Lighter (barge)
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A lighter is a type of flat-bottomed barge used to transfer goods and passengers to and from moored ships. Lighters were traditionally unpowered and were moved and steered using long oars called "swee
A lighter carrying shipping containers (loaded and unloaded by the tall derrick-crane on the lighter's top-deck) in Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour.
A US Army LACV-30 (Lighter Air Cushion Vehicle - 30 Ton) hovercraft transporting ground-support military equipment to the shore in 1986.
A lighter for mechanized equipment designed by A. J. Higgins in 1941
USN Ash Lighter (YA-13) photographed in 1941
Lighterman
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A lighterman is a worker who operates a lighter, a type of flat-bottomed barge, which may be powered or unpowered. In the latter case, it is usually moved by a powered tug. The term is particularly as
Lighter (barge)
…unpowered and were moved and steered using long oars called "sweeps" and the motive power of water currents. They were operated by skilled workers called lightermen and were a characteristic sight in London's docks until about the 1960s, when technological changes made this form of lightering largely redundant…
Watermen's Hall (1778-80), by William Blackburn.
19th-century lightering
Lighters along the Singapore River in 1973. Photograph by Ng Yew Loo.