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Comment by ksjskskskkk | Hacker News Reader

passenger boats are way overdue for a come back.

don't even mention nasty cruises which only cover coastal routes, like some paleolithic dingy.

Not sure if you are serious, but I agree. I like to take a train+ferry whenever possible even if it adds a day or two to the journey. Did lots of trips on the Amsterdam-Newcastle and Sweden-Poland routes. Uncomparably good memories compared to plane travel which is uniformly awful.

I have been scouting cruise websites for ways to also replace transatlantic flights, but they are way too sparse.

Ferry routes have really taken a pounding in the UK over the past decade or two unfortunately. Combination of the channel tunnel and low cost airlines I would making former routes uneconomical to run is, I would imagine, where the majority of the blame lies.

One example: I've always wanted to do a motorcycle tour around Scandinavia, particularly Norway, but it's a heck of a ride from Calais all the way up there. For many bikes, far enough that you'd need to organise a service and tyre change at least once whilst on the trip. At the time when I was first thinking about this I had a bike with a 3750 mile service interval, although I could generally squeak 4000 - 5000 miles out of tyres.

So my plan back in 2014 had been to ride up from East Anglia to Aberdeen, get on the ferry to Lerwick, and then get a ferry from Lerwick to Stavanger in Norway to cut off a lot of "transit" riding. Unfortunately it turned out the website with this ferry route listed was lying to me, and that actually it had been retired in something like 2008. (You can still find this route listed on some websites today, but it's long since gone.)

Nowadays I'm not even sure it's possible to get a ferry from the UK to Germany. I've never done it but you used to be able to get a ferry from Harwich (very convenient for me) to Bremerhaven: no more, sadly.

There was a ferry from Emden, Germany to Kristiansand, Norway which might have been interesting. But it recently got shut down[1] due to financial difficulties.

Maybe it gets resurrected at some point...

[1]: https://reiseliv1.no/reiseliv/2023/rederiet-holland-norway-l...

Some of these ferries still run for freight-only, e.g. link below. I'm not sure if they'd take a motorbike (or car) as freight though, except on a trailer.

https://www.dfds.com/en/freight-shipping/routes-and-schedule...

It does mention self-drivers

There may be hope

"Low emission cruise travel . save more than 50% energy compared to.. the last vessel operating the same route."

BERGEN STAVANGER NEWCASTLE - planned to start 2026

https://bergencruiseline.no/ourmission/

Ooh, now that's exciting. There's a Kawasaki dealership in Bergen where I'd been planning to get my bike serviced on the trip.

> One example: I've always wanted to do a motorcycle tour around Scandinavia, particularly Norway, but it's a heck of a ride from Calais all the way up there.

Hah, that brings back memories: in the early 80s I did a bike (not motor-) journey from home (in the south of England) to Sweden, taking the Dover-Calais ferry and then via France-Belgium-Netherlands-Germany-Denmark. Must've been ~900 miles of pedalling.

But I didn't attempt a tour of Scandinavia once I got there! (I was headed over there to stay with relatives for a few months.)

There’s basically only one ocean liner in the world although cruise ships do reposition and there are some other options. Trains are more practical in Europe although long distance can involve a fair number of changes and time spent in train stations.

I don’t love plane trips but they generally get the trip over fairly quickly if the journey isn’t the goal. And longer haul comfort is mostly just a matter of money.

I don’t think that passenger boats are a replace for planes in any way.

There's plenty of places where geography means they are, especially in Europe — around Scandinavia, Greece, the British Isles, Spanish islands etc. Presumably the Caribbean and some of South East Asia is the same.

The journey is obviously slower, but that can either be a way to rest on a long road journey (truck drivers in Europe sometimes use longer ferry routes so they get their mandatory rest period), or an opportunity to sleep in a fairly decent bed.

Let's not pretend that passenger vessels are less likely to be subject to accidents.

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