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And Jesus was a Sailor

 And Jesus was a sailor
when he walked upon the water
and he spent a long time watching
from his lonely wooden tower
and when he knew for certain
only drowning men could see him
he said All men will be sailors then
until the sea shall free them
but he himself was broken
long before the sky would open
forsaken, almost human
he sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.

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Ship History
Since the end of the age of sail a ship has been any large buoyant marine vessel. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing, entertainment, public safety, and warfare. Historically, a "ship" was a vessel with sails rigged in a specific manner.

Ships and boats have developed alongside mankind. In armed conflict and in daily life they have become an integral part of modern commercial and military systems. Fishing boats are used by millions of fishermen throughout the world. Military forces operate vessels for combat and to transport and support forces ashore. Commercial vessels, nearly 35,000 in number, carried 7.4 billion tons of cargo in 2007.

Ships were key in history's great explorations and scientific and technological development. Navigators such as Zheng He spread such inventions as the compass and gunpowder. Ships have been used for such purposes as colonization and the slave trade, and have served scientific, cultural, and humanitarian needs. New crops that had come from the Americas via the European seafarers in the 16th century significantly contributed to the world's population growth.

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Types of Ship

Commercial Vessels

• Bulk Carrier: also known as bulk freighter, or bulker is a merchant ship specially designed to  transport unpackaged bulk cargo, such as grains, coal, ore, and cement in its cargo holds. Economic forces have fueled the development of these ships, causing them to grow in size and sophistication. Today's bulkers are specially designed to maximize capacity, safety, efficiency, and to be able to withstand the rigors of their work.

• Container Ship: is a cargo ships that carry all of their load in truck-size intermodal containers, in a technique called containerization. They form a common means of commercial intermodal freight transport.

 

• Tanker Ship: or tank ship or tankship is a ship designed to transport liquids in bulk. Major types of tankship include the oil tanker, the chemical tanker, and the liquefied natural gas carrier.

• Cargo Ship: or freighter is any sort of ship or vessel that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another. Thousands of cargo carriers ply the world's seas and oceans each year; they handle the bulk of international trade. Cargo ships are usually specially designed for the task, often being equipped with cranes and other mechanisms to load and unload, and come in all sizes.

•  Passenger Ship: is a ship whose primary function is to carry passengers. The category does not include cargo vessels which have accommodations for limited numbers of passengers, such as the ubiquitous twelve-passenger freighters once common on the seas in which the transport of passengers is secondary to the carriage of freight. The type does however include many classes of ships designed to transport substantial numbers of passengers as well as freight. Indeed, until recently virtually all ocean liners were able to transport mail, package freight and express, and other cargo in addition to passenger luggage, and were equipped with cargo holds and derricks, kingposts, or other cargo-handling gear for that purpose. Only in more recent ocean liners and in virtually all cruise ships has this cargo capacity been eliminated.

• Roll on/ Roll Off:  or ro-ro ships are vessels designed to carry wheeled cargo such as automobiles, trucks, semi-trailer trucks, trailers or railroad cars that are driven on and off the ship on their own wheels. This is in contrast to lo-lo (lift-on/lift-off) vessels which use a crane to load and unload cargo.RORO vessels have built-in ramps which allow the cargo to be efficiently "rolled on" and "rolled off" the vessel when in port.

  

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Naval Vessels

Naval vessels are those used by a navy for military purposes. There have been many types of naval vessel. Modern naval vessels can be broken down into three categories: "surface warships", "submarines", and "support and auxiliary vessels".
Modern warships are generally divided into seven main categories: aircraft carriers, cruisers, destroyers, frigates, corvettes, submarines and amphibious assault ships. The distinctions between cruisers, destroyers, frigates, and corvettes is not rigorous; the same vessel may be described differently in different navies. Battleships were used during the Second World War and occasionally since then (the last battleships were removed from the U.S. Naval Vessel Register in March 2006), but were made obsolete by the use of carrier-borne aircraft and guided missiles.

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Fishing Vessels

Fishing vessels are a subset of commercial vessels, but generally small in size and often subject to different regulations and classification. They can be categorized by several criteria: architecture, the type of fish they catch, the fishing method used, geographical origin, and technical features such as rigging. As of 2004, the world's fishing fleet consisted of some 4 million vessels. Of these, 1.3 million were decked vessels with enclosed areas and the rest were open vessels. Most decked vessels were mechanized, but two-thirds of the open vessels were traditional craft propelled by sails and oars.

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 Weather Vessels

A weather ship was a ship stationed in the ocean as a platform for surface and upper air meteorological observations for use in weather forecasting. Surface weather observations were taken hourly, and four radiosonde releases occurred daily. It was also meant to aid in search and rescue operations and to support transatlantic flights. Proposed as early as 1927 by the aviation community, the establishment of weather ships proved to be so useful during World War II that the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) established a global network of weather ships in 1948, with 13 to be supplied by the United States. This number was eventually negotiated down to nine.

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 Inland and Coastal Boat

Many types of boats and ships are designed for inland and coastal waterways. These are the vessels that trade upon the lakes, rivers and canals.
Barges are a prime example of inland vessels. Flat-bottomed boats built to transport heavy goods, most barges are not self-propelled and need to be moved by tugboats towing or towboats pushing them. Barges towed along canals by draft animals on an adjacent towpath contended with the railway in the early industrial revolution but were out competed in the carriage of high value items because of the higher speed, falling costs, and route flexibility of rail transport.
Riverboats and inland ferries are specially designed to carry passengers, cargo, or both in the challenging river environment. Rivers present special hazards to vessels. They usually have varying water flows that alternately lead to high speed water flows or protruding rock hazards. Changing siltation patterns may cause the sudden appearance of shoal waters, and often floating or sunken logs and trees (called snags) can endanger the hulls and propulsion of riverboats. Riverboats are generally of shallow draft, being broad of beam and rather square in plan, with a low freeboard and high topsides. Riverboats can survive with this type of configuration as they do not have to withstand the high winds or large waves that are seen on large lakes, seas, or oceans.