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Sail Freight Revival:
Methods Of Calculating Fleet, Labor, And Cargo Needs For
Supplying Cities By Sail.
Steven Woods
COR57700: Capstone Project.
In Partial Completion of Requirements For
Master of Resilient and Sustainable Communities
Prescott College
Spring 2021
Committee Members: Prof. Benjamin Dube & Erik Andrus
Steven Woods Sail Freight Revival
ABSTRACT.
Sail Freight has slowly worked its way into the realm of sustainability
discourse as a way of reducing emissions from transportation, providing
logistical solutions using the emissions free power of the wind and
technologies proven effective for over 5000 years. This attitude toward Sail
Freight and transportation in general has some merits, but none of these
discussions seem to have examined the issue of readopting sail freight at
scale. This paper proposes methods of understanding this issue of scale by
calculating the needs of a city for food. Using foodshed analysis to calculate
necessary fleet capacities therefrom, as well as the labor needed to support
this fleet, a model is provided for the New York Metro Area. The capacity for
building this fleet and training sailors with current sail freight infrastructure
and operations is then examined, with recommendations and analysis for
addressing these challenges over the coming decades.
Table Of Contents.
Abstract 1
Table Of Contents 1
Table Of Tables And Figures 2
Acknowledgements 3
Executive Summary 4
Introduction 6
1. History Of Sail Freight 12
2. Alternatives 16
3. Calculating Daily Per Capita Supply 19
4. Calculating Fleet Requirements 22
5. Challenges Of Expanding Infrastructure 34
6. Challenges Of Expanding The Fleet 40
7. Current Sail Freight Capacity 50
8. Time And Cost To Build Vessels 53
9. Time To Train Sailors 56
10. Crew Requirements By Rig And Tonnage 59
11. Necessary And Attainable Capacity For New York by 2050 62
12. Towards More Accurate Models 71
13. New England Fleet Requirements Based On Regional Self Reliance
Expectations. 74
14. Hawaii Sail Freight Predictions Based On Regional Self Reliance
Information. 79
15. Recommendations For Further Study 83
Conclusion 87
Bibliography 88
Appendix A: Directory of Sail Freight Vessels 93
Appendix B: Advocacy & Policy Recommendations 94
Appendix C: Recommendations for Further Research 95
Appendix D: Daily and Annual Ton-Miles, Tons Bunker, and Tons
CO2e for NYMA Supply. 96
Appendix E: Sail Freight Survey of November 2020 97
Citation: Woods, Steven. “Sail Freight Revival: Methods of calculating fleet, labor, and cargo needs for supplying
cities by sail.” Master’s Thesis. Prescott College, 2021.
Cover Photos: Vermont Sail Freight Project’s Ceres under sail, c. 2013. Courtesy of Erik Andrus.
© Steven Woods 2021. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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Steven Woods Sail Freight Revival
Table Of Tables And Figures
12 Map Of Roman And Carthaginian Empires.
14 Map Of Egyptian Empire.
23 Pack And Dra Animal Capacity Loss By Distance
26 Great Lakes Fleet Of 1900 Tonnage Distribution
28 Map Of US Inland Waterways
31 Coffee Requirements For Selected US Metro Areas
32 Chart Of Tons Per Sailor By Net Register Tonnage
42 Chart Of Operating Expense Per Ton
44 Time To Break Even For Selected Vessel Tonnages, Circuits, And Rates
44 Table Of Vessel-Miles To Operating Expense Break Even
57 Chart Of Crew Size By Ship Tonnage
60 Table Of 1906 Sailing Fleet Data By Rig
60 Chart Of Tons Per Sailor By NRT And Rig
61 Table Of 1906 Sailing Fleet Data For Ships Over 100 NRT
61 Table Of 1906 Sailing Fleet Data For Ships Over 1000 NRT
65 New York Fleet Requirements At Various Levels Of Supply
65 Time To Construct New York Fleet By Shipyard Capacity And Productivity
68 Chart Of Training And Shipbuilding Times By Tons Of Shipping
70 Estimated Fleet Requirements Of Miami & Baltimore Metro Areas
75-76 Estimated Fleet Requirements Of New England States
76 Coffee Requirements Of New England States
80 Estimated Fleet Requirements Of The State Of Hawaii
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Acknowledgements.
This work would not have been possible without the support of my Thesis
Committee: The Impending Dr. Benjamin Dube of Prescott College, and Erik Andrus,
founder of The Vermont Sail Freight Project.
Dr. Dube’s demystification of the arcane secrets of ecological economics, urban
metabolism, and materials flow analysis have been infinitely useful in framing and
understanding the ideas behind this paper. Further, his assistance in technical matters and
negotiating the tripwires of red tape accompanying the formal writing process have been
instrumental in bringing this thesis to its conclusion.
Erik Andrus is largely responsible for inspiring this thesis through The Vermont Sail
Freight Project. I had spent many years working in museums with historic technologies,
and thought about their application to modern problems when the project was brought to
my attention while at technical training in 2013. The Vermont Sail Freight Project proved
the viability of simply taking action and that my dreams of using the past to create a better
future in the style of Isaac Asimov’s Foundations trilogy was not only possible, but being
accomplished in real time. His pioneering work in reviving sail and building Ceres will be a
significant landmark in the history of US Sail Freight for centuries to come, and his
expertise and experience have been indispensable in writing this thesis.
Thanks are also extended to Dr Lori Curtis, whose assistance in finding my
committee, scoping in the boundaries of the paper and assistance in working with Prescott
College’s administrative requirements is greatly appreciated.
