Preparing for Uncertainty and Self Reliance

[Montegriffo]

Pamir, a four-masted barque, was one of the famous Flying P-Liner sailing ships of the German shipping company F. Laeisz. She was the last commercial sailing ship to round Cape Horn, in 1949. By 1957, she had been outmoded by modern bulk carriers and could not operate at a profit.

She was built at the Blohm & Voss shipyards in Hamburg, launched on 29 July 1905. She had a steel hull and tonnage of 3,020 GRT (2,777 net). She had an overall length of 114.5 m (375 ft), a beam of about 14 m (46 ft) and a draught of 7.25 m (23.5 ft). Three masts stood 51.2 m (168 ft) above deck and the main yard was 28 m (92 ft) wide. She carried 3,800 m² (40,900 ft²) of sails and could reach a top speed of 16 knots (30 km/h). Her regular cruise speed was around 8-9 knots.

She was the fifth of ten near-sister ships. She was commissioned on 18 October 1905 and used by the Laeisz company in the South American nitrate trade. By 1914, she had made eight voyages to Chile, taking between 64 and about 70 days for a one-way trip from Hamburg to Valparaíso or Iquique, the foremost Chilean nitrate ports at the time.

Think about it. This ship was one of 10, launched only 1/2 dozen years before the Titanic. The economy of the time said sail was a viable choice to make money. But this was about the time Rockefeller & Standard Oil were changing the landscape of the petro industry, and oil fired diesels & turbines were replacing coal at sea.

This is a riot, deja vu all over again! Https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/06/maga ... power.html

If sail-assisted power is indeed imminent, as many of its advocates believe, we stand on the threshold of a new era, one that may prove to be more dramatic and lasting than that of the old square-riggers. When we scan the ocean's horizon 20 years from now, we may see ships with sails unlike anything we have seen before -some with a solid wing sail like that of an airplane's airfoil, others with soft sails of synthetic fibers and plastics. And these sails will be automatically trimmed, and furled or unfurled, depending on the wind direction and velocity, by microcomputers on the ship's bridge.

Yes, almost 40 years ago when the world economy had had it's ass kicked by oil shocks, people were taking sails for cargo ships seriously. Then oil prices dropped, and um, never mind. As always, innovation is all in the numbers.

The thing which killed the age of sail was the Suez canal.
It was the inability to navigate the canal under sail.
Steamers didn't have to round the Cape and could knock weeks off the time from the East to Europe.

Oceans full of commercial sailboats would be a beautiful thing.

[Ex-California]

How many fucking sails would this thing take?

[Hastur]

You don't need to haul oil if there is no oil.

[Montegriffo]

Don't need to haul oil if everyone has stopped using it.

[Speaker to Animals]

So your plan is to put nuclear reactors on freighters?

We have great ship engines right now. Totally electric. Our carrier fleets run for decades.

All powered by nuclear reactors.

What happens when the Somali pirates get a nuclear reactor, Monty?

This got buried. I thought it amusing that Monty appealed to giant electric engines like those on our warships without considering the fact that those engines all run on nuclear reactors.

[Speaker to Animals]

Honestly, if oil became very scarce relative to our global demand, I can see us transitioning to nuclear-powered freighters. But they would have to move in huge flotillas and guarded by warships.

You would not use something like that to transport most consumer goods you consume today.

[brewster]

The thing which killed the age of sail was the Suez canal.
It was the inability to navigate the canal under sail.
Steamers didn't have to round the Cape and could knock weeks off the time from the East to Europe.

Oceans full of commercial sailboats would be a beautiful thing.

I doubt that was really it. There are plenty of other commercial routes, and even a standard freighter is navigated through much of the Panama canal by tugs. I don't know about the Suez, but I'll bet anything many sailing ships were tugged through. I was just there over Christmas.

It was a confluence of ever cheaper fossil fuel, ever more efficient engines and ship design, and increasing globalization which rewarded transit speed. Don't underestimate what I said about cost of interest vs transit cost. This is what Panama makes bank on, time=money when you have many millions tied up in a cargo. It can cost more than a million to use the SuperPamanax canal. But that ship I linked was profitably running raw ores around in the 1st half of the 20th century, just not as time sensitive as a cargo of manufactured goods with a lot of cash tied up in it.

