Maierform

Maierform is a hull form patented in the 1920s by the Austrian engineer Fritz Maier, marketed through Maierform GmbH (Bremen, founded 1927). It pairs a pronounced V-shaped, sharply raked stem with cutaway sections forward and aft and a high flare, raising reserve buoyancy in the forebody. The claimed gains were an 8 to 10 percent reduction in calm-water power for a given speed and reduced pitching in a seaway. Several hundred merchant ships and trawlers were built to Maierform lines through the 1930s and 1940s. It is a forerunner of later soft-nose and clipper-bow forms rather than the bulbous bow, which addresses wave-making differently.