The idea of transporting trucks on ships was put into practice before World War II. In 1926 regular connection of the luxury passenger train from London to Paris, Golden Arrow/Fleche d’Or, by Southern Railway and French Northern Railway began. For transport of passengers’ baggage, four containers were used. These containers were loaded in London or Paris and carried to ports, Dover or Calais, on flat cars in the UK and “CIWL Pullman Golden Arrow Fourgon of CIWL” in France
In the early 1950s, Malcolm Purcell McLean decided to attempt use of the containers commercially. By 1952, he was developing plans to carry his company’s trucks on ships along the U.S. Atlantic coast, from North Carolina to New York. It soon became apparent that “trailerships”, as they were called, would be inefficient because of the large waste in potential cargo space on board the vessel, known as broken stowage. The original concept was modified into loading just the containers, not the chassis, onto the ships, hence the designation container ship or “box” ship. At the time, U.S. regulations would not allow a trucking company to own a shipping line.
Read the complete article on Wikipedia.com.
TEU: 20-foot equivalent unit is the international standard measure of containers. TEUs are featured in the Jack Forbes song, Rolling Down the River.
Jack said this about his song, “I wrote and recorded the song ‘Rolling down the River’ in 1982 for a radio programme about Tilbury Docks. It has since been used in an Educational Drama production, a folk theatre presentation and also as a Morris Dance, as well as being sung all over the world. It can be heard wherever there are shanty sessions at folk festivals and festivals of the sea. There is an American version* and a Polish version (sung of course in Polish).”
Jack Forbes was a member of the Hoy Shanty Crew and Slow Loris. Jack passed away on January 30, 2016; many kind words about him were shared on MudCat Cafe