Further Thanks are due to:
Andrew Willner, The Center for Post Carbon Logistics.
Gavin Allwright, The International Windship Association.
The Schooner Apollonia
Sail Cargo Inc.
The Colonial Seaport Foundation
The Foundation for Underway Experiential Learning
Lastly, I owe a great debt of Gratitude to The Mumptons, who graciously let me hide
from the real world during a pandemic and a sprint through graduate school in their house.
My year and more of studies at an overly aggressive pace would have been impossible
without their assistance.
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Steven Woods Sail Freight Revival
Executive Summary
Sail Freight is an ever more popular, if far from mainstream, option for reducing
emissions from transportation and providing logistical solutions through proven
technologies. With efforts such as The Vermont and Maine Sail Freight Projects having
recently demonstrated the possible viability using sail freight in the modern world,
alongside Tres Hombres and other efforts in Europe, there is a growing fleet of
windjammers plying the seas. The last significant fleet of sailing vessels to work the seas for
commercial purposes ceased operation in 1948, leaving about a 70 year gap in the working
tradition of sail freight.
This revived interest in Sail Freight and renewably powered transportation in
general has some merits, but rigorous examinations of what a re-adoption of sail freight
would require are conspicuously absent. Much of the focus appears to be on Supplemental
Wind Power for existing commercial and conventional ships to increase fuel efficiency.
While some saving can be had, up to about 20% so far in a handfull of trials, this does not
achieve the requirements of meeting global warming targets, nor does it open the door to
looking at perfectly viable alternatives. The shortcomings of biofuels and electrification are
also mostly ignored in a maritime environment.
This paper proposes methods of understanding this issue of scale by calculating the
needs of the New York Metro Area for food. By determining the minimum average food
requirements of citizens and populations, daily tonnages of approximately 50,000 tons of
food per day were established for the 20 million inhabitants of the NYMA.
Using foodshed analysis to calculate necessary fleet capacities therefrom, as well as
the labor needed to support this fleet, a model is provided for the New York Metro Area.
Needing a fleet tonnage of over one million, nearly 10,000 ships and over 62,000 sailors,
the time to build the necessary fleet for New York’s food needs would be several decades
using all the US Shipbuilding and Sailor Training resources in existence. The usefulness of
these formulas when confronted with regional food self reliance information is also
examined. A Short evaluation of fleet needs is calculated from sources on New England’s
food goals for 2060. A Fleet of some 3000 ships and 18,000 sailors could likely take care of
importing half of New England’s food requirements, if agricultural capacity changes are
met.
The economic and environmental savings offered by Sail Freight are not
insignificant. Studies in the South Pacific during the oil crises of the 1970s showed that the
use of low capital changes could rapidly and cost effectively reduce oil dependence in the
region. In the last 10 years, much of this has been confirmed and is being actively turned
into working projects in the region. These are important proving grounds for Sail Freight.
The Luxury Goods market served by most of the European Sail Freight initiatives are
working to build alternative commercial networks which will prove important in future.
In-depth examination of historic models of sail freight from all over the world and
covering approximately the last five thousand years give a wide range of data on fleet
composition, ship efficiency, ship capacity, and other elements of sail freight. Finnish
Community Ownership models for small vessels from the late 19th century and the
construction of these ships for community use gives what amounts to a Community
Supported Shipping model which may prove useful for initial expansion of sailing fleets.
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Crowd funding and direct investment are also options used in recent Sail Freight
operations with some success.
Aside from the fleet and sailors to operate it, regulatory concerns are a significant
obstacle to the adoption of Sail Freight in the United States. The Jones Act, which regulates
all shipping sailing between US ports, prevents the use of all but one of the active Sail
Freight vessels in the world from operating between US Ports in a coastal capacity.
Navigational equipment and registration, as well as port requirements are also an
impediment, as is insurance for small vessels engaged in atypical trade. Cost to build
vessels, and a lack of infrastructure to operate them are also problems beyond the scope of
individuals or small organizations to address on their own. The rebuilding of brokerages,
warehousing systems, and foresight in all aspects of urban provisioning will be extremely
important to a successful transition to Sail Freight.
Sail Freight alone cannot fix the problems we are facing as a world and a culture.
Many other auxiliary changes must also happen to not only make Sail Freight viable, but
reduce the need for shipping overall. These include cultural and regulatory shis
incorporating Right to Repair and Design for Repair, the avoidance of single-use products,
prevention of food wastes, and localized production of other goods. An adjustment of the
cultural obsession with speed and instantaneity must also occur when adapting to a world
which relies on the weather for energy.
Recommendations and analysis for addressing these challenges over the coming
decades are included in the Appendixes, though they are not novel in most cases.
Exemption for Sailing Vessels from the Jones Act, improvement of infrastructure for small
vessels, and subsidy for sail training programs are among the major sail-freight specific
changes which should be made a priority. Other general improvements for a post-carbon
world and meeting Paris Climate Accord requirements such as increased taxation on
transportation fuels, tires, and carbon emissions all weigh the market more in favor of Sail
Freight at all scales. A weight-distance tax on all non-maritime shipping would also greatly
encourage Sail Freight and other sustainable long-distance transportation.
Recommendations for further research are also included.
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Introduction.
In October, 1921, this country was suddenly threatened with a total
suspension of railroad transportation. The public agencies in charge of the
transportation, food supply, and health of the metropolitan territory about
New York City organized a committee to meet the emergency. As this
committee met to study the problem of feeding the city in the event that
railway transportation should cease, it immediately became apparent that
there was a dire lack of dependable information regarding the city's food
needs, the sources from which they were supplied, and the manner in which
these supplies were transported and handled.
