hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger…

©Meta chantier naval
This picture comes from Meta-chantier-naval.fr. I have just enhanced colors and contrast for a better view on our website. The picture shows one of their trollers navigating through polar icy waters. We find the works of Meta chantier naval very interesting. Their boats, motor or sail, are sturdy, wear resistant and adapted to the extreme cold of the polar regions. Slocumboats have many common design features with Meta chantier boats: thick aluminum fully developable hull, full insulation, twin keels, low draft, etc., so we definitely like these boats…

safe return (un)doubtful, honor and recognition in case of success…

©Meta chantier naval
This picture comes also from Meta-chantier-naval.fr. I have flipped it horizontally, enhanced contrast and cropped it for a better view on our website. The picture shows one of their aluminium trollers under construction. The particularity of Meta boats hulls is that they are manufactured with thick aluminium plate and full penetration welding. The result is a self-standing hull with no internal reinforcement. The ability to resist to deformation is based in an advantageous combination of plate thickness and geometrical form. At the end, the total weight of the hull is very close to that of a typical structure based on internal bracings and a thin skin plate but with additional advantages (no thermal bridges on internal insulation, higher skin resistance to tear and wear, lower center of gravity).

 

The title and subtitles of this post have been quoted from the job advertisement that was posted by Sir Ernest Shackleton in the newspaper for his 1914 Trans-antarctic expedition. I believe that Sir Shackleton would have been happy to navigate in a Meta chantier naval type of boat and who knows if the outcome of his expedition would have been different…