And Somali pirates lick their chops.
Castaways and pirates should be particularly interested in this development.
Mary Celeste?
Forget pirates, a hacker with a laptop can get himself a whole cargo ship.
http://gcaptain.com/dnv-gl-short-sea-ship-of-the-future-is-unmanned/
Another version—for up to 100 miles.
g.captian.com is a great site for maritime news.
Ping
Yes, particularly salvage law. It'd be kind of a bummer to have some guy put-put up to the thing, board it, and claim ownership of a perfectly functioning vessel. And win.
There will, of course, be limitations to the applicability of such a vessel. I recall what it was like to enter Hong Kong harbor. Absolute insane chaos and you had to double the lookouts and pray that mama-san in a junk wouldn't suddenly decide she had right of way in a narrow channel. Yes, human error is largely responsible for maritime disaster but it's often somebody else's.
Pirates will learn how to hack.
........On a ship or a large recreational boat, things constantly break down and someone has to go to a storage locker, find the replacement part, and go fix it! Most of the time “Shit happens” and he can’t fix it for one reason or another OR must improvise.
So,while the idea of not one person on a huge ship is a good goal I guess I just don’t believe we will ever see it.
What about a harbor pilot? He still must board and run the ship. What controls will he use?
Can’t wait until some little 12 year old hacks it and sends it to ports unknown. What’s worse would be thieves rerouting it to steal the cargo. Arr, pirates wouldn’t have any worries, yee haw!
I’m sure this will put companies shipping millions of dollars worth of freight at ease.
These so-called experts have obviously never been to sea before.
And I recall the guy from IBM who suggested that there might be a need for two, maybe three computers worldwide.
Nothing that is mentioned in the comments is insurmountable.
Progress is coming. People on board ships are a huge expense and a huge liability. Consider the costs associated with housing and maintaining crew. If you can recover the space, and eliminate the expense it is possible to overcome ALL of the concerns.
I bet you will see shipping go from outside of Port A to Port B, with crew coming on to bring the ships into the docks.
Repairs and what not can be centralized en route to service multiple ships.
Insurance rates would drop to cover just the ship and the freight. No more workers comp, no more liability insurance.
Does anyone reading this article think the folks working this plan have not already done the work on these issues?
Change is exciting. Unless you are a maritime engineer.
this will make the life of pirates a hell of a lot easier.
Pirate’s dream!