It was proposed that motor trucks take the place of railway
transportation. But how many trucks would be needed? How many car loads
of perishable foodstuffs do eight million consumers need daily or weekly?
Whence do these commodities come? How much is held in storage? These
and many other questions at once challenged the committee, and nowhere
could it find accurate and comprehensive answers to them.
1
The above is a quotation from the first chapter of William Hedden’s 1929 work
“How Great Cities Are Fed,” which first presented the idea of foodsheds,
2 and gives a
snapshot of how food got from the farm to the tables of citizens in the end of the Post-First
World War boom era. While this is a fascinating read for the historian, it also is a look at a
problem we currently face over 90 years later, as transportation is again experiencing a
crisis and slow-motion revolution. The imperative to combat global warming and climate
change by moving away from fossil fuels presents a unique challenge for our times
compounded by peak oil, and the problem encountered by Hedden is resurgent.
In the realm of transportation, renewable energy and fuel sources are of paramount
importance in research and development. These do, however, require either fuels or
electrical generating capacity to operate. A time-tested, highly efficient, and proven source
of fuel and energy avoidance is available to us in the form of the immemorially ancient
practice of sailing ships under wind power. A competent and rapid re-adoption of Sail
Freight in the Coastal, Inland, and Transoceanic trade across the US and the world could
significantly reduce carbon emissions, provide many thousands of jobs, and contribute to
solving some issues of environmental justice.
Before moving too much further into this thesis, it is worth defining exactly what is
meant by the term “Sail Freight.” Sail Freight is defined as "The maritime movement of
cargo under primarily wind power." Sail Freight vessels are those involved in or designed
for Sail Freight, while passenger and leisure vessels are excluded. This definition was largely
created and refined by Erik Andrus of the Vermont Sail Freight Project around 2012,
though quite obviously the idea is as ancient as sail and trade itself.
3 The definition is
somewhat flexible and allows for projects like the schooner Apollonia , which is fitted with a
supplemental diesel engine, or the Ceiba with a solar-powered electric engine for
1 William P. Hedden, How Great Cities are Fed (New York: D.C. Heath, 1929). Pp 1.
2 Christian J. Peters et al., "Mapping Potential Foodsheds in New York State by Food Group; an
Approach for Prioritizing which Foods to Grow Locally," Renewable Agriculture and Food Systems 27, no.
2 (2012), 125-137. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26332641.
3 Erik Andrus, Personal Communication, 2020.
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maneuvering around ports and other obstacles. Modern container, bulker, and tanker
vessels which have added wind power technologies as a way of gaining fuel efficiency with
their conventional engines do not qualify under this definition and will be excluded from
this paper, though they certainly have a place in the sail-freight transition.
To successfully re-adopt this technology we need to understand what capacity we
need to create, the types of infrastructure needed to support it, and train a sufficient pool of
labor to operate the ships and docksides. Thus far, no one has taken a comprehensive view
of what must be undertaken to accomplish this, nor has anyone seriously looked at the
available training and shipbuilding capacity and how long it would take to build the
required fleet.
This paper rests on several assumptions about the future of energy and its
availability between 2021 and 2050. In the face of global attempts to address climate
change, fuel conversion from heavy fuel oil to cleaner grades of diesel, biodiesel, natural
gas, and other biofuels are already underway in the shipping industry. This is likely to drive
up the cost of shipping goods, as these fuels face far more competition from other
industries and uses. Further, long term deferred investment in the oil industry due to low
prices and decreasing demand as part of the transition away from fossil fuels will likely lead
to frequent fluctuations in fuel prices, creating an environment where the generally stable
pricing of wind-based transport will become ever more competitive and desirable.
On the front of electrification, renewable energy and associated supports such as
energy storage are likely to reach a point where it gains an ever larger share of the energy
market by expanding faster than consumer demand. At the same time, retiring fossil fueled
plants will likely be replaced by renewable energy facilities due to economic and political
forces. While this generating capacity may be sufficient for consumer demand, the
availability of surplus energy for powering trucks and trains will likely be subject to
fluctuation based on weather conditions and the state of storage reserves. This will make
long-distance trucking economically non-viable, while encouraging mode-shi to rail and
water transport due to their lower energy demands per ton-mile.
Urban agriculture, the reclamation of vast stretches of farmland which has been
abandoned near major cities, and other trends which would be affected by unpredictable
market forces are also ignored. These changes in demographics, conversion of lawns into
market-gardens, and so on cannot be predicted, so the general status quo is used instead: If
it can be shipped into New York, and is currently, this paper will assume this continues. To
make a more detailed model for food shipping with these changes would require precisely
detailed and wide-reaching predictions of what these changes will be, and the number of
scenarios possible makes covering each of them a mind-boggling exercise in futility.
