Cheap Freighter Travel is History

One of my favorite subjects to read about is how people travelled around the world decades before I was born. Think of the early 1920s-- how did people travel across the ocean?

They went either by plane (which wasn't all that cheap) or by boat (also not that cheap). Planes are sort of romantic but boats are even more romantic! Although they, too, were pretty expensive.

A less costly alternative to the more standard ocean liner was the cargo freighter. Cargo ships may not seem like a very good to travel on your vacation, but back then freighters were actually pretty comfortable. More importantly, they were cheap, and thus a good choice for those travellers who both wanted to travel with less strain on their pocketbooks.

I got most of my information about old-time freighter travelling from one book: Vagabond Voyaging by Larry Nixon. Nixon is an excellent writer, and he sailed on quite a few freighters himself back in the day. Freighter travelling was pretty popular up until the 1970s, when airplane tickets became less expensive and people started flying more than they were sailing.

In the 1930s, freighter travelling was both inexpensive and adventurous. Freighters didn't have fancy passenger cabins like the sort of cruise ships we think of today have. They didn't have obligatory recreation, and they didn't have a lot of passengers. Depending on how big the freighter was, there could be anywhere from one to ten travellers on it at a time-- passengers were definitely outnumbered by the crew, too!

However, despite the lack of luxurious amenities, freighter travelling was still more fun than some other modes off transportation, even if it did take a long time to get somewhere. Freighters, by virtue of it being their job, stopped at multiple ports along the way, and the passengers could spend some time in some very exiting and exotic foreign locales. For the equivalent of $250 you could spend six days floating around some very interesting waters (and that wasn't such a bad deal considering the food was included).

Unlike the 1930s, however, modern freighter travel is nowhere nearly as cost effective or exciting. Perhaps if you're the sort of person who a) doesn't like to fly and b) likes to travel around the world in as many interesting ways as possible, you'd enjoy travelling on a freighter. But today it's so expensive and full of difficult paperwork it's almost not worth it. That same trip that would have cost you $250 (in modern money) in 1938 would now cost you over double the price!

Maybe I'm too frugal, but I don't see how that is value for your money, especially if you can just fly to the same place you're sailing to for a third of the price. Freighter travelling today is for people who are eccentric and want something more interesting to do than just stare out of a plane window.

Compared to cruise ships, however, freighter travel is still pretty cheap. Even cheaper is taking the river cruise route, where your three-five day trip up or down a river would cost you around $300 total. I suppose it all depends on what you want to do and how you want to do it! Personally, at this point in my life I can't get over the expense. But who knows? Maybe later, when I'm older and, hopefully, richer, I'll think it's a worthwhile investment! Romance in travelling is a thing that cannot be dismissed so easily, and freighter travel is still very romantic to me, even if it has changed a lot over the past century.

"Although there are possibilities to work on boats, traveling as a passenger is in fact more expensive than your average airfare. But before you scoff at the price – plan on an average price of $80-140/day – consider this: your ticket pays for room, meals, and a plethora of experiences that cannot be had anywhere else." Source: Traveler's Notebook