Reply
Home for Christmas — Old Style, a poem by Cicely Fox Smith, performed by Daniel Kelly from his Ukulele Christmas Singalong 2021. Home for Christmas – Old Style – Ukulele Christmas Singalong … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
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 … Continue reading
A Christmas repost from a few years ago. Spirobranchus giganteus are beautiful underwater creatures, only about 1.5 inches tall, which look like tiny decorated Christmas trees. They are almost too attractive to be described as what they are, tube-building polychaete … Continue reading
Happy Winter Solstice to all! In the northern hemisphere, today is the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The sun is at its southernmost point of travel, over the imaginary circle on the globe we refer to … Continue reading
An updated holiday season repost. Saint Nicholas, long associated with Christmas and gift-giving, is also the patron saint of ships and sailors. The St. Nicholas Center notes: “Many ports, most notably in Greece, have icons of Nicholas, surrounded by ex-votos … Continue reading
Admiral Yi Sun-sin died 426 years ago today, in his final victory against the Japanese on behalf of the Joseon dynasty. He died of a gunshot wound at the Battle of Noryang on December 16, 1598, the closing battle of … Continue reading
Authorities in Russia have said two small Russian oil tankers sank or were seriously damaged in the Black Sea on Sunday, resulting in an oil spill in the Kerch Strait. The two tankers, Volgoneft-212 and Volgoneft-239, each with cargo deadweights … Continue reading
The BBC recently reported that HMS Victory, one of the most celebrated warships in British history, is being repaired using wood from France. The conservation work is part of a 10-year project titled The Big Repair, which will cost £40-£45m. … Continue reading
The BBC reports that a humpback whale has made one of the longest and most unusual migrations ever recorded, possibly driven by climate change, scientists say. It was seen in the Pacific Ocean off Colombia in 2017 and then popped up … Continue reading
The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) announced on Thursday that US Navy Seaman 2nd Class John C. Auld, 23, of Newcastle, England, killed on the USS Oklahoma, during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor of 1941 has been identified. He … Continue reading
Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor reportedly wrote in his diary, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” Whether or not the Admiral … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
One hundred and seven years ago today, on the morning of December 6, 1917, the French freighter SS Mont-Blanc and the SS Imo, a Norwegian ship chartered to carry relief supplies to Belgium, collided in the Narrows, a strait connecting … Continue reading
In March 2021, we posted about a Laysan albatross nicknamed Wisdom who, at the age of 70, had hatched a new chick. Wisdom is the oldest confirmed wild bird and the oldest banded bird in the world, having been first identified and banded on … Continue reading
Yesterday, the World Cruising Club (WCC) released a statement regarding a Swedish sailor lost overboard in the mid-Atlantic from the Volvo 70 racing yacht Ocean Breeze on Monday while sailing with the Atlantic Rally for Cruisers (ARC). “It is with … Continue reading
Here is yet another story to remind us how little we understand about orcas, also known as killer whales. We are still scratching our heads over why Iberian orcas attack sailboats near Gibraltar or why orcas off South Africa attack … Continue reading
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 … Continue reading
After the Egyptian liveaboard dive boat, Sea Story, capsized and sank in heavy weather in the Red Sea early Monday morning, 28 of the 44 passengers and crew were rescued. On Tuesday, divers rescued five additional survivors trapped in air … Continue reading
Good news for change. On Sunday, a pod of more than 30 pilot whales became stranded on Ruakākā Beach near Whangārei in northern New Zealand. Hundreds of residents joined forces with conservationists to save the pod. The rescue effort was … Continue reading
The Sea Story, a 44m Egyptian tourist liveaboard dive boat, sank in the Red Sea early this morning. Of the 44 aboard, including 13 crew, 28 were rescued while 16 remain missing. The crew was all Egyptian, while the tourists … Continue reading