I am also assuming current political trends will continue over the next three
decades. Major powers will continue to wrangle amongst themselves, climate change will
continue to be a major concern, and energy independence at all scales will rise in
importance as time passes. An ever-increasing pressure on carbon emissions will create an
accelerating transition away from fossil fuels at all levels, with adaptations by city planners
likely lagging behind a growing alternative shipping industry. This is not to say that cities
will not be attempting to adapt to sail freight by 2050, simply that the adaptations will be
driven by demonstrated needs, and only aer the sector which would need them proves
the need. As a sufficient adaptation would need to be started today to be in place by 2050, it
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should be expected that most cities will be behind the curve of what is really needed. By the
end of this period to 2050, it is reasonable to assume that large shipping concerns will be
retiring the generation of equipment they are building and purchasing as this thesis is
written, and thus the adoption of sail as a primary form of propulsion by the major
shipping fleets will be accelerating, but not yet reach 30% of tonnage. Wind-Assisted ships
will likely be far more common than they are now, but the cost of shipping fuels will be far
higher, reducing the demand for shipping overall and making sail freight more
competitive. As part of these concerns, the decline of fossil fuels will be encouraged, and
the use of economic tools to destroy fossil fuel demand will become an instrument of
foreign policy. Cartels such as OPEC+ and others will be faced with crises as the single leg
of their economy is actively undermined by those powers who stand to suffer from oil
price fixing and price wars, while small nations attempt to alter their international balance
of payments by reducing reliance on imported fuels.
Some of these trends are already present. The UK’s ban on the sale of oil-powered
vehicles aer 2035 is one example, as are the proposals now floating around social media
for reducing and banning cars in parts of New York City, Amsterdam, and Barcelona,
among other cities. Low oil prices as a result of the Russo-Saudi oil price war of 2020 and
coronavirus pandemic demand destruction have caused havoc and reductions in oil and gas
investment, consumption, and production across the globe. More and more cities across
the world are investing in bicycling infrastructure and reducing the number of vehicles on
their roads, and even major oil exporting nations are beginning to diversify their
economies as the coronavirus shows the fragility of a single-sector economy.
If we fail to build an oil-independent reserve of physical and human transportation
capital early enough, people will suffer in major cities across the globe. If there is enough
fleet capacity to keep a city fed, there still might not be enough capacity to keep other
supplies, such as medical goods, construction materials, and other necessaries arriving at a
sufficient pace to meet needs. While not absolutely all the materials and food necessary to
supply the city will have to come by sail, we are using this assumption for the purpose of
this paper. If it is determined that only about 80% would need to be imported by sail, then
the calculated values can be adjusted accordingly by planners.
Further, the role of sail freight is interrelated to the problem of supplying
landlocked cities: Avoiding the use of scarce fuel or electrical energy by using wind
propulsion along waterways allows available fuel stocks to supply those places not served by
navigable waters. This concern was paramount in the last oil price spike, as heralded by
headlines such as “Freight Pain: The rise and fall of Globalization”
4 in 2008, when high fuel
prices drastically raised the cost of shipping goods across the pacific. Since oil crises are
frequent and unpredictable, and the decline of fossil fuels is a world wide goal, this same
situation will rise again in the near future.
5 When it does, there needs to be a substitute
technology available in sufficient quantity to replace the only support on which modern
transportation relies.
The Hirsch Report recommended implementing Peak Oil mitigations about 20
4 Marc Levinson, "Freight Pain: The Rise and Fall of Globalization," Foreign Affairs 87, no. 6 (2008),
133-140. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20699377.
5 James Hamilton, "Historical Oil Shocks," Routledge Handbook of Major Events in Economic History (2011).
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/228303880_Historical_Oil_Shocks.
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years before the event of peak oil, whose timing is impossible to predict.
6 Using this same
idea, this paper will give the formulas for calculating needed supplies for a city and an
outline of what can be accomplished with current programs and facilities through the
coming decades. New York City and its metro area will be used as the case study, though
the methods of calculation will be explained for use elsewhere. This study will not deal with
intra-city transport, as this is another concern altogether, but strictly with the
transportation of food and goods to the city’s ports and quaysides.
In examining Sail Freight’s future role, it is important that we do not succumb to the
fantasy of returning to an imagined past of glorious tall ships and localized utopian food
supplies brought into farmer’s markets by growers just outside town.
7 No return to this
bygone fiction can be made, though the patterns of trade might again rise as economically
viable.
8 First, the romantic glasses through which most people view the age of sail must be
discarded as unfounded and horribly misplaced: Blue Water Sailing was a hard life with
serious consequences for those who undertook it in the form of health problems, social
isolation, and frequently poverty.
9 Further, the long voyages meant far fewer goods could
be imported with the same number of ships, even before accounting for the smaller size of
the vessels. Such a change to modern circumstances would effect the entire structure of
world politics, economics, and society as we know it today. The lives of inland sailors were
far less harsh and isolated, but would still be alien to most modern people. These ways of
life would likely have to be relearned over time and adapted to modern circumstances.
There are many candidates touted as the technological saviour which will deliver us
from these problems but are unlikely to live up to the predictions made about them. Many
of these are neither proven, nor adoptable quickly at scale. Sailing technology has been out
of use only since the late 1940s with the decline of Gustaf Erikson’s sailing fleet, and has
been proven as effective for some five thousand years prior. The technology is well known,
still has sufficient available supports to re-adopt rapidly (given sufficient political and
economic will), and does not rely on any advanced processes, facilities, or patented
technologies. Sail Freight is a great example of what E.F. Schumacher termed an
Intermediate Technology:
“The idea of intermediate technology does not imply simply a ‘going
back’ in history to methods now out-dated, although a systematic study of
methods employed in the developed countries, say, a hundred years ago
could indeed yield highly suggestive results. It is too oen assumed that the
achievement of western science, pure and applied, lies mainly in the
apparatus and machinery that have been developed from it, and that a
rejection of the apparatus would be tantamount to a rejection of science. This
is an excessively superficial view. The real achievement lies in the
6 Robert Hirsch et al., Peaking of World Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation, and Risk Management
(Washington DC: US Department of Energy, 2005).
7 Karen J. Friedmann, "Victualling Colonial Boston," Agricultural History 47, no. 3 (1973), 189-205.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3742181.
