![]() But that year a United Nations climate report warned that the planet was careening toward an era of extreme weather and disasters, in which escalating heat waves, fires, and storms could become the norm. By 2012, the Avontuur was ferrying passengers on the Dutch coast at more than ninety years old, it probably seemed destined for a maritime museum or a scrap heap. In 1920, a Dutch shipbuilder fashioned a sailing schooner named the Avontuur and put it to work carrying cargo, which it did for the rest of the century. The shipping industry created a mind-bending supply chain in which an apple from halfway around the world often costs less than one from a nearby orchard.ĭiesel ships never entirely stamped out the sailing ships that once reigned supreme, however. So-called devil ships inaugurated a new age of petroleum on the high seas by the twenty-first century, nearly ninety per cent of the world’s products spent time on diesel-powered vessels. The Selandia, a Danish vessel that measured three hundred and seventy feet, was one of the first oceangoing ships to run on diesel power. ![]() Winston Churchill, then the minister in charge of the British Royal Navy, declared it “the most perfect maritime masterpiece of the twentieth century.” But, as the Selandia continued its journey around the world, some onlookers were so spooked that they called it the Devil Ship. In February, 1912, Londoners packed a dock on the River Thames to gawk at the Selandia, a ship that could race through the water without any sails or smokestacks.
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