I’ve been wanting to do more scenes of solarpunk ships. Shipping underpins a huge amount of our society and I think building a more solarpunk world will mean changing it in some really interesting ways.

Last time I did a ship in a storm, but I wanted to do something a little more bright and happy this time around. A month or so ago I was talking with a sailor on the solarpunk subreddit and I asked if there was anything they’d like to see in nautical solarpunk art. I was kind of looking for design ideas but what they gave me was better –an excellent list of experiences and details which stood out from their voyages, one of which was the way whales come right up to sail ships because they’re so quiet and the whales are curious. So I started looking for art of ships and whales to reference, and (of course) almost exclusively found of paintings of whalers killing and carving up whales (which put a kind of tragic tinge on that wholesome description of their curiosity). So I figured that was my next subject – I wanted to do a scene with a similar composition to those paintings, but with the ship very clearly hauling cargo, and the two subjects just sort of harmlessly crossing paths.

The trouble is that with a lot of ships (especially sailing ships), it can be hard for most of us to tell its purpose from a distance. Container ships are kind of the exception, so I started looking for the rare combination of sail ships that can haul containers, and sort of went down a rabbit hole as I learned more both about our current shipping and proposed designs. I ended up collecting so much information in the course of that reading that I’ve actually put together a second post just with information for solarpunk writers and artists who want resources for nautical solarpunk](https://slrpnk.net/post/14284744). I’m very much not an expert but I hope it hits the level of detail most folks need to get started and that it consolidates it nicely in one place.

By far the best luck I had with all that was in reaching out to the Naval Architecture subreddit, where I found a handful of folks with the patience of saints willing to answer my questions, provide all sorts of resources I’d missed, and who walked me through drafting this junk-rigged-cargo-ship-with-offset-masts design. I can’t thank Open_Ad1920and the others enough for all their help!

I’d started out unsure of whether I wanted to do a more traditional ship design to better match the old whaling scenes I was riffing on, or to lean in on some of the more modern concept art I’d found to better contrast it. I ended up taking the proposed windcoop container ship and changing it to follow recommendations from Open_Ad1920. They had a lot of interesting design ideas for a sail-based modern container ship and I basically decided I wanted to go all in on their dream design and see what it looked like, rather than copy a company’s concept art. I’m glad I went with a more modern design now, because I was able to make it look less sleek and more like a modern working vessel (with a paint scheme copied from some real life container ships). I think that reflects some of my goals in the postcard series of showing the less-pretty, industrial kind of spaces that underpin even a solarpunk society that tries to co-exist with nature.

Speaking of which, one of their recommendations was modifications to the hull of the ship to make it safer for whales. Whales are sometimes hit by ships (they sleep just below the surface and don’t know where human shipping lanes are). Some hulls are more dangerous to them than others. Ships with steep, sharp prows and bulbous bows are apparently especially dangerous for whales. If you search for ship hulls and whale safety, you’ll find an unfortunate number of photographs of a dead whale draped over one of those bulbs.

One of their suggestions was to change the prow of the ship so it was angled forward, with no bulb below the surface, and a much more rounded/blunt bowstem. This design will likely lose some performance benefits while underway but if it hits a whale I guess it’s more likely to sort of dunk them rather than to slam into them like an axe.

The notes post and this conversation go much deeper into some of the design choices, but there’s a few other interesting aspects to call out here:

As they explained it, cargo cranes aren’t as inconvenienced by masts as you might expect, but bridges built after the age of tall ships block a lot of important ports, so folding masts are necessary just to reach the dock. Junk rigs like the ones in the scene are apparently well-suited to folding and offer decent performance.

They also recommended placing the masts on the ship offset from the centerline, in a sort of zigzag pattern, two on each side. As they explained it, this gets more masts on the ship, without going extra tall or messing up each others’ lift over drag ratio. I’ve poked around and found a few examples of offset masts (on flat bottomed boats, proas, or catamarans) but not much like this.

Most of their other suggestions for reducing draft and maintaining control underwater are hidden by the ocean. To paraphrase their suggestions, “the vessel has either a lifting keel or daggerboards. It also has at least two rudders, if not more, to get sufficient area. The rudders might end up as transom-hung folding types to reduce draft and maintain good performance under sail. A long, thin rudder works best. Racing monohulls of all sizes have been built this way and they work well while avoiding rudder damage from impacts.”

The whales in the foreground are blue whales,just sort of swimming alongside.