Captain Erikson Sails Again
Jun. 29th, 2019 01:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ecosophia
I was delighted a few days ago to field an inquiry from Andrew Wilner of the Center for Post Carbon Logistics -- yes, that's a thing! -- asking if he could reprint one of my Archdruid Report articles from way back, "Captain Erikson's Equation." Of course I gave permission at once, and gladly. Gustav Erikson, for those who are new arrivals on board this voyage, was a shipping magnate in the early 20th century who foresaw the end of the petroleum age and tried to keep the square-rigged windjammer going as a living technology through the era of diesel freighters. He was, as I noted in my essay, a man ahead of his time; the petroleum age lasted longer than he did, and his heirs lacked his vision and scrapped the fleet of working windjammers he'd kept gainfully (and profitably) employed on a handful of long-distance bulk cargo runs. 
Fortunately others have stepped up to the plate. I wasn't familiar with the Center for Post Carbon Logistics until I got the inquiry in question -- I get the impression that it's a fairly new venture -- but it's both timely and seriously needed. As we'll be discussing in a couple of weeks on my main blog, peak oil hasn't gone anywhere; as petroleum engineers like to say, depletion never sleeps, and the frantic efforts made since 2008 to force down the price of oil by pouring anything dimly resembling liquid fuels into the market has merely postponed the inevitable. (What's more, it's a postponement that some of us predicted. More on this soon!) You can visit the website for The Center for Post Carbon Logistics here. The essay has lost none of its relevance since its original publication, for that matter; you can read it on the Center's website here.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-29 06:56 pm (UTC)Also, I should get in touch with them: I wonder if they have ships which need some fresh hands...
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-29 11:09 pm (UTC)You might check out some of the groups listed on the website -- there are sailing ships beginning to work regular routes again, so you've got a good shot at it
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-29 07:28 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-29 11:11 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-30 06:22 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-30 09:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-01 12:07 am (UTC)https://www.starclippers.com/us-dom/our-fleet/royal-clipper.html
They have an even larger sailing ship known as the Flying Clipper, patterned after the French windjammer France II.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Clipper
Sailing ships are already making a comeback and with advances that have been made in shipbuilding since the Preussen was launched, I wouldn't be surprised to see even larger windjammers in the future.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-01 01:48 am (UTC)A Swedish company actually built a slightly smaller copy of the Preussen and uses it as a cruise ship. Apparently, it can get into ports the standard behemoth cruise ships can’t reach.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/cruises/2018/01/12/cruising-paradise-royal-clipper-worlds-largest-full-rigged-sailing-ship/1007217001/
Not forgotten
Date: 2019-06-29 09:35 pm (UTC)https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pommern_(1903)
Re: Not forgotten
Date: 2019-06-29 11:12 pm (UTC)Re: Not forgotten
Date: 2019-06-30 04:50 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-29 10:25 pm (UTC)A friend of mine has been involved with motorless shipping for years now. I think they mostly ship luxury goods at the moment, cacao and the like. They use retrofitted ships, you might enjoy seeing this: https://fairtransport.eu/about/
On that note, the Netherlands tends to keep most old technologies going. We've kept open thousands of shipping canals. We have a functional fleet of old steam locomotives, diesel locomotives, hundreds of sailing ships, and we've even kept a few of the old steam-powered pumps in functional condition (if memory serves, they last used the one in friesland back in 2017 to counteract unexpectedly high groundwater levels due to rain), as well as a bunch of diesel-powered ones.
It's a dang shame we're under sea level, and the seas are rising. But as far as retrotopian technologies go, it really is quite an excellent basis.
- Brigyn
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-29 11:14 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-30 07:15 am (UTC)You and me both.
-Brigyn
Other ventures
Date: 2019-06-29 10:30 pm (UTC)What a timely blog post, I am visiting a group of people doing something about this in a couple of weeks (ironically via a carbon based transport network haha). This group is constructing a wooden sailing ship of approx. 450 tonnes to move freight up and down the American Pacific coast. Tiny steps, but I think an important beginning to incubate those skills we will need in the decades ahead. I can post a link to their website if anyone is interested.
Cheers,
Damo
*disclosure, I have a small financial and personal stake in the project
Re: Other ventures
Date: 2019-06-29 11:17 pm (UTC)Also, I believe there was a comment in the other blog's open post about ecoclipper - a Dutch project to continue/expand non-petroleum dependent shipping lines.
Fabulous stuff, all of this.
