Ships with No Crew

Listen to a conversation between two students about ships with no crew, and complete the sentences.

M: So, did you manage to find out any more about this idea of ships that don’t have any crew?
F: Yeah, I found a couple of websites that were quite interesting.
M: Oh good, I did too. I wanted to find out more about the advantages – you know, like the ones the speaker mentioned in his talk yesterday.
F: Well, the most obvious advantage is that you could really cut operating costs. I mean, if you’ve got one captain in charge of ten ships, that’s a huge saving straightaway. But overall, it’s estimated it’d be as much as thirty per cent cheaper with this new technology – and if it goes ahead, that approximately fifty per cent of the world’s cargo ships will become remote-controlled. It’s incredible, isn’t it?
M: I find it quite hard to imagine! The other thing is that ships these days spend weeks or even months at sea, so the crew need to eat, sleep, wash – all of that would become irrelevant. And of course, heating wouldn’t be required in colder climates if there’s no crew on board.
F: And you wouldn’t have to have lifeboats either, as there wouldn’t be any people to get off the ship if there was an emergency! So, all these things mean that you’d be able to maximise the amount of space on these ships.
M: Yeah – remember those pictures we saw yesterday? All the things like stairs, and rails to hold on to, would no longer be needed. In fact, the whole design would be different.
F: There was one other thing I read about that just didn’t occur to me before.
M: What’s that?
F: It’s that if you don’t have crew on the ships, then pirates wouldn’t be so much of an issue. There’d be no prisoners for them to negotiate over!
M: And anyway, even if they did get on board, what would they do? With remote control, the captain is the only person who can control the ship. They wouldn’t be able to take it anywhere.
F: Of course!
M: So, did you find out anything else about the research that’s going on? That’s what I’d like to look into a bit more.
F: Well, I think it was an engineering company from Britain that set the whole thing up. And apparently there’s a big research centre in Norway where they’re currently working on the technology. And they predict that it’ll be mostly shipping companies in northern Europe that’ll want to use it –because wages for the crew are generally highest there.
M: Oh, right. Will you show me the site where you read about that?
F: Sure.
M: Thanks. Anyway, come on, we’d better get to our next lecture…