A lot of studies of ship's economy are on the traditional fields such asreducing propulsion resistance, raising cargo handling rates and lessening building consts, but there are few researches on the merchant ship's economy concerning their deadweights and speeds according to shipping companies managerial cercumstances. Contrary to the contemporary trend that "the bigger, the better, if the cargo handling rate could increased sufficiently to hold down port time to that rate of smmaler vessels", this paper demonstrates the existence of certain limits in ship's size and speed according to the coditions of the freight rates, voyage distances, cargo handing rates, prices of fuel oil, interst rates etc. Fom the curves of criteria contour for various ship's deadweights and speeds which are depicted from the gird search method, one can get the costs and the yearly profit rates under the conditiions of large volume with long term contracts for the transportation of bulk cargoes. In estimating ship's transportation economy, the auther takes the position that the profit rate method is properer than the cost method, and introduces the calculation table of the voyage profit rate index. The use of the criteria contours will be of help to ship owners in determining the size and speed of the ship which will be built or purchased and serve in a certain trade route.

There may be a lor of studies on the economic design of ship for the most favorable combination of design basis on the owner's request. However, there are few on the economical ship's size and speed for the ship owner's stand point. This paper describes on the optimal ship's size and speed to the given marine commercial environments for the owner's requirement to the shipyard. As the result of the paper, the criterion curve of bulk carrier will also be used to assess existing ships for their profitability.