Lighter ship from the Red Hook Waterfront Museum
A Lighter is a long, flat-bottomed barge, and can hold up to 1,500 tons of cargo per trip. Lighter ships have no engine and are pulled by a tugboat to their destination. Barges were built mainly for river and canal cargo transportation. Today barges are used for low value bulk items or very heavy cargo. This is because barges are less costly to operate then others ships.
Container ships are ships that carry cargo from all across the world in truck size containers. There are several different types of container ships: bulk vessels, breakbulk vessels, ro-ro vessels, multi-purpose vessels, tanker vessels, crude carriers, LNG carriers, and reefer vessels.
Container Ship
Although all these ships have different names, they are all used for the same thing. Some carry cars and other types of transportation, some carry natural resources like oil, and some carry food. The sole purpose of these ships is to import and export goods around the world.