Cargo ships are pretty obnoxious things, trundling along at barely 15 knots. They’re ungainly, stupid, ugly, and we hate them. It’s about time someone stormed into the situation to shake up proceedings – that would be us! Yes, the helicopter boat (catchier than the helicopter cargo ship, non?) is a cargo ship that’s also a helicopter.

Cargo ships can carry about 150,000 tonnes. That’s heavy. You may have noted helicopters typically have one “copter” bit (the blades that spin round), but that won’t cut it with this invention. To lift all that weight, we’ve worked out you need 2,000 copter rotors to get the thing hovering. Any fewer and it’s just not going anywhere. Well, it’ll be worth it the moment you see a 150,000 tonne cargo ship being flown in land!

The Helicopter Boat

The difficulty here was attaching some 2,000 copter rotors to the cargo ship we acquired (i.e. stole) to test this all out on. We won’t divulge the exact death toll, but it was a busy week of severed limbs flying through the air! Plenty of pots of tea and good old British stiff upper lip got us through the worst moments, but it was a testing time that taught us this: ships aren’t really meant to be airborne.

The good news is the helicopter boat does work. Despite some reservations about its practicality, commercial appeal, health and safety hazards, and expense (the thing will cost $100 million per boat), it seems to us to offer many uses. If, for example, you have a cargo of instant noodles that desperately needs transporting across land (the land may be stricken by, for instance, riots due to economic deprivation after businesses wasted all their money buying helicopter boats, leading to mass unemployment and poverty), then the helicopter boat delivers big time!

Those noodles will make it to starving citizens in no time. You can see the front page headlines right now: “Helicopter boats responsible societal collapse, but feeds desperately in need wealthy people with instant noodles” – this contraption, truly, is the hero for the little man: the 1%. They’ll never starve again!

Other Uses

The helicopter boat does have other uses. It’s a boat, first and foremost, and a mighty one at that. In hot and stuffy regions, the copter rotors can be switched on to cool down staff – they can stand about on deck being gently wafted by a nice breeze. It’s lovely! Of course, occasionally the odd copter blade snaps and decapitates a worker, but that’s one less mouth to feed.

It will also double up as a tourist destination between, and during, cargo duties – a luxurious super-yacht with the capacity for 5,000+ mindless tourists. The helicopter boat will provide tours around the Cape of Good Hope, before surging on to Blackpool Pleasure Beach in Northern England, where holiday-goers will be able to dangle over the sides for closeup views of the effluence-ridden waters.