Virginia Oliver, Maine’s Indomitable Lobster Lady, Dies at 105

Posted on by January 26, 2026
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Virginia ” Ginny” Oliver has hauled her last lobster pot. Widely known as  Maine’s “Lobster Lady,” she died quietly at age 105. Oliver began lobstering at age 8 alongside her father and older brother and spent over a century hauling traps on Penobscott Bay.

“Ginny” gained national and international attention for continuing to lobster well past her 100th birthday, becoming a symbol of longevity, resilience, and Maine’s working waterfront.

“Sad news from the Midcoast,” the Maine Lobstermen’s Association said in a social media post. “Ginny was an amazing ambassador for our industry and exemplified the incredible work ethic that defines our industry and all Mainers! Our thoughts are with her family.”

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Southern England Beaches Battered By Banana Carnage and Massive Chip Wreck

Posted on by January 24, 2026
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On December 6, 2025, beaches in the county of Sussex on the southern coast of England were battered by barrages of bananas. Tons of bananas washed ashore at Selsey, Bognor Regis, and Pagham Harbour in West Sussex. Some also washed further inland, making a slippery mess on coastal roads.

Where did the yellow tide come from? 16 shipping containers fell off the cargo ship Baltic Klipper near the Isle of Wight. Eight of the lost containers were filled with bananas, while others contained plantains and avocados.

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“All Available Boats” — RDML Michael Day’s Radio Call on 9/11

Posted on by January 9, 2026
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Last week, Rear Admiral Michael Day retired after more than 40 years of service in the US Coast Guard. Over his career, he served in a range of responsible positions, in locations ranging from the Arctic to Taiwan and throughout the United States. including as Commander of Sector New York from 2015 to 2018.

Michael Day will probably be best remembered for one VHF radio call he made as a Coast Guard lieutenant on September 11th in New York Harbor. From our post on the 2oth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks:

There are moments in history when an individual makes the right choice at exactly the right moment, and against all odds, it makes all the difference. Such was the case on the morning of September 11, 2001, in New York Harbor when LT. Michael Day made the call for “All available boats.”

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Trump Admits His Vanity Fleet Battleship Plan is Just an Epstein File Distraction

Posted on by January 2, 2026
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Trump recently announced that the Navy will begin the construction of “two brand new, very large, the largest we’ve ever built battleships.” He claims that the new battleships, which he has named after himself, the Trump Class,  will be “the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more powerful than any battleship ever built, the largest battleship in the history of the world.” The first ship of the series is to be named USS Defiant.

No, not that USS Defiant

Presuming that Trump is not referring to one of two starships named USS Defiant in the Star Trek media franchise, then essentially, none of the claims about the proposed battleships are true. What Trump is trying to accomplish with this grand scheme, beyond wasting taxpayer dollars? Is it just another vanity project onto which he can affix his name? Or does he really believe that building a new class of ships considered obsolete for over 80 years is a good idea?

More distraction than shipbuilding?

Once again, Trump is saying the quiet part out loud. After giving a rambling, word salad of a speech announcing the battleships, Trump answered a reporter’s question about the Epstein files and effectively admitted that the battleship proposal was intended to distract from the deepening Epstein scandal.

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Watching the Ball Drop in Times Square — the Nautical Origins of a New Year’s Tradition

Posted on by December 31, 2025
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The USNO Millennium Time Ball

Tonight, roughly a million revelers will watch in person in New York’s Times Square, and over a billion viewers are expected to watch on television or online, as the  New Year’s Eve ball drop rings in 2026 with a dazzling new time ball — the largest in the history of the event that started 118 years ago.  

The Constellation Ball, as it has been named, is the ninth ball to usher in the new year at the famous Midtown Manhattan intersection. It measures 12.5 feet in diameter and weighs just over 12,000 pounds, is bejeweled with 5,280 circular Waterford crystals in three different sizes — 1.5-inch, 3-inch and 4-inch — as well as LED light pucks.

