Mayflower, ProMare and IBM's crewless ship, crossed the Atlantic then diverted to Halifax

An AI-piloted, crewless marine research vessel, a collaboration between marine research nonprofit ProMare and IBM.

That a ship with no captain or crew, making its own navigation decisions, could cross the Atlantic and make marine data collection cheap enough to scale.

The project began in 2016 with the goal of cutting the cost of marine data collection through artificial intelligence. ProMare, a marine research organization, built the Mayflower Autonomous Ship with IBM; lead software engineer Donald Scott's team designed it to navigate and decide on its own, with humans only checking its choices. A first crossing attempt in 2020 was unsuccessful.

On the 2022 attempt the ship left Plymouth, UK, bound for Massachusetts. It ran fine through a heavy storm, then a series of intermittent, low-level computer and electrical failures set in about 1,600 km west of the Azores. With a Dominion Diving tug headed the other way, the team accepted a tow from about 300 km offshore — 'we decided not to tempt fate', said managing director Brett Phaneuf — and Leeway Marine coordinated the recovery, controlling the crewless vessel remotely from its office.

The ship docked in Halifax in June 2022 for roughly three weeks of testing and repairs. Phaneuf still called the project a success: 'It's across the Atlantic Ocean, which was the original intent.' The plan was to continue down the Atlantic coast to Massachusetts and eventually Virginia, then stay in US research service.

The unit economics of ocean research were the prize: a ship that needs no crew attacks the largest recurring cost of collecting data at sea.

Autonomy was treated as the product itself — the team measured success by what the ship decided, not just where it arrived.

A failed 2020 attempt did not end the project; the 2022 retry is the part most moonshots never get.

Accepting a tow mid-ocean was the disciplined call: protecting the vessel and its data mattered more than a clean arrival in Massachusetts.

For an autonomous moonshot, surviving the demo is the product: a crossing that ends in a tow can still validate the system, if the team treats the failure data as the deliverable.

As of June 5, 2022, the ship was docked in Dartmouth Cove, Halifax, facing about three weeks of testing and repairs before continuing along the US Atlantic coast to Massachusetts and eventually Virginia. Phaneuf said it would remain in US research use, revisit Halifax 'many times', and that the voyage's data and experience would inform further research and development of future research vessels.