Tramp trade
Within a few years tramp ships became the workhorses of trade, transporting coal and finished products from British cities to the rest of the world.
During the Second World War, the United States created the Liberty Ship, a single design that could be used to carry just about anything, and which weighed in at 10,500 dwt.
[1][2] After the Second World War, economies of scale took over and the size of tramp ships exploded to keep up with a booming supply and demand cycle.
Tramp ships often carry their own gear, such as booms, cranes and derricks, in case the ports they use lack suitable equipment for loading or discharging cargo.
Unlike a liner, often called a common carrier, which has a fixed schedule and a published tariff, the ideal tramp can carry anything to anywhere, and freight rates are influenced by supply and demand.
[1] Under the net form, the cargo a tramp ship carries is loaded, discharged, and trimmed at the charterer's expense.
[1] A broker understands international trade conditions, the movements of goods, market prices and the availability of the owner's ships.
[1] The Baltic Exchange works like an organised market and provides a meeting place for ship owners, brokers and charterers.
Tramp steamers and freighters are associated with off-the-beaten track, romanticized adventure and intrigue in pulp stories, children's books, novels, films, and other fictional works.
When characters such as spies or resistance fighters are on the run, or lovers are fleeing from an affair gone wrong, tramp steamers are used to slip in or out of a country.
The crew of a tramp steamer is often a picaresque mix of societal outcasts and rogues with colourful (or even illegal-activity-filled) pasts who cannot or who do not want to work elsewhere.
Steamers are often depicted as operating in a grey area of legality, both in terms of their lax observance of steamship safety regulations and their plying of black market trades and smuggling of goods and passengers.
Fiction writers depicted tramp steamers as a way that penniless adventurers can explore exotic ports by being taken on as a crew member.
