Colliers - Bulker or General Cargo?

[Buttermansbay]

I've recently posted a couple of pics of colliers and have one or two more to post. There isn't a category specifically for colliers, and I notice that some folk categorise them as Bulkers and other as General Cargo ships. Bulkers seems more accurate, but perhaps colliers should have their own classification on shipspotting.com ?
Keith.

[Phil English]

Hi Keith,

The subject of colliers was discussed on shipspotting some years ago. It's a now defunct, mainly British term to describe the vessels which traded coal on the U.K. coast. These ships were essentially dry cargo ships which, when sold on, performed the same role as many other single-deck dry cargo ships - i.e. carrying a variety of bulk cargoes.

For the larger vessels, the  classification 'bulk carrier' is more accurate and that's how they would have been defined by their class society and LR (now IHS Fairplay who are responsible for Equasis data) Smaller vessels would invariable be given a 'general cargo' classification.

The rule of thumb on shipspotting.com is that we use the ship type classification provided by Equasis/LR (IHS Fairplay) or, if it's a very old ship, Miramar. As such, and given that 'collier' is not a universally accepted ship type classification for the global shipping community, we decided not to use the term.

Brgds
Phil

[Buttermansbay]

Thanks Phil, I understand now.
Keith

[James Henton]

The agreed definition of a bulk carrier (from IACS - Intl Association of Class Societies) is based on its configuration - a ship with topside and hopper tanks. Anything else is not a bulker.
However, we are seeing a trend for so called 'box type' bulkers now, either without topsides or hoppers (or without both). This is often an attempt to say 'this ship is not a bulker, and therefore not subject to bulker requirements'.
Likewise many general cargo ships are carrying bulk cargoes, but are not bulkers due to structural configuration. It's getting complicated...