The Peruvian navy has laid the keel for its new sail training ship, La Union, at the Marine Industrial Services (Sima) shipyard in Callao. When completed in 2015, the ship will be the largest sail training vessel in South America. The … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
We have reached a milestone here at the Old Salt Blog. We have passed a million pageviews! Specifically, according to Google Analytics, as of this morning, 541,358 unique visitors have viewed 1,052,167 pages on the blog. (The numbers are actually … Continue reading
The US news program 60 Minutes aired a feature on salvaging the Costa Concordia last night. The operation is the largest and most complex ship salvage in history. Well done and worth watching. Costa Concordia: Salvaging a shipwreck … Continue reading
There is still more steel to be welded, rigging to be run, and money to be raised, but the SSV Oliver Hazard Perry, Rhode Island’s Tall ship, looks to be on schedule to be sailing in time for the 200th … Continue reading
If you are a professional surfer, where do you go to train? Hawaii, comes to mind. The California Coast is possilbe. Australia, certainly. How about in the desert of Dubai? Sally Fitzgibbons, a 22 year old Australian professional surfer on … Continue reading
On October 2, the government of Ghana seized the Argentine navy sail training ship Libertad in the port of Tema on behalf of US billionaire Paul Singer. The government of Argentina appealed the seizure to the U.N. International Sea Tribunal in Hamburg, Germany. Today the … Continue reading
Really great news about the tanker, Mary A. Whalen. (Negotiations are not finalized so perhaps we should say “potentially great news” so as not to jinx anything.) For the last six years, the historic tanker and PortSide New York, the non-profit educational organization based on the ship, have been … Continue reading
Joan Druett’s The Beckoning Ice, the fifth in her series of Wiki Coffin nautical mysteries, begins in 1839, on the sealer Betsey of Stonington, homeward bound from “a short but very profitable season far south of Cape Horn.” The schooner is … Continue reading
The Tainted Prize is Margaret Muir’s second book of the Oliver Quintrell series. After sending Captain Quintrell to the bottom of the world in pursuit of Floating Gold, the admiralty is confident in the good captain’s discretion. It is 1803. The Peace … Continue reading
Rotterdam, London, St. Petersburg, and Toyko all have storm surge barriers to protect low-lying areas from flooding. In the United States, Stamford, Connecticut; Providence, Rhode Island; and New Bedford, Massachusetts all have storm barriers. Should New York, which suffered significant flooding two years in a … Continue reading
The John B. Caddell, 700 gross ton water tanker, that washed up on Front Street, in Staten Island, NY during Hurricane Sandy a month and a half ago, is back in the water. In a team effort lead by the … Continue reading
We recently posted about the SS Badger, a 410-foot long coal-fired passenger and vehicle ferry operating in Lake Michigan and the last coal-fired passenger vessel operating on the Great Lakes. Her supporters call her a national treasure, while to her … Continue reading
The government of Australia plans to establish the world’s largest marine reserve in the Coral Sea, covering an area more than one-and-a-half times the size of France. If approved, the Coral Sea reserve, would be approximately 989,842 sq km. While environmentalists have … Continue reading
The South Street Seaport Museum is reopening on Friday, December 14 with the launch of two new exhibitions – A Fisherman’s Dream: Folk Art by Mario Sanchez and Street Shots/NYC, a presentation of contemporary New York City street photography. They … Continue reading
Last week, we posted about the documentary “Shipbuilding in the Maritimes,” which aired on Sunday on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Land and Sea. For those of us who do not get the programming on television, the CBC is good enough … Continue reading
At around 1 AM on Friday morning, the Cape Apricot, a cape-sized bulk carrier, chartered to K Line, smashed through a coal conveyor serving the largest of two berths at Westshore Terminals in Vancouver, Canada. An undetermined amount of coal … Continue reading
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s Arctic Report Card for 2012. Arctic Report Card … Continue reading
In 1969 in the Sunday Times Golden Globe Race, the first non-stop, single-handed, round-the-world yacht race, there was considerable concern for Robin Knox Johnson whose radio had malfunctioned off New Zealand. Four months later, he was able to make contact with a … Continue reading
The transition from warship to artificial reef did not go smoothly for the HMAS Adelaide. Now roughly 100 feet below the surface, the popularity of the reefed ship has created new problems – a dramatic increase in the cases of the … Continue reading
It seems to me that history is all about connections. Lawrence Gooley, writing in the Adirondack Almanack, notes how many ships present at the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, were named in remembrance of those who fought … Continue reading