Quote:
Originally Posted by aerohead
Man,that put a smile on my face! A friend had just done a blog at EV World on a hybrid ship from around 1830,which combined steam-power and sails and I'd been seeing sails in my mind.---------------------- Good for those folks.Hope their profit curve looks just like the tether leading up to the sail.Thanks!
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All of the early ocean going steamships were "hybrid" since the early steam engines were so inefficient (before they developed triple and quadruple expansion engines) that the ship couldn't carry enough coal to steam all of the way across the ocean. Steam was mainly used for getting out of and into harbors and for propulsion during windless conditions or when they had to travel directly into the wind. Of course the earlier sailing ships were also "hybrid", the alternate power source being human powered sweeps or oars.