Who gains and who is at risk when the world's goods go by sea?
Most of what is made in one country and used in another crosses water in a box on a ship. What does that traffic give those who ship and those who buy, and what does it ask of the people who sail and of the towns that host the ports?
The picture
What the numbers show, read from the Data library each time the page opens.
How to read the chart above, and the words it uses.
How to read the data
The figure counts the standard containers handled at a country's ports in a year, loaded or empty, counting each one as many times as it is moved on or off a ship. It says nothing of what the containers hold or what it is worth, and it leaves out cargo that travels loose, such as oil and grain.
Key terms
Container
A standard steel box in which goods are packed once and moved between ship, train and lorry without being unpacked.
TEU
A twenty-foot equivalent unit, the size of the smallest standard container, used to count boxes of different lengths on one scale.
Port traffic
The containers loaded onto and unloaded from ships at a country's ports, including those that only change ships there.
Who has a stake
Each interest, then readings from the Catholic library and the Classics library that bear on it, oldest first. Choose a group to read.
Safe vessels, fair pay and humane hours, and a way of staying in touch with family and with the Church while long months away.
Dependable, affordable passage to wider markets, and honest dealing along the whole chain from the factory to the buyer.
Work and trade that the harbour brings, together with clean water and air, a town that remains a good place to live, and a say in how the harbour grows.
Goods they could not make at home at a fair price, and terms of trade that do not leave a poorer or weaker country at the mercy of a stronger one.
For discussion
Smith sees the sea widening the market, and Plato sees it loosening a city's loyalties. Can a port town have the gain without the loss, and who must see to it?
The psalmist's sailors cry out in the storm, and the Church's care reaches them at sea. What do shippers and buyers owe to the people who carry their goods?
Paul VI doubts that free trade alone is just between unequal partners. How might the interests of shippers and of nations that rely on their goods both be weighed?