8 James G. Lydon, "Fish and Flour for Gold: Southern Europe and the Colonial American Balance of
Payments," The Business History Review 39, no. 2 (1965), 171-183. doi:10.2307/3112695.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3112695.
9 Robert D. Foulke, "Life in the Dying World of Sail, 1870-1910," Journal of British Studies 3, no. 1 (1963),
105-136. http://www.jstor.org/stable/175051.
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accumulation of precise knowledge, and this knowledge can be applied in a
great variety of ways, of which the current application in modern industry is
only one. The development of an intermediate technology, therefore, means
a genuine forward movement into new territory[.]”
10
While Sailing ships and their Cræ knowledge
11 must be reclaimed and rebuilt, this
does not mean developments in ship technology over the last century should be rejected.
To the contrary, these should be embraced and adapted to sailing freight where possible
and appropriate. While many of the recommendations of this paper will refer to the value
of historical technologies as proven, inexpensive, and readily revived for immediate use,
this is not to say they cannot be improved upon or we should seek to preserve them in
stasis when they return as a living, working culture of sail. This preservation is the realm of
Museums, who will undoubtedly play a critical role in the initial revival, but should be the
only place where techniques are practiced in a purely historical manner for the sake
thereof.
In an idealized future of sailing freight, a vibrant mix of modern metal hulled
vessels with the latest hull shapes propelled by flettner rotors, electric engines, and kites
work alongside wooden ships with traditional rigs, some indistinguishable from their 18th
or 19th century forbearers. New developments should constantly improve safety and health
at sea for large vessels, while the value of traditional boats and the skills to handle them,
adapted to their home waters and circumstances over thousands of years, are
acknowledged by all. This is more similar to the medieval period and the turn of the last
century, where new technologies were adopted and used alongside those which were
traditional and possibly thousands of years old. These evolutions and refinements should
be sought continually, shared openly, and not simply bring sailing back to where it le off a
century ago, but bring it into a renewed phase of adaptation and evolution.
12
Such a future does not completely eliminate rail and road transport. However, it
does relegate their use to short range distribution in the case of electrified trucks, and the
supply of land-locked cities in the case of rail. On their return journeys, trucks and rail cars
will be filled with the agricultural and material products of these regions, bringing the
bounty of fields and factories to collection points, then to river and sea ports for further
shipping on to their final destinations. The status quo of long-distance trucking and rail
across water-accessible corridors will likely fall away, while transfer to land based modes
will happen as close to the end of the journey as possible, leading to lower use of the Pacific
coast ports in favor of Panama Canal crossings and journeys around the Horn to make
more use of Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico ports. This will be driven by higher fuel costs,
political pressures, carbon budgets, and other incentives as the cost of conventional
shipping rises in all forms.
This future asks some changes of us outside simply the overall choice of shipping
propulsion technology we put to work. In cities provisioned by sail, unnecessary goods
10 Ernst Friedrich Schumacher, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered (New York,
NY: Abacus, 1978). Pp 179.
11 See: Alexander Langlands, Cræ: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Cras
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2019).
12 Erik Andrus. "Vermont Sail Freight Project," accessed 9 October, 2020
vermontsailfreightproject.wordpress.com/.
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must be forgone, such as single use coffee cups, plastic bags, paper towels, food packages,
and the constant stream of consumer goods which Americans currently consume every
day. There simply won’t be space for them to get shipped into the city from their point of
manufacture or to clear away waste materials for disposal. Design-For-Repair and Right-
To-Repair for everything from shoes to refrigerators, appliances, and electronics will need
to be adopted, as shipping spare parts will take up less bulk, mass, and labor than full
replacements. Our foodways will have to grow more accustomed to preserved foods and
what can be grown locally as the ability to ship tomatoes and avocados from thousands of
miles away while they are out of season in mere days or hours fades with the availability of
fossil fuels. Many of these changes are not entirely out of the ordinary, and would be
familiar to our grandparents and parents only a few decades ago, but with smartphones and
internet access.
There are many benefits which accompany such changes. An expanding local
manufacturing, re-manufacturing, and repair sector will likely grow in most places,
providing more jobs to some degree. Local agriculture will grow and flourish. Warehouse
and brokerage jobs will be necessary to support the asynchronicity of weather-based
shipping power, as will shipbuilding trades and a manufacturing sector to support
shipyards of all sizes. A change to a mindset of repair will alleviate urban
waste-management concerns, freeing up resources for more important human needs such
as human services. On top of these economic benefits, cleaner air in cities across the world
could lead to significant health benefits and help address issues of environmental justice.
This work will not be recommending specific adaptations for more than one
bioregion, specifically the North Eastern United States. When looking to adapt the rules,
maxims, and wider principles of sail freight to any specific bioregion, a deep delve into
local history, conditions, materials, infrastructure, and abilities will need to be undertaken.
Thus, few strict rules can be given, aside from those factors which must be considered
when looking to implement local changes. The tools of calculation and general
considerations should guide the formation and adoption of local plans, not be considered a
universal solution.
The last point to be made by way of introduction is that if this adaptation is pushed
down the timeline until a major crisis point is reached, few of the points herein will matter.
Regulatory compliance, finance, formal training, licenses, insurance, and certifications will
all be out the proverbial window in such a case. All that will matter then is the speed with
which people can build boats, whether boats are built faster than they sink, and if enough
can be built to keep cities alive. If this is the way Sail Freight returns to the US, no amount
of academic writing or theory will be significantly helpful. However, I think this is an
unlikely outcome, and have le the assumptions in this paper on the heading of a prudent,
forward-thinking transition by policy and market forces as opposed to disaster.
