 | |
 | |
| Industry | Shipping |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1965 |
| Defunct | 1986 |
| Fate | Taken over by P&O Containers |
| Successor | P&O Containers |
| Headquarters | , |
Area served | Worldwide |
| Services | Container transportation |
| Owner | P&O Containers |
Overseas Containers Limited (OCL) was a container shipping company formed by a consortium of British shipping companies in 1965. It was taken over by P&O in 1986.
In the early days of containerisation considerable investment was still required in the necessary infrastructure to transport and handle shipping containers, and many shipping companies formed consortia to ease the financial burden. OCL was formed in 1965 by four British companies: British and Commonwealth Shipping, Furness Withy, P&O and the Ocean Steamship Company. [1] Between 1969 and 1970 OCL took delivery of its first ships, a fleet of six vessels of 27,000 gross register tons (GRT) and 1,900 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) capacity for the UK/Europe to Australia route. Initially operating from a set of offices in Bevis Marks, London, OCL later moved to custom built offices on Braham Street, a few hundred yards away on a traffic island at the end of Commercial Road. The service was inaugurated on 6 March 1969 by Encounter Bay undertaking her maiden voyage, and OCL overcame heavy losses in the first years of operations to become one of the world's leading container lines.
The first trade route was the Australia/UK one followed later by the Far East/UK route. Initial arrivals in Europe intended for the UK had to be diverted and transhipped via Rotterdam, because of unresolved industrial disputes in UK ports.
OCL played a leading role in the development of CAMEL - the standardised format for electronic manifests. By 1982 OCL was Europe's largest container through transport operator with a fleet of 20 containerships and more than 60,000 container units. It served more than 50 major ports and, in 1980, transported more than a quarter of a million container loads of import and export cargo on a route network linking locations throughout four continents. One company, P&O, gradually increased its share of the consortium until in 1986 it bought the remaining 53% held by Ocean Transport and Trading (as The Ocean Steamship Company was by then known) and British & Commonwealth. On 1 January 1987 the name OCL ceased to exist, the operation becoming known as P&O Containers Ltd (P&OCL). In 1996 P&O Containers merged with Nedlloyd to form P&O Nedlloyd. August 2005 saw the completion of a buyout of P&O Nedlloyd by the A.P. Moller-Maersk Group and in February 2006 the name Maersk Line was adopted for the combined fleets.
Container ships sailing for the company under the OCL banner were characterised by their green hulls with white topping, white superstructure and green funnels bearing the initials OCL in white letters. All OCL ships' names ended in Bay, such as Encounter Bay , Tokyo Bay, Liverpool Bay, Resolution Bay and Mairangi Bay . Subsidiary operations such as the Australia- Japan Container Line did not follow this trend, instead having names such as Arafura and Aotea. When OCL became P&OCL, there was a slight modification to the ships' colour scheme, the hulls becoming completely green and the OCL logo on the funnels being replaced with the P&O logo. Later the hulls and funnels were painted dark blue.. The naming convention was retained, and in June 2006 there were still a couple of Bay ships in the Maersk Line fleet.
A container ship is a cargo ship that carries all of its load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. Container ships are a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport and now carry most seagoing non-bulk cargo.
The Blue Star Line was a British passenger and cargo shipping company formed in 1911, being in operation until 1998.
Sealink was a ferry company based in the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1984, operating services to France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Isle of Wight and Ireland.
P&O was a British shipping and logistics company dating from the early 19th century. Formerly a public company, it was sold to DP World in March 2006 for £3.9 billion. DP World currently operates several P&O branded businesses, P&O Ferries, Istithmar P&O Estates, and P&O Maritime Logistics. It also operates P&O Heritage, which is the official historic archive and collection of P&O.
Ellerman Lines was a UK cargo and passenger shipping company that operated from the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century. It was founded in the late 19th century, and continued to expand by acquiring smaller shipping lines until it became one of the largest shipping firms in the World. Setbacks occurred through heavy losses to its merchant fleet in the First and Second World Wars but were overcome in each case.
American Export-Isbrandtsen Lines, New York, was the leading US-flag shipping company between the U.S. east coast and the Mediterranean from 1919 to 1977, offering both cargo ship and passenger ship services, until it declared bankruptcy and was acquired by Farrell Lines of New York.
Hamburg Südamerikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft A/S & Co KG, widely known as Hamburg Süd, was a German container shipping company. Founded in 1871, Hamburg Süd was among the market leaders in the North–South trade. It also served all significant East–West trade lanes.
P&O Nedlloyd Container Line Limited was an Anglo-Dutch worldwide ocean-going container shipping line, with dual headquarters in London and Rotterdam. The company was formed in 1997 by the merger of the container-shipping interests of Dutch transportation company Royal Nedlloyd and the British maritime shipping giant P&O Group.
The MV Mairangi Bay was a container ship owned by Overseas Containers Limited (OCL). It was named after the suburb of Mairangi Bay in Auckland, New Zealand.
The MV Resolution Bay was a container ship owned by Overseas Containers Limited (OCL).
Stoomvaart Maatschappij Nederland or SMN, also known as the Netherland Line or Nederland Line, was a Dutch shipping line that operated from 1870 until 1970, when it merged with several other companies to form what would become Royal Nedlloyd.
Sea-Land was an American intra-regional container shipping company headquartered in Miramar, Florida with representation in 29 countries across the Americas. It offered ocean and intermodal services using container ships, trucks, and rail serving customers between North and South America, Central America, and the Caribbean.
The A. P. Moller-Maersk Group is an international business conglomerate more commonly known simply as Maersk. This article concerns the history of the company.
Nedlloyd was a Dutch shipping company, formed in 1970 as the result of a merger of several shipping lines:
Ocean Group plc was a major British transport business. It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
Farrell Lines Incorporated was a boat company named in 1948 after James A. Farrell, Jr., and John J. Farrell, sons of James Augustine Farrell, president of US Steel. The company was previously known as American South African Lines (ASAL). It was a passenger line and cargo line in regular service from New York City to South Africa stopping at Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and Lourenço Marques (Maputo) in Mozambique. The ships were well-appointed and carried about 180 passengers.
Gastor and Nestor were two LNG carriers built at the French shipyard Chantiers de l'Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire. Although delivered in 1976 both ships only entered real service in 1993, after their sale to Bonny Gas Transport Bermuda Shell, a subsidiary of Nigeria LNG Limited. Under their original names, the ships never transported any cargo.
Maersk Line is a Danish international container shipping company and the largest operating subsidiary of Maersk, a Danish business conglomerate. Founded in 1928, it is the world's second largest container shipping company by both fleet size and cargo capacity, offering regular services to 374 ports in 116 countries. In 2019, it employed 83,625 people where 18,398 of which are vessel crew and the other 65,227 are processing and operations personnel in offices and ports. Maersk Line operates over 708 vessels and has a total capacity of about 4.1 million TEU.
| Parent company |  | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Divisions and subsidiaries |
| ||||
| Acquisitions | |||||
