With a proven record of supplying clean, natural energy to
mariners ever since they first took sails to sea, wind power is
an attractiveif inconsistentalternative to diesel engines, which
consume gallons of oil. In March 1925, Popular Mechanics
featured an innovation called the rotor ship, invented by German
engineer Anton Flettner. The vessel was hailed as the first new
development in sailing ships since the earliest navigators
discovered they could utilize the winds power. Buckau, the first
of the rotor ships, featured two hollow towers of steel, 10 ft.
in diameter and 65 ft. tall, mounted on pivots powered by 9-hp
motors. The towers utilized the Magnus effectwind currents
striking a rotating cylinder exert a force approximately at
right angles to the direction of the wind. After an initial
jumpstart from the motors, the cylinders motion caused the ship
to advance, PM reported. Its designers claimed the vessel outran
other sailing ships as well as freight steamers. More than 80
years after the rotor ships b