I can't say how fast ships travel in general but acording to my shipping
papers the sort of average container ship carrying my latest shipment of
anchors left the dock at Le Harve, France at 13:15 UTC on February 10 and
tied up at Wando Terminal Charleston, SC on February 16 at 11:21 UTC. That
is 5 days 22 hours and 6 minutes or about 142 hours. Great circle route
between LeHarve and Charleston is 3,820 nautical miles so the average speed
was 26.9 knots. That assumes that they took a short cut through the desert
across the NW corner of Africa and manouvered at full speed in port. :-)

However, from Wando terminal to the pickup dock in Savannah, a distance of
111 statuate miles took 6 days and 4 hours or 148 hours for an average speed
of 0.75 MPH.

--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

"Andy Champ" wrote in message
...
renewontime dot com wrote:
snip
I didn't mean to imply that -all- big ships operate at speeds over 30
knots, I was trying to make a point in reply to the original posters
question and some of the misconceived replies, ie. "at least an hour
will pass from when I see a contact on the horizon to when it will hit
me". My point is that ships at sea operate at a wide variety of speeds,
even in excess of 30+ knots, and as a cruiser you need to be aware of
this. As for "high speed" ships out there, I think you guys are off on
this. All the newer ships are being built to operate at 30 knots or
greater. There are a number of "fast" container and oil carrier ships in
the works, and shipbuilders are starting to deliver "fast" ferries that
will operate at 40+ knots. And it won't stop there, I've read that the
designers have plans for ships that will operate at 50 to 60 knots.


Fascinating. I'd like to learn more - can you point me at any web
sites? I can't find anything much over 25kts.

Thanks

Andy.