Definition of "shipping"

From the ground, Colombo’s port does not look like much. […] But viewed from high up in one of the growing number of skyscrapers in Sri Lanka’s capital, it is clear that something extraordinary is happening: China is creating a shipping hub just 200 miles from India’s southern tip.

2013 June 8, “The new masters and commanders”, in The Economist, volume 407, number 8839, page 52

Our overplus of shipping will we burn; / And, with the rest full-mann’d, from the head of Actium / Beat the approaching Caesar.

c. 1606, William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra‎, Act III, Scene 7

[…] the Advantage appeared greatly on their Side, in Numbers of Shipping, and of Men;

1724, Daniel Defoe, A General History of the Pyrates‎, London: T. Warner, Introduction, page 23

My first afternoon, on reaching New Bedford, was spent in visiting the wharves and viewing the shipping.

1855, Frederick Douglass, chapter 22, in My Bondage and My Freedom‎, New York: Miller, Orton & Mulligan, page 345

Shipping of every sort, from passenger liners to ferry steamers, tramps to tugs and trailing barges, feluccas to speedboats and yachts, from warships to caiques, chugs, hoots, glides or churns its way in all directions.

1950 July, J. C. Mertens, “By the "Taurus Express" to Baghdad”, in Railway Magazine, page 435

[…] I clearly remember a castle on the shores of the lagoon, where gondolas appeared amid larger shipping, which seemed to be plying in and out of Naples […]

1970, Robertson Davies, chapter 2, in Fifth Business‎, Toronto: Macmillan, page 107

God send 'em good shipping.

c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act V, scene i]