Container shipping takes to the air

Over the years there have been several new hull concepts designed to improve the efficiency of ships. Many of these revolve around subtle change to conventional hull design whilst others adopt new technology concepts such as hovercraft, air-supported vessels, small waterplane area twin hulls (SWATHs), multihulls etc. The aim has always been to allow higher speeds or greater efficiency but whilst they advance ship design in some respects there tends to be a downside in the loss of other aspects of performance such as perhaps, seaworthiness.