Box Boats: How Container Ships Changed the World

Box Boats is a technical/financial/general history of the first 50 years of the now ubiquitous container ship. The book opens with a chapter that outlines the history of U.S. shipping prior to 1956. The focus of the book then shifts to the development and deployment of Ideal X, the first container ship, the man behind her, Malcom McLean, and the rise of his company Sea-Land Services.

The success of Sea-Land did not go unnoticed and before long other shipping and ship building entities around the world entered the container shipping business. In the chapters following the rise of Sea-Land Mr. Cudahy details the rise, transition, and in some cases the fall/merging of Sea-Land and its competitors. In these chapters the author provides a show more mix of information about corporate finance and strategy, technical innovations, and geo-political issues that impacted the container industry.

In the final chapter of the book the author points out that, because his is a history of an economic entity that was still evolving and growing in 2006 (as it is today), there really can be no final chapter. Instead of a summation of events the author uses the final chapter to speculate on possible future trends, gives details of plans that were underway across to globe to accommodate even larger container ships, and provided information about theoretical calculations made by ship building firms concerning aspects of possible future container ship construction.

The book was published one year before Panama announced the beginning of construction of new locks to permit post-Panamax ships (ships that are too large to pass through the 1914 locks) to transit the canal. However, the author does speculate as to what such a change might mean (if it were to occur) to the container handling industry (ports, overland rail shipment, ship size, etc.). It is interesting to see that many of his speculations match what we have seen and are seeing in the aftermath of the opening of the new Panama Canal locks.

The book provides numerous tables which summarize all manner of container ship statistics (ship names, tonnage, ownership, ownership transfer, etc.) and these are effectively integrated into the text in the various chapters where they are presented.

Overall, the book does a very good job of balancing the presentation of technical, financial, and historical information. The balance is such that I think the book has equal appeal to the detail freak as well as to anyone who wishes to gain a general understanding of the history of the first 50 years of the container business.

(Text Length - 254 pages, Total Length - 338 pages. Includes several appendices, 20 pages of photographs, a bibliography, and an index) (Book Dimensions inches L x W x H – 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.25) show less