A MASTER'S GUIDE TO CONTAINER SECURING

This publication belongs to the popular Standard Club series and addresses the container securing issues. The recent development of containerization was a major step forward in marine transportation of general cargo. In the meantime, it was predicted that the unit costs related to the container securing issues would fall and associated cargo damage would be almost eliminated. In the past, vessels used to transport containers that were stowed on hatch covers, using various lashing systems.

Those systems were proven effective in lashing containers on deck to the 3rd tier. Nowadays, the ships are much bigger and may carry the containers stacked up to the nine tiers. However, the lashing systems in use are only capable of lashing to the bottom of the containers in the third tier (or to the bottom of the 4th/5th tier ones in case the lashing bridge if there). Ship design has developed a lot but securing methods have not. Class society would usually approve a vessel for carriage of the containers as per the Cargo Securing Manual containing the instructions on securing.

The present booklet starts with the introduction followed by the instructions, do's and don'ts, overview of the lashing systems, safe working issues, ships, containers and their construction, basic principles of container stowage and lashing components etc.