As founder of the world-renowned shipbuilder Incat Tasmania, Robert Clifford has followed one dream: to promote travel by ferry, through an emphasis on efficiency and elegance.
In school, Robert Clifford built a model of Bluebird, Donald Campbell’s record-breaking speedboat. At the time he went to and from school on a ferry, and loved being on the water every day. Then the era of the two-car family, and Hobart’s Tasman Bridge, put an end to the Tasmanian ferry industry.
But Clifford knew where he wanted to be.
“I wanted to be on the water,” he says. “But I couldn’t make a living in sailing. I had to go fishing, even though I didn’t want to be a fisherman.”
It wasn’t an easy life, going after scallops and crayfish on small boats. He carried a dream, from childhood, of building something – of returning to a time when we travelled on ferries. So he started a ferry business.
“It wasn’t successful,” he says.
Clifford’s ferries only made money as a tourism business, taking visitors on night cruises. The cruises were going so well they had two boats running. Then in early January 1975, a bulk zinc ore carrier hit the Tasman Bridge. It was an immediate tragedy, with 12 deaths, and an economic disaster for Greater Hobart as there was no way to cross the River Derwent. Hobart’s east-west connection had been broken.
“We immediately started at 6am the first day the bridge was down,” says Clifford. “Our record day was 29,000 people on two boats, literally working 24 hours a day. A week after we started I rang my boat-building friends: ‘You better get the material together for another boat’. We had one built within six months, a second within 12 months, and a third within two years.”
Then Clifford thought back to Bluebird, and hired a hovercraft. It was only one-third of the size of the other boats but it went twice the speed.
“We were able to charge double the fare. People were happy to pay more to get there quicker.”
However, the hovercraft wasn’t quite right. Its maintenance and operational costs were too messy. Clifford realised the boat he really wanted didn’t yet exist.
“We immediately set out to design a catamaran to do double the work of the other boats at twice the speed,” he explains. “It went 26.1 knots, better than we anticipated. It could serve more passengers in a given time, with a smaller crew. It was all about faster, more efficient boats.
“We realised: this is the beginning of something pretty big.”
Clifford’s first prototype did what he needed it to do, but it was, in his words, a pretty ugly-looking boat. He thought about his customers, people who admired efficiency as he did. They tended also to admire elegance.
“We could make a more beautiful boat, more attractive, more curved lines like a speed boat – more modern. The first two boats were rather ugly. Ugly doesn’t sell.”
By the time they were building the third boat it was aluminium, with lovely lines and curves. It was fast, attractive, lightweight, and fuel-efficient. It could operate with a smaller crew.
“It turned what was a good idea into a very good idea,” says Clifford.
The company that would over time come to be known as Incat Tasmania is still in the business of efficiency and elegance. Clifford and his team at Derwent Park are always looking for ways to run faster, lighter, and cleaner.
“We are a research company, really,” he says. “If we look to the future now, clearly fossil fuels are on the way out. I feel at this stage there is more to do: more efficiency. We could lead electric ferries on the world market. We have a major advantage over every other shipbuilder in the world. Ours are already lighter and take less power than any other ship. We have an opportunity ahead of us to move on to bigger and better things.”
Clifford is thinking about batteries. He’s thinking about building his boats in a state that generates more renewable electricity than it uses.
“I don’t feel we’ve reached the top,” says Clifford. “We could be at the beginning of something really extraordinary. We can carry thousands of tonnes of cargo with less power, with our electric ships. We can move people with zero carbon.”
Republished courtesy of TASMANIAN.