The following article is from our July 2006 issue.

May Those Safe And Stylish Ships Return. As oil becomes scarcer, hydrogen-powered ocean liners could replace kerosene-propelled jets on transatlantic routes. By Uwe Siemon-Netto

The man who assembled the world's largest private collection of maritime artifacts believes that the technology already exists to ship trans­atlantic travelers safely and comfortably across the ocean without burning a drop of oil. "Hydrogen is the answer," said Peter Tamm, 78, the former CEO of Axel Springer AG, Europe's largest publishing house. He wondered, though, if "people will once again accept the leisurely speed of ocean liners." But Dutch naval architect Ivo Veldhuis has come up with a concept for a 73-mph trans­atlantic catamaran powered by hydrogen. Thus the speed of future ocean liners might not be leisurely after all.

Every time this trans­atlantic commuter suffers the indignity of flying to Europe squeezed into the back of an airplane, daydreams set in. These dreams revolve around the charms of ocean liners that have become a delight of the past - the ship's slight shudder as it leaves port, the dark hoots of its horns, the strolls around the promenade deck, the anticipation of a flirt, the cocktails in one of the vessel's elegant bars, the fine dinners, the balls, the concerts or just long hours reading in the library.

Best of all, though, there are memories of gliding into the harbors of Southampton, Cherbourg, Genoa or Bremerhaven, free of jetlag. Ah, those were the days when the intercontinental voyager's wellbeing was unimpeded by an eight-hour inhalation of foul air. Those were days when en route from the New World to the Old, the passenger experienced the occasional "closeness to God," which Peter Tamm finds particularly alluring about this mode of travel - Tamm whose spectacular villa on Hamburg's elegant Elbchaussee holds more memorabilia of that bygone era than any other privately owned museum in the world.

Here, there are 25,000 small and 1,000 large model ships, some carved from animal bones by Napoleon's soldiers when they were British prisoners of war. About 5,000 oil paintings, watercolors and drawings of maritime themes dating as far back as 1570 A.D. are housed. It also houses 40,000 original construction plans for vessels from all over the world; naval uniforms and weapons the oldest of which was crafted in 1000 B.C.; 1,600 menus from passenger ships spanning the 150-year history of passenger liners; and a huge naval library stocked with 120,000 volumes all about ships and the sea.

Tamm started his career in journalism after World War II as the shipping editor of the regional daily, Hamburger Abendblatt. Little did he know then that half a century later, he would bequeath to his hometown a magnificent collection documenting the story of man on the move throughout the millennia.

It is an ongoing story of course. Freighters, tankers and military craft still plow the seas in increasing numbers - cruise ships too, but most of those Tamm considers an aberration. "What a nightmarish thought it is to circle aimlessly some tropical island in the company of 4,000 others, all clad in ridiculous garb," he said in a recent interview.

However, here's a question: If people are prepared to spend time and money on such futile excursions, why would they not wish to proceed by ocean liner purposefully to some real destination, as people did decades ago, impecunious students included? But does that mean the glory days of transatlantic passenger shipping will return? Do rising fuel prices and the corresponding airfare hikes mean a rebirth of sea travel? It might certainly mean reduced dependence on oil from the Middle East, Russia and Venezuela.

"I'm not sure," said Tamm whose love for everything maritime began when his mother gave him a model ship back in 1934. But he hastened to add that technically a maritime renaissance would be entirely possible in a post-petroleum world. "The technology is here. It's just that I wonder if in our era marked by rush people would accept the slower pace of a crossing by ship from, say, New York to Bremerhaven?"

And this makes one wonder - has the advent of instant communication, such as mobile telephones and wireless Internet access, not already superseded the need for haste? There already exist airliners with WiFi "hotspots" allowing passengers to stay in touch with their office, their clients or their families. What should stand in the way of ocean liners offering the same service? Given the existence of such amenities, why not while away the equivalent of an extended weekend on a leisurely journey to England, France, Germany or Italy? More than half a century ago, the SS United States raced across the Atlantic in three days, 10 hours and 42 minutes at speeds of up to 40 knots (almost 50 mph), a record that still stands but could easily be beaten by a more state-of-the-art ship.

