What’s old is new again

The history of freight by sail dates back to ancient times, and while the rise of steamships gradually made sail obsolete for commercial freight by the late 1800s and early 1900s, it’s a powerful story that connects sailors to history. Today’s races are born from an emerging world economy.

But wind-powered transport was not all by sail.

It must have been a bizarre sight when a freight ship, equipped with two large rotating towers, made its way under the Forth Bridge (Scotland) a century ago.

The experimental sail technology, on the rotor ship Buckau, was first demonstrated in 1925 on a journey carrying timber from Danzig – now Gdansk, in Poland – to the Scottish port of Grangemouth.

The spinning towers were designed to harness the wind as a way of saving fuel but it didn’t catch on for about 90 years. Now the pioneering Flettner rotors are being used on at least 35 commercial freight ships to improve fuel efficiency and reduce their impact on the climate. – Full report