Economic historians have devoted much effort to analysing and classifying cycles into categories, usually focusing on their length. Many different types of cycle have been identified. The Kitchen is a short cycle of 3–4 years; the Juglar lasts 6–8 years; the Labrousse can last 10 or 12 years; the Kuznets lasts 20 years, while a Kondratieff spreads over a half century or more.6 In shipping the existence of cycles has long been accepted as part of the shipping business. In January 1901 a broker noted in his annual report that ‘the comparison of the last four cycles (10 year periods) brings out a marked similarity in the salient features of each component year, and the course of prices’. He went on to observe that the cycles seemed to be getting longer ‘a further retrospect shows that in the successive decades the periods of inflation gradually shrink, while the periods of depression correspondingly stretch out