Re: london to hong kong - flying vs sailing


<dlwilson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1131647185.850008.130460@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Wow, do you own stock in a clipper ship company?
>
> The oranges-oranges part is the time it takes me to get from Hong Kong
> to London. Twenty two hours sounds much better than 120 days.
>
> But, just because I love to Google...
> The ship mentioned in my original post, the Fiery Cross, was a
> "so-called Aberdeen clipper of 886 tons". I looked on Boeing's web
> site (http://tinyurl.com/cvavl) and found that a 747-400F flying
> between London and Beijing (hey, Beijing's close to Hong Kong) has a
> cargo capacity of 113 tons. So that means it would take eight round
> trips to carry the same capacity. Two days per round trip means 16
> days. Double that to account for maintenance, crew rest, refueling,
> etc, and you have 32 days. That's still 1/4 of the time the sailing
> ship takes.
>
> I'm sure someone will tell me if any of my assumptions are wrong, like
> if aircraft tons aren't equal to ship tons, or maintenance takes
> longer.
>
That's 886 tons displacement not cargo weight, a long long way from her
capacity to carry tea, which given the cargo bulk and stowage requirements
(along with the quaint "packaging of the day). On a cargo only flight, I
expect that today's 747 freighters routinely haul cargo loads equal to that
of your 884 ton clipper, actually likely to be little more than 100 tons.
Look up some Lloyd's London docks cargo records if you're interested in
clipper cargos. Chinese porcelain packed as ballast was popular. The
clipper's biggest problem as a load carrier....the space required for
hauling water and food for the crew. Clippers were tiny, uncomfortable
vessels built for a high priority tade in small volume/weight cargoes.

TMO


.

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