Remote pilots without a view. Masters relying on cargo declarations they can’t verify. Designers who never asked the crew. Why maritime progress keeps coming back to the same question.
Remote pilotage, e-learning, ship design, cargo safety, and the international politics of pilotage reform. On the surface, five unrelated stories in this month’s issue. Underneath, they’re telling the same one.
Take remote pilotage. Finnish Iiro Törmä makes a point that’s easy to miss amid the impressive camera feeds and stable Teams calls. What doesn’t yet exist is the social infrastructure around it: trust built without a handshake, and communication discipline that holds up when things go wrong in unscripted ways. From a different vantage point, Matthew Williams arrives at a similar caution: the concept-implementation gap in remote pilotage isn’t a hardware problem either, and closing it will take real-world trials, not assurances.
Niels de Groot’s piece on human factors in ship design really makes a similar argument. Ergonomics doesn’t fail because the technology is lacking; people doing the designing rarely ask what the people doing the work actually need. A bridge with perfect IMO compliance can still leave an officer with a blind spot where it matters, because nobody ran a task analysis. Ann Pletschke’s contribution on digital learning shows the more hopeful side of this same coin: connectivity and e-learning are removing real barriers for seafarers. But only if implementation stays mindful of who’s being served and who might get left behind by a screen-based format that doesn’t suit everyone.
Karolina Cirjak’s piece on bulk cargo liquefaction is perhaps the starkest version of the theme. Here, the technology, the IMSBC Code, the can test, and the certification process exist and are mandatory. What’s missing is reliable information, and the people at the sharp end are left carrying a responsibility the system around them doesn’t equip them to bear.
A pattern emerges: maritime technology rarely fails on its own terms. It fails, or succeeds, depending on how well it’s matched to the people who operate it, trust it, or depend on its outputs. That match doesn’t happen automatically. It has to be designed, tested, regulated, and revisited.
Five articles, five angles, one question worth keeping in front of us: who’s steering?
This is editor-in-chief Robin Zander’s editorial accompanying the June 2026 issue.
Also read: SWZ|Maritime’s May 2026 issue: Always the skipper
SWZ app and archive
Our digital archive is available to subscribers both online and in our new app (available for Android and Iphone) and they can read the digitial version of our June issue there. Not yet a subscriber? Visit our subscription page.
Also read: SWZ|Maritime’s April 2026 issue: Dredging reimagined
The articles in SWZ|Maritime’s June issue
In addition to the regular sections such as Dutch news, Global news, Markets, book reviews, KNVTS news and Mars Report, the June issue features a special on digitalisation as well as other articles. They are:
- Young talent: Daan Buitenhuis, TU Delft Hydro Motion Team
- The harder half of remote pilotage
- Remote pilotage: Concept-implementation gap
- How to apply human factors in ship design
- Technology as a lifeline for maritime training
- Deadly solid bulk cargoes
- Windcat Amsterdam
- Type approval for SRC’s Methanol Superstorage
- CEDA – Laying the groundwork
- CEDA – Building a blueprint through collaboration
Picture: The Windcat Amsterdam is the first Elevation series commissioning service operations vessel (CSOV) to arrive in European waters and will see Windcat’s in-house hydrogen technology implemented once approvals are in place (photo Damen Shipyards, cover picture of SWZ|Maritime’s June 2026 issue).
Also read: SWZ|Maritime’s March 2026 issue: Imagine
