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The price of fuel wasn’t the only thing that doomed the SL-7’s. They were built for 35 ft containers as the world moved to 40 footers as the norm.
ROFL – I was thinking of a different McLean – who was actually, of course, McKay.
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Speed reading the op, my mind went to the same place. McKay’s beautiful clipper ships that sailed “when ships were made of wood and the men who sailed them were made of iron” as the old saying goes. While browsing through renderings of the Flying Cloud, I ran across this book review and ordered it.
https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/26/books/as-fast-as-a-flying-cloud.html
Kudos to KC for promoting literacy.
The fast fuel hog containership is just one of those ideas people can’t leave alone, isn’t it. I wonder what the next iteration will be.
600 meter ships? Trained dolphins? I like enormous airships myself, though submarines are also nice. 
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Back to Laissez’ Flying “P’s”? Preussen, Pamir, Potosi.
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Low carbon footprint.
When the icecaps give up the ghost, maybe the Russians can dust off this gem and scale it up a few hundred times.
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Ekranoplan! 
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Interstingly, the largest of his fleet had the same dimensions of a number of Wagenborg general cargo ships (the D and K class Wagenborg’s if I remember correctly); 420ft L, 52ft B, 36 ft moulded depth, and also 8,000 dwt.
Those windjammers could average 10kts from Land’s End to Valpariso…which included rounding the Horn. Pretty dang impressive.
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With sails built of material capable of absorbing solar rays and small wind turbines at the top of the masts to charge generators, the hotel side would be a huge improvement over the original Spartan living conditions.
Had an instructor at MITAGS go off for almost an hour on how the IMO did that to screw over U.S. shipping and gain the competitive edge. It was quite the passionate lecture…
I think it had more to do with what was allowed on the road. McLean locked himself into a technology (35 ft containers) and was slow to see the industry was continuing to evolve. This can easily happen to those that are first in a capital intensive businesses. The D9’s were the first ships they got that were built to the new standard.
40 footers have become standard so I wonder why we don’t use FEUs instead of TEUs.
Probably because the math is so simple (2 TEU = 1 FEU) and on many ships there are slots where only 20 footers can go. Twenty foot boxes are very popular in many countries though less so here.
I remember the SL7s taking 3 pilots, (2 docking, 1 sea) in NY harbor…they see seemed so gigantic…and they kinda were, coming through the west draw of the Newark bay ex. bridge,for those old enough to remember
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This, scaled up a whole bunch:
I made the ride quite a few times in the early 80s. . .
Well… I can’t find the artists conception. But some company (McAllister IIRC) planned a15 knot ATB version for east coast shuttle service. Novel idea.