It is easy to get caught up in the bad news. The oceans are filling with plastic. Coral reefs are dying due to ocean acidification caused by climate change. Overfishing will wipe out all currently fished seafood by 2050. And … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
We know that the ro/ro El Faro sank with all hands after it lost power in the path of Hurricane Joaquin in early October. The captain reported a hull breach. All 33 crew were lost. We may never know too … Continue reading
A beautiful and calming video of the Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard, off Staten Island, NY which seems appropriate for a Mondy morning. Arthur Kill Ship Graveyard – abandoned – Drone View – Staten Island, NY See also, our previous post: … Continue reading
Good, if rather bittersweet, news for those of us around New York harbor. The windjammer Peking, a fixture of New York’s South Street Seaport for over 40 years, will be returning to its original home port in Hamburg, Germany for … Continue reading
Great news. The schooner Spirit of South Carolina is on her way home to Charleston, South Carolina. We recently heard from Meryl Huckabey: “As a long-time reader of oldsaltblog.com I am pleased to tell you that the Spirit of South Carolina, tall ship … Continue reading
The National Transportation Safety Board announced Thursday that U.S. Navy salvage tug Apache has located the bridge deck of El Faro roughly a mile from the main wreckage of the ro/ro cargo ship. 33 crew died when the 790-foot long ship sank in Hurricane … Continue reading
On November 7th, two balsa rafts set out from Lima, Peru, bound for Easter Island on the Kon-Tiki 2 expedition. The voyage is both an homage to Thor Heyerdahl’s famous voyage on the raft Kon-Tiki in 1947 and a voyage … Continue reading
A fisherman recently may or may not have caught a three-eyed catfish in New York’s Gowanus Canal. Why anyone would fish in the canal is a question that immediately comes to mind, immediately followed by “what would you do with … Continue reading
In the latter part of the 19th and the early 20th century, windjammer sailors in the nitrate and guano trades to Peru and Chile drank significant quantities of pisco when they arrived on the west coast of South America. Pisco … Continue reading
Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, better known as Hedy Lamarr, was born to Jewish parents in Austria on November 9th, 1914, one hundred and one years ago today. At the height of her movie career, she was known as the “most beautiful … Continue reading
Last night, right about sunset, the western sky over Southern California was filled by a weird blue-green light streaking across the heavens. Visible as far as Arizona, the mysterious light didn’t look like a meteor. For a time, it was … Continue reading
At the beginning of October, the SS United States Conservancy announced that its board had retained the services of a broker to explore selling the SS United States for scrap “over concerns about the organization’s long-term ability to continue financing the … Continue reading
Queimada Grande is a Brazilian island in the Atlantic Ocean roughly 90 miles from São Paulo. It is off limits to most visitors, not because it harbors secrets or treasure, but rather because it has more snakes, between one and … Continue reading
Off the coast of Europe, offshore wind turbines with an installed capacity of over 6,600 MW generate enough electricity to power almost five million households. In the United States, the number of households powered by offshore wind is almost zero, though, with luck that, is … Continue reading
The Wavertree, an iron-hulled windjammer built in 1885, has been a museum ship in at New York’s South Street Seaport Museum since 1969. In May, the historic ship shifted to the Caddell Dry Dock in Staten Island to undergo stabilization and restoration. … Continue reading