Most of today's ships depend on petroleum just as much as airplanes, and they rank among the world's worst polluters. But by now alternatives have emerged. As far back as during the last global oil crisis in the 1970s, the Japanese built 17 freighters and even one tanker using rigid sails. They became seemingly obsolete when oil prices dropped. Today, the world's only commercial sailing ship is the three-mast windjammer, Maruta Jaya, a joint German-Indonesian development that operates primarily in Southeast Asia and proved effective during the disaster-relief efforts in the 2004 Tsunami catastrophe.

However, Tamm is betting on another form of propulsion - hydrogen. "In 10 to 20 years this will be the prevalent fuel; then we will no longer need petroleum," he predicted, reminding that the first major oil fields will be barren a decade from now. "The hydrogen-fuel cell technology is with us already," he continued. "As was the case with jet propulsion, the military has set the pace for this. The Bundesmarine (German navy) operates three Type 212A-class hydrogen-powered submarines. That makes it the first navy in the world to apply this know-how to a small number of its vessels."

These three boats are powered by a fuel cell plant that produces electrical energy from hydrogen and oxygen allowing them to cruise underwater without surfacing for several weeks. Since fuel cells cause neither noise nor exhaust heat, the submarines would be virtually undetectable. Could this technology be used on larger passenger ships, though? "At first I thought, well, not anytime soon; it would surely take decades to reach that point," according to Berlin-born journalist Peter Hoffmann, founder and editor of Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Letter, the world's oldest monthly periodical specializing in this field, which is published in Rhinecliff, N.Y.

But while attending the recent 16th Hydrogen Energy Conference in Lyon, France, Hoffmann learned of Ivo Veldhuis, a Dutch researcher at the University of Southampton, England, who had just presented a plan for a 412-foot hydrogen-driven catamaran capable of carrying 600 containers from Philadelphia to Cherbourg, France, in 51 hours. This 3,000-ton vessel would travel at speeds of up to 64 knots (73 mph). Veldhuis, a doctoral candidate at Southampton University's Ship Science Department, says that there is no reason why his project could not be adapted to passenger shipping. Veldhuis explained that this ship could maintain its speed even in 15-foot waves.

It would be ironic if at the end of the petroleum age, Veldhuis' catamaran might have to compete for transatlantic passengers with another craft of glamorous heritage - airships. Not long ago, a working group led by
IG Metall, Germany's huge metal workers union, launched an appeal for a return to the era of these "gentle giants" that crossed from Europe to America in 66 hours until their most luxurious specimen, the LS Hindenburg, exploded upon landing at Lakehurst, N.J., killing 36 of the 102 passengers and crew members on board.

Like ocean liners, airships afforded stylish travel in comfortable staterooms with baths and elegant salons and dining rooms. Their fuel consumption was relatively low because almost none was needed to lift the craft into the sky; that job was done by gases lighter than air. In the Hindenburg's case, it was the highly combustible hydrogen whose explosion destroyed that ship. Today, non-flammable helium would be used.

Moreover, modern zeppelins, as these vehicles are commonly called after their pioneer, Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, could even be propelled by solar energy. One such craft, the 33-foot airship Lotte, whose large helium cavity is covered with solar panels, was developed by Stuttgart University in Germany in the late 1990s. It is still being used for scientific purposes.

Research and tourism are the primary purposes of today's airships whose passengers experience the sensation of "flying as light as feathers," as President Thomas Brandt of the Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik GmbH in Friedrichshafen, Germany, described it in an interview. But unlike the union-led working group, Brandt was less optimistic about the changes of a zeppelin renaissance as long-distance carriers.

For one thing, zeppelins are too dependent on the weather, he said. They don't like wind and snow. For another, if they were to carry any significant number of passengers comparable to contemporary jetliners, they would need vast and clumsy gas cavities, which is why American plans to develop airships as troop carriers were "put on ice for the time being," according to Brandt.

This brings us back to Veldhuis' hydrogen-propelled catamaran. "It would be a genuine sensation," said Tamm. Will there be a place for memorabilia of such a ship in his collection once he has transferred it to its future home in Hamburg's picturesque 19th-century harbor warehouse complex called Speicherstadt?

"History is not yet over, and that includes maritime history," Tamm replied. "We will always make room for ships of the future."

- Uwe Siemon-Netto, a German foreign correspondent and Lutheran lay theologian, is scholar in residence at Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, MO.


For more information please contact Peter Tamm at the:

Wissenschaftliches Institut für Schiffahrts- und Marinegeschichte, Elbchaussee 277, 22605 Hamburg, Germany,
Tel.: 01149 40-821-341; info@peter-tamm-sen.de