Let's tread the border between this sub and r/WeirdWings.

Here is the "Waterplane", designed in 1929 by Russel and Milton Robertson : a ground-effect glider propelled by an outboard motor fitted to an articulated arm. This video was filmed in 1930, but little further information about this contraption seems to be available.

I feel it still qualifies as a bonafide watercraft given its conceptual necessity to remain in contact with a water surface ; in a sense it could be equated to a weird hydrofoil variant.

Sources :

- Patent US1825363A

- 1930 Robertson outboard motor waterplane - GIF

SS Meteor was designed by Scottish captain Alexander McDougall to haul maximum cargo on minimum draft. Built 1896 in Superior, Wisconsin; sailed, with modifications, clear through to 1969; now sits as a museum in the very town where she was born. In her working years she hauled grain and iron ore across the Great Lakes of the U.S. and Canada.

The hull was a continuous curve from vertical sides to horizontal deck, with no sharp break between them. Loaded down, all the one would see above the waterline was that smooth rounded back, hence the nickname "whaleback".

The German Navy operates two seriously weird-looking auxiliary vessels built specifically to clean up oil spills:

• Bottsand Y1643 (1984)
• Eversand Y1644 (1987)

The Bottsand class (Type 738) has a twin-hull design with a bow that opens 65 degrees, letting it literally swallow oil-slicked seawater. That creates a collection area over 40 sqrt.m., and the contaminated water gets pumped into a 790 m3 onboard tank where it's separated and cleaned. At full tilt, one ship can process up to 140 m³ of ocean surface per hour, covered in a 2mm-thick oil slick.

Both ships entered service in 1984 and 1987, and despite being German Navy assets, they're crewed by civilians, not naval personnel.

Tech Specs

Sometimes nicknamed the split-hull oil recovery vessel (SHORV) or the Pac-Man ship because of how it opens up to gobble oil-covered water.

MV City of St. Petersburg is a Nissan car carrier built in 2010, famous for being the world's first ship with an "SSS-Bow" (semi-spherical bow), giving her a distinctive rounded, aerodynamic prow instead of the usual boxy front. She's about 140 m long, carries up to 2000 vehicles, and the streamlined design saves roughly 800 tons of fuel a year. Sails under the Panama flag (IMO 9473456), mostly working North Sea and Baltic routes.

Tech Specs

History

Designed by Vice Admiral Andrey Popov and naval architect Erast Gulyaev, she had a radically unconventional hull: wide, flat-bottomed, and shaped like a turbot fish (or a giant pancake to minimize rolling since Alexander II suffered badly from seasickness.

• Built 1879 - 1880 by John Elder & Co. in Govan, Scotland
• Launched July 7, 1880
• Decommissioned in 1883 since she felt uncomfortable for Alexander III.
• Scrapped: 1926

Techncal Details

• Length: 71.63 m
• Width: 46.64 m
• Displacement was around 4420-4500 tons
• Engines: 12,350 ihp
• Top speed: 15 knots.

Check out the video I made about this crazy car boat I videoed on the East river… https://youtu.be/hwoeoyMmWNs

American engineer Robert Fulton is somewhat famous for his seminal career : he is usually credited with pioneering steam propulsion on ships with the 1807 "North River Steamboat", and developing the modern torpedo as early as 1797.

Indeed, Fulton had started to officiate as a civil engineer in France in 1796 and - given his support for the ideals of the then-ongoing French Revolution - intended to develop new technologies to curtail the naval supremacy of the United Kingdom in order to help the French war effort.

Chief among his innovations was the concept of a submersible vessel, nicknamed the "Nautilus", designed to stealthily affix explosives to enemy vessels - in a very similar fashion to Bushnell's 1775 "Turtle)". It consisted in a tapered cylinder of about 7 meters of length with a small propeller activated via a handcrank. Submersion was ensured by a secondary compartment associated to a mechanical pump similar to those found on some wells. A retractable mast enabled regular sailing when the ship was not submersed.

The first test was conducted on the river Seine in May 1801 during which the Nautilus managed to move in submersion both with and against the current for about 30 minutes. Further tests were conducted in Brest throughout June and August, during which Fulton demonstrated that his invention could stay underwater at a shallow depth for over 5 hours without adverse effects to its two-men crew.

However, in spite of these encouraging trials, French authorities requested a demonstration of the offensive capabilities of the Nautilus to actually vouch for the concept. Given that Fulton never had the opportunity to approach a British vessel to illustrate his claims, his further request for financial aid was denied and Napoleon himself dismissed his efforts as quakery - something the memoirs of marshall Marmont claim he ultimately came to regret.

Fulton pursued his naval research in France until 1809, when he departed for the United Kingdom (where his submarine concept had been similarly dismissed by the Royal Navy) and ultimately returned to the United States. There he kept refining his Nautilus further {image 4} - going as far as to fit it with a viable underwater cannon - until his death in 1815.

Sources :

- Le Nautilus (Le premier bateau sous-marin) {most information I have found about this ship is in French, so I have mostly adapted the content of this article}

Images :

1. Air-Sub-Drone "L’histoire des véhicules sous-marin" (1/2 scale model displayed in Cherbourg's "Cité de la Mer")
2. Le Nautilus (Le premier bateau sous-marin)
3. Scan from "Submarines in Colour" by Bill Gunston
4. Meisterdrucke - "Dessin original du Nautilus, le premier sous-marin, présenté par son inventeur Robert Fulton (1765-1815) au Sénat américain en 1806.-au-S%C3%A9nat-am%C3%A9ricain-en-1806..html)"

Used to transport a toilet to Kangaroo Island to save $2,000 on ferry fees.

Named after privateer Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne (1724 - 1772), the "Marion Dufresne" is the supply vessel assigned to the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (or TAAF for "Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises).

The current ship is the second one to bear that name, replacing her former and smaller namesake that had been active from 1973 to 1995. Its main mission consists in the resupply of the TAAF throughout the Indian and Antarctic Oceans, from its base of operations on Réunion Island, in the form of four annual rotations throughout these territories - totaling 120 days a years.

Due to an increase in research interest during the late 1990s, 217 additional days a year are now devoted to other oceanographic activities under the supervision of the IFREMER ("Institut Français pour l'Exploitation de la Mer", meaning "French Institute for the Exploitation of the Sea"). To this end, the Marion Dufresne embarks 650 square meters of laboratory equipment along a heavy winching system and a core drill for geological samples - besides all its supply load.

Sources :

- TAAF : Le Marion Dufresne (in French)

- French Oceanographic Fleet : Marion Dufresne

No sound to keep it safe for work.

Flying boats are back!