Can there be more sea travel?

Too slow.

Sea travel is alive and well today, and the ships are bigger and better than those that provided access to the new world before aeroplanes could carry people. However most get on board to spend a week or so, and sometimes a month or more, visiting foreign ports of call around the world, vacationing on a luxury vessel carrying hundreds, even thousands, of passengers and crew.

So a person from America can visit Europe by boat?

You can find transatlantic cruises at Cunard Lines.

Thanks zen

There are also high-end freighter piggyback services that sound pleasant and are cheaper than Cunard. Google “freighter US to Europe.”

Sea travel as a method of getting from Point A to Point B is certainly possible, but in general it’s more expensive than using air travel to achieve the same end points. Though the per-person fuel costs are much lower, the cost of people’s time makes it prohibitive to companies who would sponsor it as a means to get their people from “A” to “B”, and for people who would do it on their own to relocate it’s expensive to provide all of the meals that have to be served while on board.

Air travel to UK from NYC: ~8 hours.
Sea travel: several days.

Time is money. Companies don’t want to have to wait more time to get people to places in days, not hours. Plus, for pleasure travelers, time matters. Most people don’t get tons of vacation time. I know for me, if I want to vacation in Europe, I want to spend as little time on the plane as possible so I can spend more time in Europe.

Cruises where the sea voyage is much part of the holiday (vacation) as the destinations are here to stay. Commercial liner services for travel purposes will never compete with air travel unless of course the oil situation gets worse.

Too costly and too slow.

As others have said, sea travel is much much slower. One way sea travel, or repositioning cruises, can be very inexpensive for what you get. If you can wait for the return repositioning cruise months later then it’s still a great value. Last minute cruises also can be very good prices. Www.vacationstogo.com has tons of cruises to look at. Cunard is probably the most well know to do frequent transatlantic voyages. Some are as short as 4 nights I think, might be 5. There are three day cruises up and down the west coast of America. When I cruised in Alaska a few passengers got on at our second port and finished the cruise with us saying it was cheaper than other modes if travel for them to get to the next port. There are one way cruises through the Panama Canal.

There used to be transport by boat from Miami to Key West, I don’t know if that still runs. There are still cruises, but this was basically a regular boat ride.

Edit: Here is an example if repositioning. The one at the top is America to Spain for as low as $679. Including all the food. The link might not work eventually since the cruises won’t be listed if the date has passed.