The Maliaño & Raos quays

The main traffic at commercial ports consists of goods. When visiting the Port of Santander facilities, you can watch the loading, unloading and storage of different kinds of goods. Some of these goods will be very familiar, as you often see them in the same state as you will find them at the port. Examples of these goods include coal or cars. Most probably, you will see other goods for the first time and possibly, you will have no idea what they are used for, even though they are likely to be closely linked to your needs.

The goods

Shipments of goods are normally measured by their weight and given the large quantity of goods transported, the commonly used unit of measurement is tonnes*. Every year at the Port of Santander, more than 4.5 million tonnes are moved and two large areas are used to do this: the Maliaño and Margen Norte quays and the facilities at the Raos port complex.

One very important aspect that you should pay attention to when you see the goods at the port is their external appearance. In other words, do they have some kind of packaging or not, or do they seem to be individual, one-off items or are they part of a bigger group. These differences are important because different types of goods require specific ships for transporting them and also different facilities and special resources for loading, unloading and storing them at the port. With all this in mind, goods are divided into three main groups at the port:

Liquid bulk cargo

These are goods that do not come in containers and, as their name indicates, are in liquid form. Examples of these goods include oil products, such as diesel, certain chemical products and liquid gases.

Dry bulk cargo

Just like the liquid bulk cargo, these goods aren't in containers either, but unlike the liquids they are solid and loose materials. Common examples of this group include minerals, coal, cereals, scrap metal, composts and fertilizers and cement.

General goods

Unlike the liquid and dry cargo, general goods are individual items and can arrive as packages, bags, boxes, containers, trailers or any other kind of package and can contain products such as cement, sugar, chemical materials, etc. The contents of single items are also considered to be general goods, such as machinery, cars, wooden trunks and pallets, iron tubes, reels of paper, reels of wire, etc. To summarise, general goods includes a wide range of products that have generally been through some kind of manufacturing process.

Cabotage & foreign

It is also important to know where the goods coming through the port have come from and where they are going to. The trading of goods that arrive or are sent to other ports within the same country is called "cabotaje" (coastal trade). If the trading of goods originates in or is ending up in another country, in other words is international, it is called "foreign".

return  top

Merchant ships

Ships are vehicles that enable goods to be transported by sea. The features of a merchant ship, which are very important when organising its entrance into and stay at a port, are its dimensions and its capacity. The ship's key dimensions are its girder or length measured from the bow* to the stern*; the beam or maximum width of the ship; the depth or vertical dimension of the hull, measured from the ship's floor to the upper deck; and the ship's draught or distance between the ship's floor and the waterplane. Different measurements are used to establish a ship's capacity. The most common are called tonnage*. A ship's gross tonnage or gross registered tonnage (GRT) can be defined as the internal volume of the hull up to the final closed deck. This measurement is expressed in Moorson tonnes of 100 English cubic feet, equal to 2.832 m3.

Transporting fluids

After the Second World War, ship building progressed very quickly and ships that were used before to transport all kinds of product became specialised and adapted to the different kinds of goods that are transported by sea, giving rise to a huge range of ships. The merchant ships that most often dock at the Port of Santander, depending on the type of goods they are transporting, are the following:

Transporting bulk cargo

Ships designed to transport bulk goods (cereals, coal, minerals, etc.) are known as "Bulk-carriers". The goods travel in the ship's hold, which is a space located below the deck and which is accessed using hatchways, which are rectangular openings located on the deck of a ship.

Transporting general goods

Ships designed to transport general goods are the most specialised. There are less and less of the classic "general cargo" ships. This type of ship has been replaced by specialised ships such as container-ships, specially designed to transport this type of goods, or ferries where the goods are loaded and unloaded using vehicles with wheels (lorries, tractors, trucks) using ramps located on the quay and the ship's hatch doors located on the bow, stern or the sides of the ship. Ferries, roll-on roll-off ships and car-carriers belong to this kind of ship and are specialised in transporting vehicles.

return  top

The crew

Ships need a crew in order to be able to navigate and transport goods and depending on the ship's characteristics, the crew can be large or small. In all cases, the captain* is the highest ranking officer and is in charge and he/she coordinates the two departments whereby on-board tasks are organised: deck and engineering.

The deck department

The Chief Officer is the head of the department. The duties carried out in this department are linked to the maintenance and preservation of the cargo spaces, the loading and unloading methods, the docking and casting off systems, navigation and ship governance systems, communications with land, preservation of the ship's hull and the organisation of tasks such as cooking, the cleaning of cabins, provisions etc. As well as the officers, the most common roles in this department are radio operator, petty officer, seamen, cooks, waiters, etc.

The engineering department

The Chief Engineer is head of the department. The tasks carried out in this department are linked to the maintenance, preservation and operation of the boat's propulsion system and its auxiliary equipment. Alongside the officers in this department, the most common roles are boilermaker, electrician, oiler, etc.

return  top

Transferring the goods

Once the ship has docked at the relevant quay, operations begin to transfer the goods onto land, or vice versa. The handling of goods and associated duties can be divided into three groups: "Stowing and bulk breaking", "loading and unloading" and "storage".

Stage 1. Stowing and bulk breaking

This name is given to the tasks carried out in relation to the goods inside the ships, both in terms of distributing the goods and placing them in the hold and on the deck (stowing) as well as getting the goods into position for unloading onto land (bulk breaking). This task is best seen in the handling of "general goods", whereas for the "dry bulk cargo" and "liquid bulk cargo", this activity is merged into the loading and unloading stage.

Stage 2. Loading and unloading

This name is given to the set of activities required to transfer the goods from the quay to the entrance of the ship's hull (loading) or vice versa; the transfer of goods from the ship onto land (unloading). The most common way of carrying out these tasks, in the case of "general goods" and "dry bulk cargo", is using cranes*, which can be adapted to the specific goods by using exchangeable accessories such as "chain hooks", "scoops", "elasticated straps" or "magnets". There are also specialised cranes such as those used to load and unload container-ships. Other ways of loading and unloading can be seen when you visit the port and these include ramps or walkways for roll-on roll-off traffic, "suction tubes" or "suckers" for loading and unloading cereals and "conveyor belts". Pipes are used to load and unload "liquid bulk cargo". Using pipes, the liquids are pumped from the ship's tanks to storage tanks on land or vice versa. These operations are usually carried out in special terminals which are called jetties*.

Stage 3. Storage

Very often, the goods need to be stored at the port until they are loaded on to ships or can be transported over land to their destinations. In order to meet these requirements, the port has areas specially prepared for storing goods. Many of these storage spaces are open air and they are called open fields. To protect the goods from the elements, covered areas are used that are called sheds or warehouses. There are also buildings constructed specifically for particular goods, such as silos, where products like cement and grain, etc. are stored, or tanks, which store liquid products.

return  top