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1. History of sail freight.
The history of Sail Freight dates back some 5000 years or more, while
Maritime trade has been in existence for likely more than 40,000 years. While the
importance of inland and overseas navigation has changed over the course of recent
centuries, especially with the rise of steam and fossil fueled shipping and the railroads
in the last 120-150 years, it is still extremely important to the world economy. The
history of sail freight points to some possible points of departure for a future powered
by sail.
1900 was the first year steam propelled tonnage surpassed sailing vessel tonnage in
the United States. “The last report of the commissioner of navigation shows that the
tonnage operating under our coasting laws, 21,397 vessels of 4,015,992 gross tons, is the
largest in our history, and is greater than the coasting tonnage of any other nation. Our
steam tonnage, 2,476,011 tons, for the first time exceeds the tonnage of all other cra. In the
rest of the world steam tonnage eleven years ago exceeded sail tonnage.”
13 Before this date,
Sailing vessels had dominated the world of commerce and trade for a very long time.
Map of Roman and carthaginian empires, showing their direct links to navigable waterways. Taken from:
William R. Shepherd, “Rome and Carthage at the beginning of the Second Punic War, 218 B.C.” Historical Atlas (New
York: Henry Holt & Company, 1923) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rome_carthage_218.jpg
13 Marine Review Publishing Company, Blue Book of American Shipping: Marine and Naval Directory of the
United States; Statistics of Shipping and Shipbuilding in America , 5th ed. (Cleveland, OH: Marine Review
Publishing Company, 1900). Pp 4
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Highly advanced maritime trade networks have existed since at least the Early
Bronze Age. The Minoan and Mycenaean civilization in what would become Greece was
famed for seafaring, and used advanced shipping across the eastern mediterranian basin, as
did the Anatolian, Egyptian, and other powers of the region some 3,500 years ago.
14 The
Maya traded extensively with maritime links
15 and the rest of the world was no different.
The settlement of the Eastern Pacific is a story of ship-borne expansion across vast
distances over 40,000 years ago.
16 With sail-based trade networks having existed for over
4200 years at an absolute minimum, it should be no surprise maritime trade has been
important in history and continues to be a critical means of moving goods today.
17
The expansion of empires from Carthage into the early modern period was based
on the ability to sail and move goods over water, as was european colonial expansion and
empire in its heyday just over eighty years ago. Drastically expanding commercial sailing
fleets on the deep sea trade built the economic power of mercantilism and capitalism as
imperialism expanded across the world from the 17th to the 20th century, moving cargoes
of food, goods, settlers, soldiers, weapons, and ammunition, alongside stolen people and
treasures, across the globe. Currently, nearly 90% of international commerce moves by
sea.
18
Water transport was so important to the historical world that humans have spent
thousands of years building canals and altering rivers to expand the range of ships and
boats inland.
19 Doing so reduced handling of goods, increased speeds, and reduced the cost
of shipping drastically, while greatly increasing the volume of goods moved.
20 Aer the
middle of the 19th century much of the former canal traffic shied to rail transport as fuels
such as coal became less expensive, while the Bessimer steel process made production of
stronger rolling stock and the machinery to produce it far less expensive.
Each region and time period developed unique vessels and rigging systems adapted
to their level of technological development, resource constraints, and maritime conditions.
The patterns constantly evolved from adaptations both local and global, spread by the
normal course of cultural contact and technological diffusion. An introductory work on the
subject is Archaeology and social history of ships, by Richard Gould.
21
14Thomas F. Tartaron, Maritime Networks in the Mycenaean World (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2013).
15Scott R. Hutson and Bruce H. Dahlin, "Introduction: The Long Road to Maya Markets," in Ancient
Maya Commerce; Multidisciplinary Research at Chunchucmil , ed. SCOTT R. HUTSON (Boulder, CO:
University Press of Colorado, 2017), 3-26.
16Patrick V. Kirch, "Peopling of the Pacific: A Holistic Anthropological Perspective," Annual Review of
Anthropology 39 (2010), 131-148. http://www.jstor.org/stable/25735104.
17 M. W. Pendleton et al., "The Characteristics of Early Helladic II Period Wood Recovered from an
Underwater Shipwreck Site Near Dokos, Greece," Microscopy and Microanalysis 8, no. S02 (2002),
1070-1071. doi:10.1017/S143192760210691X.
18 Nicola Cutcher, "Winds of Trade: Passage to Zero-Emission Shipping," American Journal of Economics
and Sociology 79, no. 3 (2020), 967-979. doi:10.1111/ajes.12331.
19 Anthony Burton, The Canal Pioneers: Canal Construction from 2,500 BC to the Early 20th Century
(Barnsley, UK: Pen & Sword Transport, 2017).
20 Ronald E. Shaw, Canals for A Nation: The Canal Era in the United States, 1790-1860 (Lexington, KY:
University Press of Kentucky, 2014).
21 Richard A. Gould, Archaeology and the Social History of Ships , 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press, 2011).
