WWII Cargo ship loading/unloading time

[Mdphotographer]

Hello I am interested in the time it took to load and unload cargo during WWII specifically Liberty Ships.
Thank You!

[j.sabourn]

Question is a bit ambiguous , the obvious answer would be what type of cargo ? No doubt it would be as fast as possible round the clock discharging or loading. But there is a difference between handling tanks, and grain. Would I imagine depending on the man power available . JS

[Ivan Cloherty]

Hmmm ! how long is a piece of string?

First let us know what you know about ships'
let us know what the particular interest is

As John mentioned, so many variables make it an impossible question to answer without further information

If loading in the USA or Canada, whose ports were not under any kind of attack, then loading times would be governed by the supply of goods alongside the vessel, what shore labour was available to load the goods and whether goods were being loaded using ship's gear or shore cranes, both the USA and Canada were lacking in shoreside cranes and invariably relied upon ships gear, not the fastest in the world in that era, especially Liberty ships which were built with the bare essentials.

Discharging was a whole different ball game, were the goods being discharged to shoreside, or barges or other vessels, were the ports being bombed (invariably they were!) had the ports got shore gear, had it been destroyed, were the ports fully operational, probably not, probably having suffered enemy bombing/mining,

UK and Europe ports were a whole different scenario to the USA, which never suffered , ships on fire, warehouses on fire, lock entrances being destroyed, equipment being destroyed, stevedore casualties from enemy action, etc etc etc

As you can see the string is getting longer

[Mdphotographer]

Thank you for responding. I have been a student of history for all of my life and am fascinated with the logistics of the WWII era. I have a good basic understanding of ships in regards to speed and cargo capacities. I know different cargo’s take different times to load/discharge and should have specified in my OP.

I was mostly interested in war material cargo that would be used for the CBO and for Overloard. So everything from bombs and bullets to armor,trucks,artillery,rations,medical supplies and so on. I understand that there are many factors that affects the time it would take to discharge cargo depending on port facilities and manpower available. And was just looking for a very general broad idea for how long a ship would be in port on each end of the voyage.

I know this will also be a highly subjective question but I was also interested knowing how big a crew of stevedores would be used just to handle the cargo irrespective of transportation personnel in very broad terms again both general war materials and vehicles.


Again I know this is all very subjective and for the sake of argument let’s assume only shipboard equipment would be available and port warehouse and dockside transportation availability isn’t a factor.

[j.sabourn]

If you had attended one of the Merchant Navy Defense courses in the early 1960s , when the Cold War with the USSR suddenly hotted up and people got their knickers in a twist especially when the Cuban fiasco nearly reached its peak , then the official future if things came to the worse , then there would be no ports to discharge or load , and all such work would be off the beaches . They never explained how this would be done so assume they got their references for the same from the surf ports down the West Coast of Africa , which could take a day or the best part of a year . One examiner for the BOT not British I assure you his idea of discharging a Rolls Royce was sewing a tarpaulin around it , lowering it ito the water and towing it ashore with the motor lifeboat , this is the answer he wanted . What utter rubbish a theoretical answer to a theoretical question. In times of war work safety goes out the window , but the only aim is to get the commodity there in one piece . JS

[Des Taff Jenkins]

The only thing I can add to Ivan;s excellent prose is that, in wartime, there may have been and mostly was only the the ships gear there to unload, old steam winches, not exactly modern, and certainly not fast, and in Britain even during the war there where strikes to factor in, I would say they where no faster than a general cargo boat today,, hence the containers'
Des

[j.sabourn]

Maybe the pilfering was more acute Des ? JS

[j.sabourn]

Ref. The reason for this question are you doing a theme question for B.Ed degree.? My daughter who did one years ago her main question re History was the Hitler years. She did succeed with the degree with honours , what she knew of the Hitler years I have no idea. All I knew about Hitler he was a small ex corporal out of the German Army WW1 , a despatch rider I believe , with a big ego and a small moustache . Cheers JS.

[Mdphotographer]

The reason I am asking is I am doing research for a book/series about a small group of people going back in time to Dec. 41 and introducing new technology to win the war faster. As everyone knows logistics wins wars one technology I was thinking about was in shipping specifically container and ro/ro ships so naturally that had me looking for information about how long it took to turn liberty ships around in port. And yes I know for container ships they would need to carry their own cargo handling equipment. I know this may seem like a dumb reason for my OP but I am trying to be as accurate as I can with not pushing the WWII era’s technologies past what is plausible even if the premise itself is implausible.

I hope this makes sense and am sorry if I have wasted anyone’s time.

[j.sabourn]

Certainly not wasting my time as anything to keep the mind working puts off the day when one doesn’t have one to work at all. All our learning came originally from the written word so being accurate is the name of the game, there is a lot of false information out there and people even go to war on those mistaken beliefs . So the truth is always looked for. Best of luck. JS