For decades, now quite as long as most people can remember, crossing the Atlantic became something to be endured at 35,000 feet, preferably with noise-cancelling headphones, a tiny plastic cup of wine, and lately, every digital device known to man. In recent years, the French, however, appears to have remembered that there is another way. Quite, a wonderfully inconvenient, gloriously slow, slightly absurd and increasingly serious way.

Once again, you can leave a French port, point yourself toward the Americas and spend a couple of weeks actually crossing the Atlantic rather than blinking over it. The unlikely agents of this maritime revival this time are not grand liners with ballrooms and brass bands, but working cargo ships under sail. Vessels such as Anemos, Artémis and Neoliner Origin now carry freight first and passengers second, reviving the pre-COVID tradition of booking passages on cargo ships, but with more style.

Maersk certainly sucked the fun out of such travel by never restoring hop-on passenger travel for their cargo fleet.

Certainly, on this type of vessel no one is pretending that the purpose of the voyage is to keep you entertained. The ship has somewhere to go, coffee or machinery or assorted useful things have to get there, the wind is the wind, and passengers are simply along for the ride. Between France and America lies a very large amount of sea and, rather refreshingly, no duty-free cosmetics counter, all for the decent cost of around 200 euros a night.

The French sailing cargo revival are modern commercial ships designed to move serious loads while using wind as a primary source of propulsion, i.e. they are not museum curios. The smaller sailing freighters Anemos and Artémis operated by TransOceanic Wind Transport were built to carry more than a thousand tonnes of cargo while accommodating a handful of passengers, and the much larger Neoliner Origin combines enormous rigid sails with a roll-on, roll-off freight deck and proper passenger cabins. Brands such as Renault book these cargo vessels to show off their commitments to the environment, usually with large amounts of hashtags.

Whatever sails your boat.

Of course it is not a cruise because there are no nightly shows, no floating casino and no special notice that the buffet has a chocolate fountain. It is not quite a ferry too, unless the idea of a ferry includes taking two or three weeks to arrive. Perhaps the best way to describe it is to say it is quite French, closer to hitching a ride with a beautifully engineered commercial enterprise. Staring at the horizon, watching the weather change, perhaps learn the names of several bits of rigging you had previously regarded as ropes, and gradually lose the nervous habit of checking the time every six minutes. Environments like ships used to be decent ways to try digital detox, what with the outrageously priced Wi-Fi, but in some of these ships there are comfortable double cabins, lounges, decks and even balconies. On all of them there is the rare luxury of being allowed to take a journey at the speed the planet itself seems to prefer.

There is, of course, a comic element to choosing this method in the twenty-first century. Someone will ask how long the trip takes and you will say, with suspicious calm, “about two weeks, perhaps longer.” Someone else will point out that a jet does it overnight. This is true in the same sense that a microwave cooks dinner faster than a restaurant. Efficiency is not always the whole argument. A transatlantic voyage under sail gives distance back its proper proportions, where Saint-Nazaire to Baltimore is no longer an abstract line on a booking screen. It is thousands of kilometres of moving water, changing skies, shifting winds and repeated meals with people you actually begin to recognise, and the Atlantic stops being the blue patch under the little aeroplane icon (whether 2D or 3D) and becomes the principal character in the trip. Schedules remain subject to weather and freight operations, which means anyone demanding precise punctuality may find the experience unforgettable in a quite different manner, yet that unpredictability is part of the appeal. To cross an ocean this way is to accept that nature has retained a small administrative role in human transport, and she does not answer emails.

Though sometimes you do wish it did.

What makes the French ideal especially appealing is that it manages to combine romance with pragmatism. France has a long history of ships, ports, Atlantic trade and elaborate opinions about lunch, so the idea of reviving ocean passages aboard sailing freight vessels feels almost suspiciously on brand. But the new generation of ships is not merely reenacting the past. The commercial purpose is central. They are moving goods, cutting dependence on conventional propulsion and testing whether wind-assisted freight can become a meaningful part of modern shipping. While there will be faster ways to reach America for as long as aircraft exist, but speed has already won that argument. The more interesting question is whether anyone still wants the crossing itself, one with no gold trimmings and no Cunard’s luxury style. The French, with several great sails spread over the Atlantic and a dozen berths tucked among the cargo decks, has offered a cheerful answer. Perhaps we still do.