Hacker Cinema
Around Cape Horn
1985 · Film · documentary · 37 min
Captain Irving Johnson sailed aboard the bark "Peking" in 1929, as the sun set on the day of commercial sail. During his voyage on the big German windjammer, Johnson compiled unequaled footage of the crew's daily activities, and spectacular images of a wild storm as the ship made the dangerous passage around. Johnson's narration of the trip is a delight.
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These newly built traditional ships are simply insignificant in the face of the volume of goods transported globally. They are passenger vessels for people who want to experience forgotten time while also delivering some feel-good. Definitely a viable business, but it does not replace global logistics.
The EcoClipper in the article is said to take 500 tons of cargo, that is 23 TEUs (Twenty-foot equivalent unit) [1] by weight. Ever Given the ship that got stuck in the Suez canal carries 20 000 TEUs. That is by volume. Not all can be fully loaded by weight, but still. There is a factor of about 1000 between them. Add on the reduced speed for the EcoClipper, and you need ~4 000 sail ships to replace it.
Now we haven't even gotten into cargo handling since the EcoClipper can not easily be unloaded directly by crane.
Simply, it is too low scale.
What is truly interesting is, for example, the Oceanbird program by Wallenius and Alfa Laval [2]. That is making Ro-Ro vessels aided by the wind, ensuring that you get the efficiency gains and hit the slot times in port. The Ro-Ro, Roll-on, Roll-off, part is important since that means you do not clash with unloading requirements coming from cranes.
The shipping industry is also looking into synthetic fuels and hydrogen since the infrastructure is relatively centralized, and they rely on the energetic density of chemical fuels. Where the trips are measured in hours rather than days or weeks batteries are being deployed.
A nice short film from the latter parts of the era of sail is "Around Cape Horn" from 1929, when the narrator worked on one of the large four-masted barques. [3]:
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twenty-foot_equivalent_unit
[2]: https://www.theoceanbird.com/blog/orcelle-horizon/
[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tuTKhqWZso
Documentaries for geeks or about geeks? The ones about geeks will probably be really boring. They'll leave out both the technical stuff and the potentially actionable war stories. "Revolution OS", for instance, was a well-crafted film, but pretty dull if you read Slashdot.
Branch out a bit. Off the top of my head:
"The Pleasure of Finding Things Out": Richard Feynman talks. (Danny Hillis pops up for a bit.)
"The Fog of War": a smart, reflective person discusses how he presided over a huge disaster.
"Lost in La Mancha": Terry Gilliam takes a bunch of risks to get a movie started and doesn't make it.
"Around Cape Horn": Captain Irving Johnson describes sailing around the Horn on one of the last windjammers.
"Walking with Dinosaurs": Woo! Dinosaurs!
"Apollo 13" is not an actual documentary, of course, but it's fun and reasonably faithful for a big-budget movie.