The encyclopedia · Engineering & Operations · Technical decision · 1969
LASH ships, from 1969, carry whole barges loaded away from the dock
Lighter-aboard-ship loaded pre-filled barges onto a mothership, so cargo could be gathered inland and loaded without a berth.
Prudential Lines · Central Gulf Lines
the move
A container ship is only as fast as the port it calls at. If the terminal is congested or a berth is unavailable, ships wait, and the money lost is not the crane's time but the ship's. Ports with shallow water or poor equipment made this worse.
Lighter-aboard-ship, designed by engineer Jerome Goldman, split the difference between barge and container. Each barge — a small self-contained lighter — was loaded and sealed inland, then lifted whole onto a mothership by a stern crane. The first LASH ship, Acadia Forest, entered service in 1969 and could carry 75 lighters.
The ship did not need a berth or a container crane; it could load and unload its own lighters at anchor. The cargo did not need a container terminal either — it was already sealed in a barge at an inland port. The box and the port problem both disappeared.
Prudential Lines ordered the first US vessels, and Acadia Forest arrived in London in late 1969, which showed the system working end to end.
why it works
- The mothership carries its own crane, so it does not depend on port crane capacity.
- Lighters can be loaded at inland waterways or anchorages, avoiding crowded container terminals entirely.
- An empty or partially-loaded ship need not wait for a berth — it works at anchor.
- Barges handle feeder and river legs that a container ship cannot reach.
what transfers
If the bottleneck is the port, move the loadable unit onto the water and let it meet the ship rather than forcing every ship to come to the same dock.
what came after
LASH found a niche in trades connecting ocean vessels to inland waterways, but it never displaced the container, which became the single world standard. The large, weight-efficient principle of loading cargo away from the dock influenced later thinking about port congestion even as LASH itself faded.
references
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