‘The result was a significant, very large reduction in the need for manpower.’ ‘Before, gangs of labourers working long hours in the port on long shifts resulted in a very large labour force being required, but with containers, manpower was supplanted by cranes and other kinds of dockside equipment,’ says Professor Slack. While some dockworkers, like crane operators, managed to increase their salaries through mechanisation, many more lost their jobs. The other big loser was the dockside workforce. In the US, east coast ports like Baltimore and New York declined in favour of western hubs like Oakland. Traditional UK ports like Liverpool, Glasgow and Bristol found themselves on the wrong side of the country. Mediterranean ports declined as shipping companies bypassed them on the way to Rotterdam’s European container hub. The fact that containers can be put on semi-trailers or trains and transported cheaply and easily away from the ocean has caused the decline of entire cities. Ports began to move out of their traditional locations in the heart of cities, the old docksides of cities, and were moving into what are called greenfield sites where new port facilities were built.’
Many started to convert existing docks, knocking down sheds as much as they could, but these proved not to be as efficient as developing new terminals on new sites to accommodate the container vessels that were coming in. ‘They had to completely rethink their operations. A ship is coming in, it's carrying 1000, 1500 containers you had to have a lot of space on the dock to store those containers.’ ‘But when you get to containerisation you don't need the storage space because the goods are in a container and they are not exposed to the weather. ‘A typical feature of the port of the 1940s and '50s was storage sheds, finger piers, lots of berthing space,’ says Professor Slack. If containerisation was difficult for existing firms, it was catastrophic for many ports and the cities and neighbourhoods centred on them. Many traditional shipping lines folded, unable to bear the expense. It became apparent that retrofitting existing cargo ships was impractical, and as a result an entirely new fleet needed to be built.
McLean was named ‘man of the century’ by the International Maritime Hall of Fame and his invention transformed the transport industry. The impact of containerisation was enormous. The key to that is that you could design a ship to fit exclusively those dimensions of boxes.’ ‘In terms of containerisation, which became a global phenomenon, it would have had great difficulty in doing that were it not for the fact that the boxes that everybody adopted were of fixed dimensions. ‘The box was identified as being eight-foot high, eight-foot wide and 20-foot long.’ ‘The International Standards Organisation, which is still today the most important agency that tries to standardise dimensions and features, came to conclusions that imposed on the rest of the world a standard box,’ says Professor Brian Slack of Montreal’s Concordia University. The demand for labour that once existed in port cities has diminished very, very significantly, and I think that is probably the biggest change and dislocation that has occurred as a result of containerisation.