Vessel History

The Horizon Pacific was constructed at Bethlehem Steel Shipyards in 1978. This vessel was a purpose-built container vessel and was one of the last container vessels that can be described as first generation.  Prior to the first generation, container ships were conversions of break bulk freighters or tankers

This vessel was one of a class of four near sisters, and part of an even larger class of closely related designs all built by different shipyards and designed by different commercial naval architects while classified and coordinated as US Maritime Administration standard designs.  All these vessels, like the Liberty ships and the Sea Fox, were assigned type designations, this vessel assigned C8-X-X.  While these vessels were purpose built as container ships, the first generation of such vessels were generally based on break bulk hull and machinery designs, so this vessel is actually a close development of the Sea Fox, while substantially larger.

The vessel is a typical US design and while the rest of the world was building almost exclusively diesel engine powered ships, most US built ships were still powered by steam turbines.  This vessel was one of the last steam powered commercial vessels and, soon after her construction, US ship owners and builders also started to adopt the more efficient diesel engines. The vessel was optimized for long range trades and fitted with a passenger accommodation deck.  The accommodation house still has curved surfaces that provide a streamlined appearance, but the streamlining served no purpose since it normally is fully boxed in by the container stacks in front and behind the house.

A significant number of the containers carried on deck are of the refrigerated type, with their own refrigeration unit fitted inside the container.  The units are powered by the ship’s generators through electrical outlets on deck.

The vessel also loads containers inside her hull, and so carries more containers than those on deck.  At the time of her construction, container vessels were being built all over the world, rapidly replacing a huge number of break bulk freighters and older less efficient container vessels.  One of these container vessels would replace several smaller freighters and all these newer vessels ended up competing for a relatively constant amount of cargo, resulting in murderous competition and price cutting between shipping lines.  She was nowhere near the largest container vessel constructed at that time, yet if her entire cargo of containers were loaded onto railroad cars the row of cars would be about 5 miles long.

Horizon Pacific was originally built as the Austral Pioneer for Farrell Lines, configured to carry cargo between the United States and Australia.  It was expected the vessel would carry a large quantity of refrigerated containers, so she was fitted with a unique system to refrigerate containers below decks.

In 1983 the vessel was purchased by United States Lines, renamed the American Pioneer and her below decks refrigeration system was no longer used.  Upon purchase the ship was lengthened by inserting a hull section forward of the house.  The vessel was still operating with US Lines when the company went bankrupt in 1987 and was purchased at the bankruptcy sale by Sea-Land Shipping.  She sailed for Sea-Land as the Sea-Land Pacific until 2000 when Maersk bought Sea-Land Shipping.

However, since Maersk was not a US corporation, and since the vessel was a US flag ship that also was constructed as a Jones Act ship, it was considered commercially advantageous to create a US corporation to own and operate the Jones Act vessels in the Sea-Land fleet.  Jones Act ships are US-flagged and US-built.  It certainly is allowed to build US flag ships in other countries, but then the ships cannot be Jones Act ships.

Only Jones Act ships are allowed to carry cargo (and passengers) between US ports, and, as such, do not compete against ships from other countries in the Jones Act trade.  Since, due to higher labor costs, it is much more expensive to build ocean going ships in the United States than other countries such as Korea and China, a Jones Act ship ends up being more valuable than non-US built ships.  This means that it is more cost effective to maintain the ship when it gets older than to build a new replacement.

A Jones Act corporation named CSX Lines was created after the parent corporation that owned Sea-Land at the time of the sale to Maersk, the ship was renamed CSX Pacific.  In 2003 CSX corporation (primarily a railroad company) spun off the shipping line as Horizon Lines.  At over 35 years of age, she was an old rather small and inefficient container ship, but still making her living carrying containers between US ports and its possessions together with her older sisters and some newer US built container ships.

Horizon Lines went bankrupt in 2015 and the vessel was purchased by Pasha Hawaii Line and continued to operate until taken out of service in 2023.