Re: Other ventures
Date: 2019-06-29 11:21 pm (UTC)Re: Other ventures
Date: 2019-07-01 03:49 pm (UTC)https://panamacityliving.com/homeport-and-destinations-brian-disernias-schooner-columbia/
Re: Other ventures
Date: 2019-06-29 11:55 pm (UTC)Yes, you can find more information at the website here:
https://www.sailcargo.org/
As John mentioned, there are a couple of other commercial operations now also running, but these guys are the only ones I know of building a wooden ship from scratch for cargo transport. Note, for the purists, it will have electric drive motors to get in and out of port, no capstan here :-) The batteries will charge from the prop spinning under sail similar to the way an electric car charges when braking.
The design is based on a coastal trading schooner built in Finland in the 1900s.
Cheers,
Damo
Re: Other ventures
Date: 2019-06-30 03:55 am (UTC)Re: Other ventures
Date: 2019-06-30 09:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-30 01:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-30 03:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-30 04:31 am (UTC)Best news I've heard in a long time!
Date: 2019-06-30 11:10 am (UTC)The return of the glorious Age of Sail is inevitable as oil gradually runs out; the big question has always been “when”. I had always feared that the “aha” moment would only occur in the midst of an oil price spike that would cripple fleets and turn petroleum-dependent commercial shipping into “bankruptcies r us”. As a former sailor, I am delighted beyond words by reports from you and others among the commentariat that shipping via sail has already made inroads as a niche market and that there are some enterprising and forward thinking companies who are reviving the schooners, brigs and barks of old, in anticipation of the sunset of fossil fuels. Perhaps a less-than-apocalyptic transition to sail on the high seas is possible.
By the way, in Canada, there are a fair number of small sailing ships plying the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway which train seamanship to high school students. They even get a high school credit for participating. Such opportunities didn't exist when I was a lad 40 years ago... Hopefully in the future these and similar training ventures will serve as a springboard for a future of competent commercial sailors.
Thanks for sharing the good news, JMG! May "Captain Erikson's Equation" catch on like wildfire!
Ron M
Re: Best news I've heard in a long time!
Date: 2019-06-30 09:34 pm (UTC)Re: Best news I've heard in a long time!
Date: 2019-06-30 09:37 pm (UTC)peak oil
Date: 2019-06-30 05:02 pm (UTC)These are their best arguments, really? A drunk third-grader could probably come up with better ones :)
And he doesn't even understand what he writes. "there’s no reason to think civilization is outstripping its resource base" - yep, nothing to see here, folks, go back to your TVs ... and a paragraph later he says that since late 70s we burned through 1.1 trillion barrels, with 1.7 trillion barrels remaining. So, even if these numbers are correct and we forget about billions of people driving cars (instead of bicycles they rode back in the 80s and 90s), we're good for another 60 years or so. Nothing to worry about? /facepalm
Leon
Re: peak oil
Date: 2019-06-30 07:50 pm (UTC)Also, I think he needs to read the book he's critiquing: it was quite clear oil is non-renewable over any time scale relevant to humans. To use his words: "A minor but telling mistake suggesting superficial knowledge of the subject."
I really wonder if he read the book or just felt the need to critique you regardless of the facts....
Re: peak oil
Date: 2019-06-30 08:11 pm (UTC)Re: peak oil
Date: 2019-07-01 04:49 pm (UTC)Leon
Re: peak oil
Date: 2019-07-01 06:48 pm (UTC)Re: peak oil
Date: 2019-07-02 02:12 am (UTC)I see this as a good thing. “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”. With full respect to the Archdruid, ten years ago he was ignored by the mainstream. Articles like the above show that he is being taken seriously enough now to be seen as an adversary. We will know he is making inroads when they come up with more convincing counter-arguments ;-)
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-30 05:39 pm (UTC)my favourite Non-uncle was a seaman and then a Master on those Barquentines back in the 1930's until WW 2 diverted his attention. I'd forgotten I used to know a lot about it = but that was long ago :)
Mark
(no subject)
Date: 2019-06-30 09:19 pm (UTC)One of my lasting disappointments is that the bottom never seems to drop out of the fiberglass yacht market. Still, maybe one of these days I'll find something I can afford.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-01 02:39 am (UTC)Fifty years ago there were still a few men alive, like Alan Villiers, who had taken much larger sailing ships around the world. When a replica of the famous Mayflower was commissioned and built in the 1950s, it was Villiers (IIRC) who captained it from a shipyard in England to its new home in Plymouth, Mass.
One of the reasons we have been supporting Mystic Seaport Museum (in Connecticut) for so many years is precisely to help keep this particular set of old skills alive until it is needed again. (Another such museum we support is Old Sturbridge Village, in Massachusetts, which preserves the skills of early 19th-century farming and animal husbandry.)
on the topic of water...
Date: 2019-07-01 04:12 pm (UTC)-Ms. Krieger
(no subject)
Date: 2019-07-02 02:32 pm (UTC)Tall ship Elissa
Date: 2019-07-02 11:19 pm (UTC)