A ship chandler is a retail dealer who specialises in supplies or equipment for ships, known as ship's stores.
For traditional sailing ships, items that could be found in a chandlery might include: rosin, turpentine, tar, pitch (resin), linseed oil, whale oil, tallow, lard, varnish, twine, rope and cordage, hemp, oakum, tools (hatchet, axe, hammer, chisel, planes, lantern, nail, spike, boat hook, caulking iron, hand pump, marlinspike), brooms, mops, galley supplies, leather goods, and paper.
The ship chandlery business was central to the existence and the social and political dynamics of ports and their waterfront areas.
Today's chandlers deal more in goods typical for fuel-powered commercial ships, such as oil tankers, container ships, bulk carriers. They supply the crew's food, ship's maintenance supplies, cleaning compounds, rope, et cetera. The advantage of a ship's crew using a chandler is that they do not have to find stores in the town they have landed in, nor hold that local currency - assuming they are let out of the dock compound by the immigration authorities. Typically, the ship owner has a line of credit with the chandler and is billed for anything delivered to the crew of his ship. The chandler is supplied by merchants local to his location.
Their distinguishing feature is the high level of service demanded and the short time required to fill and deliver their special orders. Because commercial ships discharge and turn around quickly, delay is expensive and the services of a dependable ship chandler are urgent.
Famous quotes containing the words ship and/or chandler:
“We want some coat woven of elastic steel, stout as the first, and limber as the second. We want a ship in these billows we inhabit. An angular, dogmatic house would be rent to chips and splinters, in this storm of many elements. No, it must be tight, and fit to the form of man, to live at all; as a shell is the architecture of a house founded on the sea.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)