Unless someone has spent time at sea they cannot appreciate all the maintenance a large ship requires. Crewless ships are pipe dream. But captainless ships, ships operated without officers to navigate them, are a real option. You keep the tiny crew for fixing things but the operation of the ship is handled from afar.

Crews are cheap. Ships' masters are not.

Alternatively, the repair crew don't stay on the ship. Have a mobile team on a faster boat going ship to ship rescuing and repairing ones that can't make it to port again.

Maintenance is not repairs. The work needed to prevent repairs has to happen ever day. A crew at sea doesnt sit around waiting for an alarm. They are tending to equipment, verifying sensors ... even touching up paint is an essential daily task.

Interesting perspective. I hadn't considered that.

Part of me starts to wonder now about building boats that are more resilient, but then I remember that salt water is terrible and surely by now someone would have if it were possible, since we spend so much money on humans doing that maintenance!

If man can build it, the sea will destroy it.

Spoken like a true sailor :)

If you've ever been on a cruise, you'll notice the "crew" (not the staff) constantly painting and maintaining -- even on a brand new ship. If you ask, they'll tell you that they have to constantly work on the upkeep because of the size of the ship (kind of like painting the golden gate bridge, once you're done it's time to start over again).

The reason autonomous/crewless isn't really feasible or worth investing in is that most container ships only have a crew of about a dozen, and they are generally from low-wage countries so that their salary costs are far out-weighted by the fuel.

Maybe a little bit picky, but the average size of a crew on a, say, 9000 TEU container ship is actually closer to two dozen. 20-24 most of the time.

The number can rise further with more complex cargo.

I think this is a good example where automation doesn’t mean getting rid of all jobs, just 99% (which has nearly the same effect). I mean, we still have blacksmiths hand forging swords ffs.

Funny, I had this idea around my head for a while tagged under the "world changing startups I'd like to try someday" :)

I think it will do to shipping what two engine, midsized passenger jets (A350/787) are doing to air travel: connect directly between small ports anywhere, instead of using very large ports as hubs. FedEx/UPS could have sea terminals anywhere, possibly automated.

Global shipping will only grow and I don't see a driver for air freight prices to drop enough so that things are truly international (e.g. buy a fridge from AliExpress).

I think it needs to happen, and will happen.

Another fun possibility: a train of such ships connected by cables, which wind and unwind generators as the distances between them change, to power propulsion.

As for very good reasons why this would never work, sometimes that is beside the point. I am not in the running to redesign trade and power on my own terms, but sometimes I can flush out assumptions that don't need to be held.

No hostages for pirates to take either (though I guess they could help themselves to all of the goods on the ship)

And the ships. Drop an anchor and demand ransom to cut it free.

Even easier, just spoof the GPS signals with your own higher powered broadcast and make the ship think it's sailing around while it's actually stationary. Cant find the link but, some university actually demoed this working in real life with an actual container ship.

Im imagining an LED throwie type big magnetic thing with gps RX and TX, and a satellite uplink. Cruise by the autonomous ship on a jetski near a port, thrown the magnet thing on, jetski away, disrupt from afar once the boat is out at sea.

Ye old compass and lag wont get fooled by such mischievous act.

Electromagnet.