History

This technology is not new. It was first developed by a German engineer called Anton Flettner who fitted what he called 'rotors' to a ship in 1926 and successfully completed an Atlantic crossing. Back in those days the key criteria was speed, a kind of brute force and environmental ignorance philosophy prevailed. Fuel cost was not a prime consideration. Thus the technology remained unused, not because it didn't work but because it was dependent on the wind and winds were not as predictable as machines.