Will ships without sailors be the future of trade?

Will ships without sailors be the future of trade?
Stav Dimitropoulos 16 July 2019

On 7 May, customs officers in Ostend, Belgium, received a box of oysters from the UK.

The molluscs had been caught in Essex and transported to Belgium on a 12m (39ft) aluminium-hulled vessel, which traversed the English Channel with no humans on board.

It was the world's first unmanned commercial shipping operation.

The crewless boat was carefully watched by four people in a control centre in Tollesbury, Essex, headquarters of Hushcraft, the company behind the design and development of the craft.

Self-navigating cargo ships 'by 2025'

UK and Belgian coastguards also monitored the oysters' progress.

"You could actually listen to the waves hitting the boat," says Ben Simpson, Hushcraft's managing director.

It boasts a hybrid diesel engine, electrical generators, satellite links, CCTV and thermal cameras, an automatic identification system to warn approaching vessels of its position and more.

Prize-winning

The boat was made by Sea-Kit, and the same vessel helped an international team of hydrographers, funded by the Japanese non-profit Nippon Foundation, win the $4m (£3.2m) Shell Ocean Discovery Xprize for advances in autonomously mapping the oceans.

Now Hushcraft wants Sea-Kit to be used for transporting cargo, hence mounting the 5kg box of oysters - a local delicacy - on to the vessel and sending it to Ostend. But is there a market for it?

"The benefits are many," says Mr Simpson. "You can send them around the world to do different jobs at a significantly reduced cost. Then, you don't have to have a galley, you don't have to have toilets. You can utilise space."

They are better for the environment as they can be electrically propelled, and since they can use smaller ports they can replace road transport and cut even more fumes, he says.

Ghost ships

For Lawrence Brennan, a retired US navy captain and adjunct professor of admiralty and maritime law at Fordham University School of Law, all these virtues of uncrewed cargo ships come with certain caveats.

Ships with no sailors mean no risk to human life from fires or other hazards at sea. No-one needs to recruit staff, pay them, keep them trained or guard against unlicensed crew. The boats can go anywhere.

But, in Prof Brennan's view, the first Achilles heel of unmanned shipping might be the very technology that created it.

A failure in communications between vessel and base will render it a ghost ship, hopelessly drifting without a soul on board, a hazard to its owners, the owners of its cargo, and the environment, he argues.
Get creative

"Unmanned ships may be stopped by pirates by disabling shots or damaging the ship's propeller and rudder," Prof Brennan continues.

Karolina Zwolak, head of the Navigation Section at the Institute of Navigation and Marine Hydrography of the Polish Naval Academy, contributed to the success of the oysters' voyage. Part of her job was collision avoidance.

Dr Zwolak is already working on the Sea-Kit international team's next ambitious endeavour, which will be to sail across the Atlantic next year, but is aware of the technology's limitations.

more...https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48871452