Another interesting and very technical document on the subject:
http://www.marinepropulsors.com/smp/fil ... _Ouchi.pdf

[Montegriffo]

The thing which killed the age of sail was the Suez canal.
It was the inability to navigate the canal under sail.
Steamers didn't have to round the Cape and could knock weeks off the time from the East to Europe.

Oceans full of commercial sailboats would be a beautiful thing.

I doubt that was really it. There are plenty of other commercial routes, and even a standard freighter is navigated through much of the Panama canal by tugs. I don't know about the Suez, but I'll bet anything many sailing ships were tugged through. I was just there over Christmas.

It was a confluence of ever cheaper fossil fuel, ever more efficient engines and ship design, and increasing globalization which rewarded transit speed. Don't underestimate what I said about cost of interest vs transit cost. This is what Panama makes bank on, time=money when you have many millions tied up in a cargo. It can cost more than a million to use the SuperPamanax canal. But that ship I linked was profitably running raw ores around in the 1st half of the 20th century, just not as time sensitive as a cargo of manufactured goods with a lot of cash tied up in it.

Another interesting and very technical document on the subject:
http://www.marinepropulsors.com/smp/fil ... _Ouchi.pdf

Wasn't just the navigation of the canal itself, the difficult sailing conditions of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean made the shortcut to the Orient impractical for sail.

When the canal was opened to traffic the sailing ship was still queen of the ocean. The canal cut such large distances off the route to India and the Far East that a great impetus was given to the improvement of the steamship. Sailing vessels could not benefit by the Suez Canal; the winds of the Mediterranean are variable, and the Red Sea is not suitable for sailing ships. In addition, the world was railway-minded as regards steam, and it was thought that a railway from Suez to Alexandria would solve the problem of the blind alley of the Mediterranean.


This period was the heyday of the sailing ship. Far better vessels than the steamships of that time, they had behind them tradition, experience, and faith in the established order of things. The steamship was still an experiment. Fine ships set out from England, picked up the north-east trades, left the African coast, worked across the Doldrums by standing over towards South America, swept round the Cape of Good Hope, picked up the “brave west winds”, and made fast passages to Australia.


Although the Suez Canal did not cut many miles off the route to Australia, it was obviously the short cut to India and the Far East - if marine steam-engines worked. For some period the issue was in the balance. So inefficient were the steam-engines of that day that for a time they could not compete with sail on long voyages. The Suez Canal cut the fairway for the steamship and offered many advantages. The mileages saved on the routes from London to Bombay and Calcutta were 4,563 and 3,667 respectively. In the early years the success of the Suez Canal was in doubt, but as soon as the advantage of the saving in distance and improvements in steamships took effect, its superiority was recognized and has remained unchallenged. Coaling ports were established at various point; thus ships did not have to load so much fuel as to reduce cargo-carrying, while lack of reliable winds prevented sailing vessels from competing on the new route to the East.

https://www.shippingwondersoftheworld.c ... canal.html

Journeys from Australia with grain and wool remained just about viable until WWII but the days of the tea clippers were ended by the canal.

If you haven't already read it I highly recommend The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00KFEH12G/ ... TF8&btkr=1

[brewster]

Wasn't just the navigation of the canal itself, the difficult sailing conditions of the Red Sea and the Mediterranean made the shortcut to the Orient impractical for sail.

That was interesting, and basically confirmed the time=money formula was the death knell of sail. Ships had been sailing the Med and the Red seas for millennia, but it was faster and more dependable by steam. None of the modern proposed designs are engineless, many are not even designed to be under sail alone, just using sail to cut fuel consumption. Just another example of the options we have that we don't take because fuel is cheaper. For now.

EDIT: Just ordered The Last Grain Race on Ebay for $4!

[Speaker to Animals]

Sailing will likely comeback for trans-Atlantic passenger transit.

I bet a clipper outfit will beat airline prices by quite a lot after peak oil.