Modern cargo ships slow to the speed of the sailing clippers

guardian.co.uk

20 points·stfu··4 comments

From what I understand, part of the reason for this trend is an excess of cargo ships. As a shipper it doesn't pay to rush cargo from one place to another if you have empty ships doing nothing.

But I doubt this will continue. The reason is the customers don't like it. If I have a billion dollars travelling from Shanghai to LA I want it to get there quickly so I can sell my product and use that billion for something else. This is why much-more-efficient-but-slower airships could never compete with airplanes.

> Travel times between the US and China, or between Australia and Europe, are now comparable to those of the great age of sail in the 19th century.

If this is true, why don't we all just use sailing ships, which require no fuel and produce no emissions?

They still have to pay the sailors. The Cutty Sark had a capacity of 1,700 tons and a minimum complement of 28 [1]. By contrast Emma Maersk can carry 154,000 with only 13 Sailors [2]. The fuel savings are probably not worth ~200 times higher labor costs.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutty_Sark

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_M%C3%A6rsk

It was amazing what a big sailing ship could do on a downwind course and with good weather (which for them was storms in the right direction).

The standard deviation in speed would be high, and not all destinations could be managed on downwind courses.

All that said, the length of time the Cutty Sark held its speed record was amazing and inspiring. IIRC it took modern multi-hulls to beat it (sailing).

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