The Military Sealift Command (MSC) operates approximately 125 replenishment and military transport ships to support the US Navy. Currently, MSC has more ships than it has civilian mariners to sustainably operate them. MSC’s commander confirmed Thursday that the command will sideline 17 ships to ease the stress on civilian mariners.
“That number’s based on again the number of mariners that we need to get us to 95 percent [manning],” Rear Adm. Philip Sobeck told reporters in a call Thursday morning. “It is aligning the force so that we are most ready and that we are getting after the fleet requirements.”
MSC crews the Navy’s logistics and support vessels, with 4,500 billets across the command. There are about 5,500, or 1.27 mariners per billet, to fill positions on an MSC ship. That ratio means a mariner is at sea for four months, off for one month and then must return to work. The new move will allow mariners more time on shore.
The Pacific island nation of 
We 
Early Monday morning, a 1,170km (730-mile) telecommunications cable in the Baltic Sea between Finland and Germany was severed, while a 218km internet link between Lithuania and Sweden’s Gotland Island stopped working on Sunday.
An interesting story from the 
In November 1878, the wooden schooner 
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In 1964, pop-artist Andy Warhol shocked the art world by making hundreds of replicas of supermarket cartons and presenting them as art. He painted screenprints of soup cans, then sculptures of packaging for Kellogg’s cornflakes and Heinz ketchup. Among the most notorious were his sculptures of 
A sad account that reinforces an old lesson, while also highlighting an unexpected risk of social media. 
The first American naval ship lost in World War II was not sunk in the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. Over a month before, on October 31, 1941, the destroyer 
In August of last year, we bade a sad farewell to the 
The 
After being closed for five years for renovations, the 
Two hundred and nineteen years ago today, in 1805, the Royal Navy, commanded by 
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Emirates Team New Zealand clinched match point in the 
In early August, Mikhail Pichugin, 46, set off in a small inflatable boat to watch whales in the stormy