Black History Month — First Black Liberty Ship Captain, Hugh Mulzac, Says No To Jim Crow

Posted on by February 22, 2026
Reply

Hugh Mulzak served as the first Black Liberty ship captain in World War II. When offered the command, he refused to sail with a segregated crew. An updated repost in honor of Black History Month.

Born in 1886 on Union Island in Saint Vincent Grenadines, he went to sea at 21 and served on British, Norwegian, and American sail and steam-powered ships. After studying at the Swansea Nautical College in South Wales, he earned a mate’s license in 1910. He served as a deck officer on four ships during World War I.

In 1918, he became a naturalized US citizen and in 1920 sat for his Master’s license, earning a perfect score on the test. Despite his experience and qualifications, he was generally only able to find work aboard American ships as a messman or cook. Mulzak has been described as “the most over-qualified ship’s cook in maritime history.”

Continue reading →

In Honor of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion During Black History Month — the Floating Freedom School

Posted on by February 21, 2026
Reply

The steamboat Ben Campbell commonly attributed as John Berry Meachum’s Floating Freedom School. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

At a time when programs supporting the American values of diversity, equity, and inclusion are being banned in schools across the nation, it is incumbent on the rest of us to keep alive the history that some are now seeking to suppress. Here is a repost of an account of how far we have come while also being a reminder of how far we still have to go — the story of Missouri’s Floating Freedom School.

The Floating Freedom School was an educational facility for free and enslaved African Americans on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. It was established in 1847 by the Baptist minister John Berry Meachum.

Continue reading →

Trump’s Navy Secretary Phelan — Billionaire Donor, No Military Experience, Porn Collector With Epstein Links, of Course

Posted on by February 21, 2026
Reply

Donald Trump bragged that his administration would recruit “only the best people.” Instead, his regime is the very definition of a kakistocracy, a system of government run by the least qualified, most unprincipled, or worst citizens.

Trump’s unhinged Attorney General, Pam Bondi, or his dog-killing cosplaying DHS Secretary, Kristi Noem, as well as his Fox TV host, with white supremacist tattoos and a history of public drunkenness, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, are obvious examples of the least qualified, most unprincipled, or worst citizens running the regime. The list of kakistocrats in the Trump regime is long, and would be comical if his gang of incompetents weren’t individually and collectively doing so much damage to this nation and the world.

Given the deep and vast well of total ineptitude in the regime, many of the more garden-variety government agency bunglers don’t receive the attention they deserve. One good example is Trump’s Navy Secretary, John Phelan. 

The Navy Secretary is a civilian position in accordance with the Constitutional mandate that civilian government has the responsibility to control the military. The secretary is not required to have any Navy experience or even any military background, although most do. Phelan has no military background whatsoever. He is the first person in more than 15 years to serve as the Secretary of the Navy without any prior military experience. Continue reading →

Winter Cold Enough to Sail Van Nostrand Challenge Cup, America’s Cup of Ice Yachting

Posted on by February 18, 2026
Reply

Last Sunday, on a frigid day on the Navesink River in Red Bank, NJ, the Hudson River Ice Yacht Club (HRIYC) won back the Van Nostrand Challenge Cup from the North Shrewsbury Ice Boat and Yacht Club (NSIBYC), which held the cup for the last 135 years. 

The cup was created by Gardiner Van Nostrand, a wealthy Hudson River ice boat owner who, in 1891, had crafted a Tiffany silver cup to be kept by the winning team. The contests, including the most recent in 2003 and 1978.

The Van Nostrand Cup is often referred to as the America’s Cup of ice yachting. The most recent sailing of the America’s Cup was the 37th competition since the first race was hosted by the New York Yacht Club in 1870. The Van Nostrand Cup Challenge, by contrast, has been sailed only four times, since the first race 135 years ago: in 1891, in 1978, in 2003, and in 2026. 

Unlike the America’s Cup Races, which are held every several years on dates agreed between the defender and the challenger, the Van Nostrand Cup Challenge is sailed whenever the weather is cold enough to freeze the ice thick enough on the rivers to allow racing the ice yachts. The Van Nostrand ice boat races are hosted by the winner of the last round of races. As the North Shrewsbury Ice Boat and Yacht Club of Red Bank, NJ, won the previous races have been held on the Navesink River. The next race, whenever the ice is thick enough, will be sailed on Orange Lake, NY.

