A beautiful Friday evening at the Sultana Downrigging Weekend in Chestertown, MD. The schooner Sultana, launched in Chestertown, Maryland, in 2001, serves as an educational vessel for schoolchildren as it travels around the Chesapeake Bay. Now in its fifteenth year, … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
In early October, the headline in the Philadephia Inquirer was Is the S.S. United States headed toward the scrap yard?. After years of attempting to save the iconic cruise ship, the SS United States Conservancy announced that the SS United States, … Continue reading
In 1998, the whale-watching boat Ocean Thunderer was hit by a wave and swamped, throwing all on board — three passengers and one boat operator — into the waters near Sea Lion Rocks, also known as Plover Reefs, off the western … Continue reading
Ben Talman, a reader and contributor to the Old Salt Blog, visited the Edwin Fox in Picton, New Zealand and took a series of wonderful photos of the historic ship. The Edwin Fox is an East Indiaman built in 1853 of teak in Calcutta, India. … Continue reading
Recently, we posted that five nations were responsible for 60% of the plastic dumped in the world’s oceans. Why is plastic so destructive to the ocean environment? National Geographic put together the short animation below to explain all the damage … Continue reading
MV Leviathan II, a 65′ whale watching boat, sank late yesterday afternoon, off the port of Tofino on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. 27 were aboard when the vessel sank. Five are reported to have died and one person is … Continue reading
For several years now, we have posted about the so-called ocean garbage patches, the great swaths of the oceans where plastic and other floating debris accumulate while riding on vast circular currents. The problem is that an estimated 8 million … Continue reading
In 1998, the United States Naval Academy dropped celestial navigation from its curriculum. If a naval officer wished to know where he or she was, the officer simply had to read the display on a GPS (Global Positioning System) receiver. … Continue reading
When Ferdinand Magellan rounded the tip of South America in 1521, he encountered favourable winds. He named the ocean Mar Pacifico meaning “peaceful sea” in Portuguese. Today, Hurricane Patricia, the most powerful tropical cyclone ever measured in the Western Hemisphere, … Continue reading
The US Coast Guard rarely gets enough credit for the remarkable work that they do in routinely rescuing mariners in often extremely dangerous conditions. A new movie, “The Finest Hours“, is coming out this winter, which tells the story of … Continue reading
Yesterday afternoon, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released an updated report on their investigation into the sinking of El Faro in Hurricane Joaquin in early October. The report notes: “In a recorded satellite phone call to the company’s emergency … Continue reading
Happy Trafalgar Day! Today is the 210th anniversary of the overwhelming Royal Navy victory over the French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. After considerable research, Admiral Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory has now been repainted to more accurately … Continue reading
NASSCO Shipyard in San Diego delivered Isla Bella, the world’s first LNG-powered container ship to TOTE Maritime. The 3100 TEU 764-foot long ship, the first of two 764-foot long Marlin Class container ships, should dramatically decrease emissions and increase fuel efficiency … Continue reading
On October 9th, the schooner Phoenix dragged her anchor in a storm in Port Townsend harbor, Washington. She ended up sinking, holed on the rocks of the breakwater. The good news is that, after a week underwater, the schooner was … Continue reading
The recent rain in the Carolinas has been close to unprecedented. Meteorologists have referred to it as the “1,000-year rainfall.” Another way to describe it is that it was “enough rain to float a battleship.” In this case, however, that … Continue reading
Mark McCracken was out fishing for bonito half a mile off Gaviota State Beach, near Santa Barbara, when a hammerhead shark started bumping and circling his kayak. Mark, to his credit, didn’t panic, paddled toward shore and kept striking the shark … Continue reading
L. Francis Herreshoff was the son of naval architect, Nathanael Greene Herreshoff and the father of yacht designer and naval architect Halsey Herreshoff. L. Francis was widely respected as was a boat designer, naval architect, editor and author of books and … Continue reading
Yacht designer Halsey Herreshoff at the Herreshoff Marine Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island, describing how his grandfather Nathanael Greene Herreshoff carved rather than drew the boats that he designed. The more interesting question may not be how Captain Nat carved … Continue reading
When Nathanael Green Herreshoff was around 16, he began to work for his elder brother, John Brown Herreshoff, in his boat yard in Bristol, RI. To work as an apprentice was a traditional way to learn the skills and techniques … Continue reading
In 1859, 18 year old John Brown Herreshoff of Bristol Rhode Island, accepted his first commission to design and build a yacht. The fact that J.B., as he was known, was blind, having lost his sight at 15, didn’t seem to … Continue reading