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Steven Woods Sail Freight Revival
Map of Egyptian Empire following water communication routes. Taken from: Wilhelm Sieglin & Max
Kiessling. Atlas Antiquus. Atlas zur Geschichte des Altertums. (Gotha: Justus Perthes, 1909)
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Maps_of_Ptolemaic_Egypt#/media/File:Nr._3._Aegypten.png
Early Aegean networks of sail trading were divided by Tartaron into several classes,
with their corresponding mariners. Trading was broken down in his work into Direct,
Down-The-Line, Central Market, and other variations of these major types, such as
Tramping, a form of down-the-line trading where the transporter purchases from one
party, owning and reselling the cargo from port to port independently of either the buyer
or seller. In Down-The-Line trade, the goods are sold from seller to seller at markets, each
taking them further afield from their point of origin. Central Market trading is where
sellers and buyers travel to a central point of exchange where a market is set up and trade at
this location, then returning to their home bases. Direct trade is self-explanatory. Each of
these was occuring on different ranges from home bases, and with each range increment
from the local, mariners became more and more specialized. While most everyone was
involved in direct and central market trading on a local scale, longer distance trading was
less common and required more experienced crews with specialized skills. These specialists
gained prestige and power based on their ability to navigate and ply waters farther afield
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and negotiate the necessary intercultural and linguistic barriers presented by this long
distance trade.
22
The same general pattern can be seen in the Åland Islands some 3,000 years later in
the second half of the 19th century. Most farmers used boats and small ships to bring goods
to markets around the islands, which when aggregated at the markets were traded to
Stockholm and other Baltic ports by specialists. About the middle of the 19th century the
“Farmer’s Ships” were built, skippered, and manned by amature farmers who would sail
their produce collectively to ports within about 100 miles. At the same time, Åland sailors
and captains who were professionalizing their arts were sailing to England and other
Atlantic ports, as well as running grain from the Black Sea to England for profit. The longer
the distances involved, the more specialized the skillset, the higher the profits, and
generally speaking, the higher the social status ascribed to these sailors and ships.
23
The same general distinction can be seen between barge sailors on inland routes and
deep water sailors in the 19th century US. Bargemen and their families lived as specialists,
but relatively well integrated into the land based, mainstream society, while blue water
sailors were in some ways of higher status and part of a distinct and more isolated
subculture. In addition, many farmers and foresters would engage in forms of local
maritime trade, ranging from bringing their produce to local markets in small boats and
ships,
24 to the annual log runs down rivers, and the building of disposable lumber boats
which were broken up at the destination and sold as part of the cargo or as fuel. The crews
of these log runs and disposable boats would then return home overland with cash in hand.
This later practice was seen not only in the middle ages on the Rhine, but in North America
and elsewhere into the 19th century.
25
While in the modern world some of the linguistic and cultural borders will be less
pronounced due to communication technologies and a wider general understanding of
cultural differences, they have not entirely disappeared. Navigational skill will still be of
progressively higher importance as journeys lengthen, and prestige will be attached to
those who have the skils and knowledge to undertake long distance trade. At the same time,
it is likely that saile freight along canal routes and within local areas will become relatively
routine, creating the same type of dynamics seen in these historic cases.
Historical curiosity aside, there is little need to dwell on a holistic and entire picture
of the history or historiography of sail freight in this paper. The last fleet of sailing vessels
engaged in oceanic trade ceased operations in 1948,
26 though small traditional networks do
still survive. A set of sources will be found in the bibliography for those with a deeper
interest. The majority of the historical models treated in this paper will be meshed into the
discussion of modern necessities, as each current need will be best served by one of
thousands of bioregional or world-wide systems too numerous to treat individually.
22 Tartaron, Maritime Networks in the Mycenaean World. Pp 184-188 and 28-33
23 Georg Kahre, The Last Tall Ships: Gustaf Erikson and the Aland Sailing Fleets 1872-1947 Basil Greenhill,
Ed. (London, UK: Conway Maritime Press, 1990)
24 John McAlpine, Genuine Narratives and Concise Memoirs of some of the most Interesting Exploits and
Singular Adventures of J. M'Alpine, a Native Highlander (Greenock, UK: W. M'Alpine, 1780).
25 Meinrad Pohl, "The Role of Laach Abbey in the Medieval Quarrying and Stone Trade," in Everyday
Products in the Middle Ages , eds. Gitte Hansen, Steven P. Ashby and Irene Baug (Oxbow Books, 2015),
251-269. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvh1dtfs.19.
26 Georg Kahre, The Last Tall Ships: Gustaf Erikson and the Aland Sailing Fleets 1872-1947
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2. Alternatives.
There are alternatives to Sail Freight which are being considered as
replacements for the modern shipping paradigm. However, when examining these
options at scale, most cannot supply the volume of shipping needed to maintain food
supplies and other economic requirements. Due to fuel competition, shortages, and
other challenges, no other fuel source offers a practical replacement for the wind.
Since the decline of sail freight in the 1850s through the 1920s, fuel use and cargo
volumes have increased massively across the globe. Fuel use for a single conventional
5,000-6,000 Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) container ship is enormous: even at extra
slow steaming of around 18 knots, fuel requirements reach 50 tonnes per day.
27 A 14 day,
6300-nautical mile sailing from Hong Kong to LA would require 700 tonnes of fuel, by
simple calculations, generating over 2,100 tonnes of CO2 emissions for this single voyage.
Each TEU is the capacity to carry one standard 20 foot container, roughly equivalent in
volume to 12 Net Register Tons, or 1200 cubic feet.
28 This means the types of ships
discussed above are roughly a dozen times larger than the largest of windjammers ever
built, and there are container ships nearly triple their size currently in service. The Port of
Los Angeles saw some 8.16 million TEUs pass through it in 2014, giving about 4.5 of these
ships arriving daily, or 1,632 annually.
29 This equates to some 1,142,400 tons of bunker fuel
for just containerized cargo at only the port of Los Angeles using this class of ship.
