Palgrave Studies in Maritime Economics is a new, original and timely interdisciplinary series that seeks to be pivotal in nature and improve our understanding of the role of the maritime sector within port economics and global supply chain management, shipping finance, and maritime business and economic history. The maritime industry plays an increasingly important role in the changing world economy, and this new series offers an outlet for reviewing trends and developments over time as well as analysing how such changes are affecting trade, transport, the environment and financial markets. Each title in the series will communicate key research findings, shaping new approaches to maritime economics. The core audience will be academic, as well as policymakers, regulators and international maritime authorities and organisations. Individual titles will often be theoretically informed but will always be firmly evidencebased, seeking to link theory to policy outcomes and changing practices.
This article discusses the development of countries’ market shares in world shipping over the last 150 years. The analysis is based upon a new and purpose-built indicator: the shipping/trade ratio. This indicator presents the relationship between the merchant marine of a country and the country’s role in world trade. Analysis of the shipping/trade ratio identifies two important developments. First, although the share of the world fleet registered in Europe has dropped significantly, Europe’s role in world shipping over the last 50 years has been more stable than is commonly perceived. Second, there appears to have been an increasing specialisation in the world shipping industry, both among and within continents. Internationally and within Europe, certain ‘super-transporters’ have acquired large market shares, while most countries have relatively limited fleets.
Crisis? What Crisis? Norwegian Shipping in the Interwar Period On 14 October 1924, the reputable US newspaper, The Washington Post, featured an article on the Norwegian ship Sagatind, where the crew allegedly had ended up in a free-for-all fight after a "wild orgy on contraband cargo." The ship had been floating "aimlessly 40 miles off New York without a helmsman" two days earlier, when 22 representatives from the US Coast Guard vessel Seneca boarded. The Americans found "two sailors asleep in the wheelhouse. Below decks they found the rest of the crew. Some were asleep, some were in their bunks nursing broken bones, and some were staggering about in a stupor. Nearly all were nursing black eyes." 1 According to the newspaper report, the Coast Guard put the crew of 32 in irons, and confiscated the cargo, which consisted of more than 40,000 cases of liquor. The crew received a heavy-handed welcome by the US authorities, and one mate was beaten so heavily that he lost three teeth and had to be hospitalized after he had tried to stop one of the customs officers from stealing a bottle of whiskey. Following the seizure, Sagatind was anchored off the Statue of Liberty. The illegal cargo was discharged to a Brooklyn
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