Continue reading →

Pilot Falls Into Ocean Off Hawaii Attempting to Board Emerald Princess

Posted on by February 15, 2026
Reply

Last Tuesday, the 3,080 passenger cruise ship, Emerald Princess, approached Nawiliwili Harbor, on Kauai’s southeast coast, in Hawaii. Nawiliwili was the ship’s first port of call after departing from Los Angeles on a 16-night Hawaiian Islands itinerary. The National Weather Service had issued high wind advisories, warning of rough seas raised by the strong easterlies. After several days at sea, many passengers watched from their cabin balconies as they neared the harbor.  A pilot boat arrived nd maneuvered alongside the113,561 gross ton cruise ship to allow the pilot to board to guide her into the harbor.

As the 1,000-foot-long cruise ship rolled, the pilot boat rose and fell in the choppy seas. The harbor pilot attempted to climb the rope boarding ladder attached to the ship’s side. After several attempts, the pilot slipped and fell into the ocean as passengers looked on, startled, from above.

Continue reading →

Valentine’s Day Repost — Valentine Islands

Posted on by February 14, 2026
Reply

On Valentine’s Day, a few Valentine Islands.  Are they islands of love on the storm-tossed seas of life? Sadly, they are probably not, but at least they do resemble Valentine’s Day hearts.

Celebrating Frederick Douglass on Valentine’s Day — “I Will Take to the Water”

Posted on by February 14, 2026
Reply

Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of both the day and Black History Month. Here is an updated repost about the social reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. He is considered to be the most important leader of the movement for African-American civil rights in the 19th century. Frederick Douglass. But what does Valentine’s Day have to do with Frederick Douglass?  As a slave, Douglass never knew the date of his birth, so he chose to celebrate it every year on February 14th.

Frederick Douglass was born around 1818. From an early age, he developed a close attachment to ships and the sea. His path to freedom led directly through the docks and shipyards of Baltimore, Maryland.

Continue reading →

Online Poll Names Deep Sea Chiton — No Its Not Molly McMollusk-Face

Posted on by February 13, 2026
Reply

A global internet poll has named a new species of deep-sea chiton – a type of marine mollusc – from the genus Ferreiraella. The chiton was discovered in 2024 in the Izu-Ogasawara Trench of the coast of Japan at a depth of over 5,500 metres (3.4 miles). The name chosen is Ferreiraella populi.

A public naming campaign began after YouTuber Ze Frank featured the rare chiton from the genus Ferreiraella in an episode of his “True Facts” series. Over 8,000 name ideas were submitted through social media, and after reviewing the entries, scientists selected the name Ferreiraella populi, where the species name in Latin means “of the people”.

Continue reading →

Harriet Tubman, Part 2 — the Arc of History Doesn’t Always Bend Toward Justice

Posted on by February 10, 2026
2

Martin Luther King Jr. popularized the saying, “The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.” It would be pleasant to think that this is always the case. Given the recent political climate, the quote may be overly optimistic.

We recently posted Celebrating Black History Month — Part 1: Harriet Tubman & the Great Combahee Ferry Raid, the first of a two-part post which recounts a daring raid planned and helped lead a Union riverboat raid at Combahee Ferry in South Carolina in June, 1863, freeing over 720 slaves.

Before the war, Harriet Tubman was a legendary “conductor” on the Underground Railroad, nicknamed “Moses.”  She rescued approximately 70 enslaved people after her own escape from slavery. She made the perilous journey at least 13 times, through treacherous swamps, shadows, and danger. She always escaped and later boasted, “I never ran my train off the track, and I never lost a passenger.”

As we noted in our previous post, the current Trump regime has launched a full-scale war on American history, specifically America’s non-white history. Through a series of executive orders, the current regime has attempted to rewrite our past, glorifying racists and traitors and erasing the horrors of slavery. Federal websites removed the positive accounts of resistance to oppression and tyranny by deleting the names of thousands of non-white heroes in American history, including Harriet Tubman, the Tuskegee Airmen, and the Navajo Code Talkers.

Continue reading →

Remembering Robert Smalls – Former Slave, Pilot of the Planter, First Black Captain in the US Navy & US Congressman

Posted on by February 7, 2026
3

Robert Smalls is an American hero, well worth celebrating every day of the year, not only during Black History Month. An updated repost in honor of the remarkable story of Robert Smalls.

On May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old slave, who served as the pilot of the Confederate armed transport, CSS Planter, led eight fellow slaves in an audacious flight to freedom. They seized the CSS Planter, steamed it out past the batteries and forts of Charleston harbor, and turned it over to the Union naval blockade.  Smalls would go on to become the first black captain of a U.S. Navy vessel, a South Carolina State Legislator, a Major General in the South Carolina Militia, a five-term U.S. Congressman, and a U.S. Collector of Customs.

Harper’s Weekly of June 14, 1862, recounts the escape:
Continue reading →

Celebrating Black History Month — Part 1: Harriet Tubman & the Great Combahee Ferry Raid

Posted on by February 10, 2026
5

Updated: Several blog readers pointed out that in focusing on the history of  Harriet Tubman and her leadership in the Great Combahee Ferry Raid, I failed to mention the bridge over the Combahee River named in her honor. (Thanks, Doug and Boca Jim.)

