per cent (UNCTAD, 2013). This growth in the average length of voyages has been largely in the carriage of coal, grain and ores.