Construction
Then named Steamer's Future, the ship's keel was laid on 8 February 1996 at Wuhu Shipyard in Wuhu, China. Its hull, constructed from ordinary strength steel, has an overall length of 100.59 metres (330.0 ft). In terms of width, the ship has a beam of 16.24 metres (53.3 ft). The height from the top of the keel to the main deck, called the moulded depth, is 8.2 metres (27 ft).
Although much of its career has been spent crossing oceans, the ship's container-carrying capacity of 384 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) (384 20-foot shipping containers) places it in the range of a small feeder ship. The ship's gross tonnage, a measure of the volume of all its enclosed spaces, is 4,276. Its net tonnage, which measures the volume of the cargo spaces, is 2,129. Its total carrying capacity in terms of weight, is 5,055 long tons deadweight (DWT), the equivalent of almost 170 Sherman tanks.
Steamer's Future was built with a Wärtsilä Vasa 9R32E main engine which drives a controllable-pitch propeller. This is a four-stroke diesel engine, that is turbocharged and intercooled. This engine also features direct fuel injection. It has nine in-line cylinders, each with a 320 mm cylinder bore, and a 350 mm stroke. At 720 revolutions per minute (RPM), the engine produces a maximum continuous output of 3,645 kilowatts (4,888 hp), and at 750 RPM 3,690 kilowatts (4,950 hp). According to Military Sealift Command, the ship's cruising speed is 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph).
In addition, the ship has a Schottel SST170LKT maneuvering thruster.
The ship was built with two 400-kilowatt (540 hp) Wärtsilä UD 25 L6 55D auxiliary generators, backed-up by a Cummins emergency diesel generator. At some point prior to 21 April 2011, the #2 ship's service diesel generator was replaced with a Caterpillar C-18 diesel generator. This unit runs between 1,500 and 1,800 RPM and supplies between 301-602 kilowatts of electrical power. It burns between 16.6 to 38.3 US gallons (63 to 145 l; 13.8 to 31.9 imp gal) per hour of diesel fuel and weighs between 3,900 pounds (1,800 kg) and 4,200 pounds (1,900 kg). This generator has a 145-millimetre (5.7 in) bore and a 183-millimetre (7.2 in) stroke.
TransAtlantic has two Liebherr rotary cargo cranes. Ships with cranes, known as geared ships, are more flexible in that they can visit ports that are not equipped with pierside cranes. However, having cranes on board also has drawbacks. This added flexibility incurs some costs greater recurring expenses, such as maintenance and fuel costs. The United Nations Council on Trade and Development characterizes geared ships as a "niche market only appropriate for those ports where low cargo volumes do not justify investment in port cranes or where the public sector does not have the financial resources for such investment." Slightly less than a third of the ships in TransAtlantic's size range (from 100–499 TEU) are geared.
Construction of the ship was completed in 1997. As of 2011, the ship is classified by Det Norske Veritas with the code "1A1 General Cargo Carrier Container E0", meaning that it was constructed under the supervision of a recognized classification society, that the construction complies with the society's rules, that it is classed as a general cargo carrier and container ship, and that it is designed to be operated with unattended machinery spaces.
Read more about this topic: MV Trans Atlantic
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“When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)