In another first, the dazzling new ball will be lowered twice, to celebrate both the arrival of the new year and the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States. As the clock strikes midnight on New Year’s Eve 2025, the Constellation Ball will drop and then rise back up to be relit in red, white and blue for a second celebration.

The tradition of the ball drop began in 1907 after New York City officials banned New Year’s fireworks over concerns about the celebration setting the city on fire. Instead, they chose a time ball to mark the birth of the new year, But where did the tradition of dropping a ball to mark the time originate?  The practice dates back to 1829 and was a key tool for making it possible for sailors to calculate their position at sea.

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Update: Cruise Ship Coral Adventurer Runs Aground on First Trip Death of Elderly Passenger

Posted on by December 29, 2025

The last time the expedition cruise ship Coral Adventurer was in the news was in October, when the ship sailed from Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, leaving Suzanne Rees, an 80-year-old passenger, behind on the remote island, where she died. A major search operation found her body the following day. An investigation is underway in Ms. Rees’ death.

Now the ship has run aground off the eastern coast of Papua New Guinea on its first trip since the death of the elderly passenger. The vessel, which had been carrying 80 passengers and 44 crew when it ran aground, remained on a reef off the coast, about 30km from PNG’s second-largest city, Lae, on Monday. All passengers and crew aboard the cruise ship have been reported safe. All passengers are set to be flown home early.

Sting — Christmas At Sea, Live from Durham Cathedral

Posted on by December 24, 2025

We hope everyone is having a joyous holiday season.  Here is a repost of a beautiful version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Christmas at Sea,” performed by Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, better known as Sting.

Sting – Christmas At Sea (Live from Durham Cathedral)


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Hundreds of Victorian Shoes Mysteriously Wash Ashore on Beach In Wales

Posted on by December 24, 2025

Hundreds of Victorian hobnailed shoes have washed ashore on the UK’s Ogmore By Sea Beach in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales. The remarkable trove of footwear was discovered by volunteers from the Beach Academy cleaning up rock pools on the beach last week on December 18.
 
Nearly 450 of the strange boots and shoes have so far been found by members of the  community interest group, who called it an ‘amazing day of discovery’.

So far, where they came from is unclear. The Daily Mail refers to their appearance as a “real shoedunnit!.”

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Radio Broadcasts Reporting Attack on Pearl Harbor 84 Years Ago Today

Posted on by December 7, 2025

An interrupted broadcast of a football game, a newsbreak during a performance by the New York Philharmonic, a weather report followed by an announcement from President Roosevelt that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Reports of attacks on the Philippines. Here is a compilation of news reports from Sunday, December 7th, 1941, eighty-four years ago today.

Pearl Harbor Attacks – As It Happened – Radio Broadcasts

Tragedy in the Mozambique Channel — Two Sailors Found Dead in Possible Pirate Attack

Posted on by December 4, 2025

Australian sailor Deirdre “Cookie” Sibly, 67, and French sailor Pascal Mahe have been found dead on the yacht Acteon, sailing in the Mozambique Channel, around 200 miles north east of Beira, Mozambique.  Acteon is a 50-foot sloop registered in France. The pair, both described by relatives and friends as highly capable mariners, had left Reunion Island in June with the intention of reaching South Africa, stopping in Durban before continuing to Cape Town.

A distress signal was transmitted from the yacht on the evening of Nov 26. A nearby cargo vessel responded and notified French authorities after attempting without success to make contact with those on board. The ship’s crew approached the drifting yacht but could not safely board. That ship was then joined by a cargo ship and a maxi yacht to assist. There was no sign of life on the boat when the first responding ship attempted to make contact.

Sailors from one of those vessels eventually managed to get onto the Acteon on Nov 28 at 10 a.m., where they discovered the bodies of a man and a woman. 

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Trump Regime Attempting to Scapegoat Admiral For Illegal Second Strike on Venezuelan Boat

Posted on by December 2, 2025

The criminal clown circus that is the Trump regime continues to spin out of control with lethal consequences.

