Curriculum Index Curriculum Objectives Curriculum Outline Student Pages Virginia SOLs Lesson 1: Preparing For Your Journey Lesson 3: Plotting The Course Lesson 4: Adding It Up Lesson 5: Environmental Impact Bibliography

LESSON TWO: MEET YOUR SHIP

Objectives
Materials
Background Information
Key Questions
Vocabulary
Procedure
Evaluation

Objectives

  • Students will access the internet to locate their assigned ship.
  • Students will prepare a written report about the home port of their assigned ship.
  • Students will prepare a written report about the characteristics of their assigned ship.

Materials

Background Information

From the earliest days, when man first took to the seas to trade goods, goods were shipped in bulk. Traders filled their ships with their products, tied it to the ship or threw a net over it, and set sail. The potential for loss to the sea or damage from the weather was great. When the ship arrived in port, it took many hard and dangerous days to offload the cargo by hand. What was left of it anyway.

In the 1940's, the United States Government was looking for a safer and more cost effective way to ship goods that would limit the risk of loss and damage to the goods from the elements. The result of that investigation was the introduction of shipping containers. Large metal boxes that could be filled with goods, trucked or brought by train to the shipping dock, lifted directly from the transport vehicle and loaded directly onto the ship. When an ocean going vessel reached its destination, the process was reversed. Huge cranes lift the containers off of the ship directly onto trucks or trains in hours versus days. This idea has evolved into the standard practice by which goods are shipped by every country in the world.

Now, products such as electronics, fresh fruit, clothes, automobiles, steel and oil are safely and efficiently shipped around the world.

Google Earth image of Portsmouth Marine Terminal

Google Earth image of Norfolk International Terminals showing 8 Suez class cranes (in blue)

Container ships are not the only types of ships associated with the transportion of goods. There are

  • Reefer vessel: A refrigerated ship used to ship perishable goods which require temperature-controlled transportation, mostly fruits, meat, fish, dairy products, vegetables and other types of food.
  • Bulk carriers: Bulk carriers are used to carry coal, grain, phosphates and other "loose" cargo.
  • Coasters: Coasters are smaller cargo ships, usually container ships, that run what are called feeder routes. They transport a few containers from smaller ports to large ports. Coasters are named such because they cruise along coasts, making frequent stops in a short time.
  • Roll-on/roll-off (ro-ro) ships: Ships that carry cars, trucks, railway carriages, trailers, anything that can be driven onto and off of the ship. Ships that require cranes to load cargo are called lift on-lift off (lo-lo). Examples of ro-ros include cruiseferries, ferries, and car carriers.
  • Tanker: A ship designed to carry bulk liquids, particularly oil. Can also carry chemicals.
  • Feeder ships: Feeders collect containers from different ports and transport them to central container terminals where they are loaded to bigger vessels. In that way the smaller vessels feed the big liners, which carry thousands of containers.
  • Research Vessels: Hydrographic survey vessels conduct seismic and hydrographic surveys of the ocean floor and its underlying geology. This information is used for making navigational charts that are used in shipping. Oceanographic research vessels research the physical, biological and chemical characteristics of the atmosphere, water and the climate.

Key Questions

  1. How are goods transported around the world?
  2. Why is there a need for different types of ships?
  3. What are some types of goods that are transported by ship?

Vocabulary

  • None

Procedure

There are two ways to handle assigning ships to students. You can choose the ships, or you can have the students choose a ship that will then be approved by you.

This course uses real time data from real ships at sea so it is important to locate a ship which is reporting the appropriate data that students need to complete the following lessons. This data includes the ship's name, barometric pressure, wind speed, dewpoint, and water temperature. Because these are real ships, they are constantly moving, so you can't pick the ships too far ahead of when you plan to introduce this lesson.

Here are the steps to choose a ship, whether you choose the ship for the students or you let the students choose their own:

  1. Go to http://www.oceanweather.com/data/.
  2. Click on an area of the world that you would like to study.
  3. When you click on an ocean area, you are taken to a page that shows a close up map of the area you clicked on. Click on "Marine Observations" at the top of the page.
  4. On the Marine Observations page, you'll see red, blue, and purple wind barbs. Buoys are presented in red, ships are blue and Coastal Manned Stations are purple. We are interested in the blue barbs. You'll also see pressure isobars (concentric circles) with the latest pressure reading.
  5. Next to the blue barbs you will find a 4 or 5 digit ID Code that is either made up of all letters or numbers & letters. This ID Code is the ship's identification number. All numbers means it is a bouy. Don't choose a buoy.
  6. For some ships, the ID code might be hard to read. In the upper right hand corner of the page, click on "Observation Table". A new window will open with a list of all of the ships, buoys, and manned stations in this geographic area. Use this table to select a ship to track. The ships are usually located at the bottom of the page. Write down the Ship's ID number.
  7. Go to http://www.sailwx.info/shiptrack/.
  8. Enter your ship's ID in the field marked "Search for one ship by call sign:" and press search. It may take a moment for all of the data to be collected for display.
  9. Make sure that the ship is reporting the ship's name, barometric pressure, dewpoint, wind speed, and water temperature. If not, go back to the "Observation Table" and select another ship. Also make sure that the ship is moving (not in port). You can verify this by looking at the latitude and longitude data. If it is the same for several reporting periods, the ship is in port and you need to pick another ship. This is a trial and error process but you will find many ships reporting this data.
  10. Ships report every 3, 6, or 12 hours. If there are just a few data entries, go to the top of the map, change the value from 240 to 480 to get the past 48 hours information.
  11. Once a ship is chosen, determine which ocean map you will need to plot the ship's progress. The ocean maps are named using the same naming scheme that is used in the address bar of the "Observation Table" page. When you click on the "Observation Table" link, the map area is listed in the address bar of the browser. It looks like this for the Northern Indian Ocean area, http://www.oceanweather.com/data/Indian-Northern/marine_text.html. This means, for this example, you would pick the Indian Ocean-Northern Region map. Print the map that you will need from the maps listed below.

Evaluation

Using the information obtained from the internet, student's will write a short report about their ship and the ship's homeport.

Curriculum Index Curriculum Objectives Curriculum Outline Student Pages Virginia SOLs Lesson 1: Preparing For Your Journey Lesson 3: Plotting The Course Lesson 4: Adding It Up Lesson 5: Environmental Impact Bibliography

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