#ageofsail

This cargo ship from 1909 is starting to make zero-emissions deliveries again

Sailcargo doesn’t expect to replace the massive industry. But as companies look for ways to reduce emissions, it can offer a solution that works now. Because it doesn’t use shipping containers—goods are loaded on pallets—it also has some logistical advantages. “Some of these fast vessels have to wait at port often up to two weeks, because they’re dependent on the port infrastructure,” says Doggett. “They need the big crane to unload the container. We do not—we can unload ourselves.”

Doggett, who started sailing on tall ships as a 13-year-old, started thinking about the potential to revive traditional cargo shipping more than a decade ago. In 2014, she and two partners launched the company and later began working on building a traditional vessel from scratch. While traveling, Doggett had also run across the Vega. The ship, built in 1909, had been retired in the 1960s, as fossil-fueled container ships started to dominate trade routes. It was headed for the scrapyard when a family of Swedish shipbuilders rescued it and spent years restoring it; Doggett, who loved the design, stayed in touch with them and eventually made a deal to buy it.

“Fortune’s Gambit” – A Study in Color, Chaos, and Fate In Fortune’s Gambit, Rob conjures a world where nature’s fury and fate’s indifference converge in a breathtaking display of movement, texture, and atmosphere. The piece captures a spectral wreck, its rotting hull and tattered sails draped in ghostly decay, caught in an eternal struggle against the elements. But this is no ordinary maritime…

In the past, people would hold a sextant in their hands to determine the angle that the horizon formed with respect to the sun, moon, or stars. Prior to the development of contemporary navigation systems such as GPS, it was a crucial instrument for ships to determine their latitude and chart their voyage over the seas.

An eyepiece, horizon glass, and a moveable arm make up the sextant. The user would use the movable arm to align the image of the celestial object with the horizon after sighting it through the horizon glass. The instrument's scale may then be used to read the object's angle with respect to the horizon.

With this angle measured and the time in hand, navigators could use celestial navigation methods and tables provided in books to determine their latitude. Even in the middle of the enormous oceans, before satellite navigation became accessible, sextants allowed sailors to precisely map their position and route by measuring the ship's speed and direction.