What would Chang have thought of this?

EVEN for those of us who have been in the shipping industry a while, 1968 seems a long time ago now - the halcyon days of the general cargo ship and the conventional liner companies. Though few realised it then, it was also the beginning of their swan song; the container revolution was about to transform shipping.

But in 1968 it was not at all clear that the box would sweep aside the derrick and sling for ever. A strong body of opinion held that palletisation was the way forward, and for a while it looked as though pallets and pallet- friendly ship designs would achieve hoped- for efficiency gains and solve the endemic pilferage problem.

There were some who saw that containers were the future but very few who understood how profoundly "the box" would change the way shipping works.