The secret language of ships

Port of convenience reading ships © David Webster Smith

Approaching the container ship in San Francisco Bay, the tugboat looks like a pit bull puppy chasing an eighteen-wheeler. When the vessels are an arm's length apart, the ship's mate throws down a line. Now leashed to the ship, the tug can push and pull it around the bay. Big ships can't easily slow down or maneuver by themselves—they're meant for going in a straight line.

Tugboat crews routinely encounter what few of us will ever see. They easily read a vessel's size, shape, function, and features, while deciphering at a glance the mysterious numbers, letters, and symbols on a ship's hull. To non-mariners, the markings look like hieroglyphs. For those in the know, they speak volumes about a particular ship and also about the shipping industry.

Oceangoing vessels carry over 80 percent of the world's trade, with more than 90,000 merchant ships plying international waters. Tankers, bulk carriers, and container ships—the largest things on Earth that move—are by far the most important modes of transportation of our time. They convey billions of tonnes of goods every year, bringing us everything from cars to crude oil to containers jammed with fidget spinners.

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