Topic summary
Bulk carriers
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Bulk carrier.
Hull
Bulk carriers are designed to be easy to build and to store cargo efficiently. To facilitate construction, bulk carriers are built with a single hull curvature. Also, while a bulbous bow allows a ship to move more efficiently through the water, designers lean towards simple vertical bows on larger ships. Full hulls, with large block coefficients, are almost universal, and as a result, bulk carriers are inherently slow. This is offset by their efficiency. Comparing a ship's carrying capacity in terms of deadweight tonnage to its weight when empty is one way to measure its efficiency. A small Handymax ship can carry five times its weight. In larger designs, this efficiency is even more pronounced: Capesize vessels can carry more than eight times their weight.