I started to correct this oversight, and it quickly became obvious that I had also left out a large part of Tubman’s legacy. Just as she continues to be an icon and a role model for all Americans committed to freedom and justice, she is also still under attack by white supremacists. I have decided to break the post into two sections — the history of the famous raid and Tubman’s legacy and continued challenges of combating bigotry in this troubled nation. As is so often the case with any good story, both posts involve ships.

Part 1: Harriet Tubman & the Great Combahee Ferry Raid

Continue reading →

Candela P-12 Flying Above the Waves: the Fastest Electric Passenger Ferry in the World

Posted on by February 5, 2026
Reply

For several years now, we have followed the all-electric hydrofoil runabouts designed and built by Candela. Now the Swedish boat builder and engineering design firm has moved beyond runabouts to delivering the P -12, the world’s first serial-production electric hydrofoiling passenger ferry which appears to be on the brink of revolutionizing urban ferry services around the world.

Recently, a Candela P-12, a 30-passenger ferry, completed what the company says is the longest electric sea journey ever made by an electric passenger vessel. The 160-nautical-mile voyage saw the ferry travel from Gothenburg on Sweden’s west coast to Oslo, Norway, over the course of three days.

Continue reading →

When New York Harbor Froze

Posted on by February 4, 2026
Reply

Strolling on the East River, 1867

As we posted recently, the Coast Guard has been busy breaking ice in New York Harbor. The current forecasts suggest that the frigid weather is likely to continue for several more weeks, so the ice breaking is also expected to persist. Nevertheless, it has been far worse in the past. Even the recent past. In 2015, ferry traffic was interrupted by heavy ice in New York’s East River, and sections of the Hudson River partially froze over. And that is nothing compared to conditions in the late 18th and 19th centuries.

When the Harbor Froze

Despite tidal currents that can run up to four knots, New York’s East River froze solid at least eight times between 1780 and 1888. The East River isn’t actually a river. It is a tidal strait connecting Upper New York Bay to Long Island Sound. Nevertheless, it froze often enough so that after the particularly hard winter of 1866-1867, there was a public outcry that led ultimately to the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.

People continued to walk across the frozen East River even after the Brooklyn Bridge was completed in 1883. In the hard winter of 1888, the New York Times reported: The ice was fully six inches thick and covered with two inches of hard snow” and “was solid from shore to shore.” That day, New Yorkers tested the strength of the ice and “paid a boy his two-cent fee for the use of his ladder” to get on the ice on the Brooklyn side… when they reached Manhattan, they found a young employee of the fish market with a thriving side business, charging 5 cents to use the ladder he secured to help people up to land. Continue reading →

Icebreaking in New York Harbor

Posted on by February 4, 2026
Reply

Tthe USCGC Polar Star has been icebreaking in the Southern Ocean summer in support of Operation Deep Freeze 2026, including rescuing a cruise ship stuck in pack ice. Meanwhile, in the winter Northern hemisphere, US Coast Guard icebreaking tugs have been hard at work breaking ice in harbors along the East Coast, including New York Harbor.

Toward the end of January, Winter Storm Fern swept across North America, extending from northern Mexico and the southern United States to the Northeast and into Canada. The storm brought significant snowfall and high winds. Over a million customers lost power, and approximately 146 people lost their lives in the storm. The weather system moved into the Northeast, where it began to transition into a nor’easter, which battered the region with gusty winds and heavy snow.

In the deep freeze that followed the storm, New York Harbor began to ice up. A mosaic of ice formed and spread quickly across the harbor and the Hudson River, with significant ice packs impacting the waterways north through the Hudson Valley. Shore and drift ice formed throughout the area, with forecasts indicating continued ice growth over the coming days as cold temperatures persist. Continue reading →

50 Year Old USCG Polar Star Rescues Cruise Ship Scenic Eclipse II from Pack Ice in Antarctica

Posted on by February 1, 2026
Reply

Last month, the US Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star (WAGB 10)  began icebreaking operations in the Southern Ocean in support of Operation Deep Freeze 2026. The deployment also marked the cutter’s 50th year of commissioned service.

This milestone was further commemorated by the Polar Star rescuing the  Australian-owned cruise ship Scenic Eclipse II, which became trapped in pack ice, eight nautical miles from McMurdo Sound. After receiving a call from the distressed cruise ship shortly before midnighton January 17, the Polar Star broke the ice surrounding the Scenic Eclipse II by encircling it twice before escorting it for four nautical miles until it reached open water.

Continue reading →