If translated to Biodiesel production possibility, an estimated 2.7 billion pounds of
used cooking oil is produced in the USA each year,
30 giving only 1.35 million tonnes of fuel,
or under 2000 journeys as calculated above. It has been estimated Salt Lake City, Utah,
could only provide 1/250th of their biodiesel needs from recycled oils, leaving no surplus
for use in maritime transport.
31 Biofuels can be increased by growing more fuel crops,
diversifying the types of engines in use, and other methods. However, growing more fuel
crops comes with deleterious land-use effects, diversifying engine types leaves few options
with the power needed for most applications, and other methods are yet to be developed
with unintended consequences of their own. This also assumes there is no loss of these oils,
all are recycled into fuels, and none is diverted from international maritime shipping.
In reality, there is likely to be a large amount of competition for these biofuels.
32 Air
traffic, home heating demands from thousands of legacy oil systems, land-based transport
by rail and road all come immediately to mind. If rail transport is looked at as an absolutely
27 "Fuel Consumption by Container Ship Size and Speed," accessed 9 October, 2020,
https://transportgeography.org/?page_id=5955.
28 US Army Corps OF Engineers Institute for Water Resources, US Port and Inland Waterways
Modernization: Preparing for Post Panamax Vessels (Washington, DC: US Army Corps of Engineers, 2012)
https://www.iwr.usace.army.mil/Portals/70/docs/portswaterways/rpt/June_20_U.S._Port_and_Inland
_Waterways_Preparing_for_Post_Panamax_Vessels.pdf Pp 98
29 Federal Highway Administration. 2016 Freight Quick Facts Report (Washington, DC: USDOT, 2016)
https://ops.wa.dot.gov/publications/wahop16083/ch1.htm Pp 21
30 "Used and Waste Oil and Grease for Biodiesel," accessed 9 October, 2020,
https://farm-energy.extension.org/used-and-waste-oil-and-grease-for-biodiesel/.
31Jonathan Miller, "Determining the Rate of used Cooking Oil Output by the Restaurant Industry in
the Salt Lake Valley, UT," in Senior Research Seminar: Environmental Sciences Group Major , ed. John Latto
(Berkely CA: Nature.berkely.edu, 2007).
32 Sustainable Shipping Initiative, The Role of Sustainable Biofuels in the Decarbonisation of Shipping
(London, UK: Sustainable Shipping Initiative, 2019).
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Steven Woods Sail Freight Revival
necessary user of biodiesel to supply cities and towns not accessible by water, the amount
of fuel needed is still very, very large. Even at 500 ton-miles per gallon of diesel, most
trains weigh over 3,000 tons, giving a need for 6 gallons of fuel per mile. At 1,200 miles
between St Paul’s canal terminal and Salt Lake City, for example, a 3,000 ton net-weight
train would need 7,200 gallons of fuel, over 250 tons, for a one-way run. Salt Lake City,
with 1.22 million people in the metro area, would need that mass of supplies daily, or
91,250 tons of biodiesel per year if supplied directly from St Paul’s river port. This doesn’t
count the fuel needed to supply Las Vegas, San Antonio, or Denver, all of which have over 2
million people each, or dozens of other cities in a similar position, or the fact most rail
lines do not reach this level of fuel efficiency. Lightening train cars themselves can only be
brought so far in attempting to make efficiency gains, so there is little hope that increased
efficiency can make up for the fuel shortfall in overland transport, while the availability of
electric assist power will be far too intermittent to trust the movement of critical cargoes to
only electric traction.
While rail transport could more easily use forestry and agricultural byproducts for
steam generation or electrical generation than marine shipping, reducing competition for
biodiesel, this must be framed against the large amount of capital which will need to be
built in the form of steam engines, and the amount of capital already designed for diesel
which has created a measure of path dependency through their service lives. Municipal and
domestic power and heating demands will likely also compete for solid biofuels to
supplement electrical systems, introducing additional price pressures on these fuels.
Human power in the form of bicycles for transit may reduce this fuel demand
competition somewhat, but to what degree remains to be seen. Since this will likely be only
in the very local delivery markets, there is little reason to think there will be a significant
surplus of energy gained from these sources for long-distance use. These are not long-haul
viable transportation systems, leaving the need for large scale long range transport
independent of these fuels.
33
To account for losses, competition, and other factors such as fuel demand for
personal vehicles, only a small share of the above-predicted biodiesel should be expected to
reach the maritime market. This leaves fuel for only a limited number of round-trip
journeys, clearly a drastic decline from current trends. While other countries produce these
biofuel feedstocks and could produce their shares, this still does not leave enough fuel to
maintain even a small fraction of current import and export trends worldwide. The idea of
biofuels replacing fossil fuels in long distance maritime shipping is panglossian at best.
Other supplemental measures are being attempted in shipping, such as
electrification of ship’s engines, however, they are not promising for anything outside the
shortest haul uses and small vessels.
34 Batteries do not store sufficient energy for their mass
and bulk to make them economical for long-range cargo hauling, meaning deck space must
be taken up for solar panels and other generating equipment. This space must also be
sufficient to generate enough electricity to power the ship and charge batteries, which is
33 J. Alexander Page, "Role of Cargo Bicycles in Disaster Planning and Emergency Management"
(Eugene, OR: University of Oregon, 2014), . AND "Prototype Human Power Plant," accessed Feb 16,
2020, https://www.humanpowerplant.be/prototype-human-power-plant.html.
34Chia-Wen Carmen Hsieh and Claus Felby, Biofuels for theMarine Shipping Sector (Copenhagen,
Denmark: <