The Washington Post reports that during an attack on an unidentified Venezuelan vessel on September 2, the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive “to kill everybody,” according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation.

After an initial rocket attack on the craft left two survivors clinging to the burning wreckage, the Special Operations commander overseeing the — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions. The two men were blown apart in the water.

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Trump Ready to Pardon Honduran Drug Kingpin While Threatening a War With Venezuela

Posted on by December 1, 2025

President Trump is threatening to start a war with Venezuela, allegedly to counter drug trafficking to the United States. At the same time, the would-be king has announced his intention to pardon the notorious drug kingpin and former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández. In a Federal Court last year prosecutors argued that Hernández “paved a cocaine superhighway to the United States.” Hernández was convicted of flooding the US with more than 500 tons of cocaine and was sentenced to 45 years in prison. 

Venezuela, by contrast, is not considered an important player in drug production, even though it allows cartels to use the country as a transit point.

Trump has also ordered attacks on Venezuelan and Colombian boats alleged to be running drugs into the United States. In these attacks, at least 83 people have been killed in 21 strikes on 22 vessels. Eleven of these vessels were in the Caribbean Sea and 11 in the Eastern Pacific. Secretary of Defense Hegseth ordered the military to “kill them all.”

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Trump Threatens to Execute Veteran Lawmakers for Calling on Military to Follow the Law

Posted on by December 2, 2025

Last week, Sen. Mark Kelly, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, and House Reps. Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander,and Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan filmed a short PSA video message to members of the military. Each of the lawmakers is a veteran of the military or intelligence communities. 

Their message was simple and direct — “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.”

The message was nothing new or even controversial. It was taken directly from the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), in which service members are required to obey lawful orders but must refuse orders that are patently illegal. An illegal order is one that violates the Constitution, US laws, or international law, or directs the commission of a crime or unethical act, such as war crimes or the intentional harming of civilians. Refusing an illegal order is a duty, and obeying one can result in criminal prosecution. 

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Thanksgiving Repost — Whaling Ships, Sarah Josepha Hale, Mary’s Lamb & a Liberty Ship

Posted on by November 26, 2025

Happy Thanksgiving to those on this side of the pond and below the 49th parallel. (The Canadians celebrated the holiday in October.)

What do whaling ships, a child’s nursery rhyme, a female magazine editor, and Abraham Lincoln have to do with Thanksgiving? An updated repost.

Until the Civil War, Thanksgiving was a sporadically celebrated regional holiday.  Today, Thanksgiving is one of the central creation myths associated with the founding of the United States, although it is not universally admired. The story is based on an account of a one-time feast of thanksgiving in the Plymouth colony of Massachusetts during a period of atypically good relations with local tribes. 

The actual history of what happened in 1621 bears little resemblance to what most Americans are taught in grade school, historians say. There was likely no turkey served. There were no feathered headdresses worn. And, initially, there was no effort by the Pilgrims to invite the local Native American tribe to the feast they’d made possible.

Thanksgiving only became a national holiday in 1863.  Before the celebration spread across the country, Thanksgiving was most popular in New England. On 19th-century American whaling ships, which sailed from New England ports, they celebrated only the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Of the three holidays, Thanksgiving may have been the most popular. On Norfolk Island in the Pacific, they also celebrate Thanksgiving, the holiday brought to the island by visiting American whaling ships.

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Voyage of the Mayflower II, 1957

Posted on by November 26, 2025

Happy Thanksgiving!

On Thanksgiving eve, here is a short video of the voyage of the Mayflower II across the Atlantic in 1957, under the command of Captain Alan Villiers. The reproduction was built in Devon, England, during 1955–1956, in a collaboration between Englishman Warwick Charlton and the Plimoth Patuxet Museum. The work drew upon reconstructed ship blueprints held by the American museum, along with hand construction by English shipbuilders using traditional methods.

Voyage of the Mayflower II, 1957