A new exhibition opened at the at the Maryland Science Center, Odyssey’s Shipwreck! Pirates & Treasure, that will run through January 30, 2011. Exploring pirates and shipwrecks at the Maryland Science Center … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
Sea monsters exist. They break ships in half and pull them below the waves. Sometimes they swallow them whole. Most who encounter them never return to tell the tale and those few who do, until very recently, were rarely believed. … Continue reading
A comment on our post, Happy National Coffee Day – Coffee, Edward Lloyd, Ships and Shipping, by Barista Uno host of the excellent Marine Cafe blog raised two interesting points. He commented: There ought to be an International Coffee Day. Coffee, after … Continue reading
An interesting article by Dan Moreland, Captain and owner of Picton Castle from Sail Training International. Picton Castle’s 5th Voyage around the World … Continue reading
I will admit to doing a double take when I saw the USCG press release announcing “Coast Guard Cutter Harriet Lane returns home after 9-week patrol.” I wondered, who would name a ship the Harriet Lane? For the record, the … Continue reading
When I had a sailboat, I hated motoring. The diesel was loud and vibrated, completely different from why I went out sailing in the first place. Tag Yachts in South Africa, in partnership with Electric Marine Propulsion and International Battery, … Continue reading
This week 1,000 Royal Navy Medical Officer Journals were made available to the public at the British National Archives in Kew. The journals are revealing, if often disturbing by modern standards. From drunken mutinies to disease outbreaks to … Continue reading
Perhaps not a case of swords into plowshares, but at least a destroyer into an artificial reef. In November, the 535 foot decommissioned Navy destroyer, USS Arthur W. Radford, will sink beneath the waters off Cape May Point to become the longest vessel ever turned … Continue reading
Happy National Coffee Day! I don’t know who decided that today was National Coffee Day, nor even why we should necessarily be celebrating it. However, as a confirmed and happily contented coffee addict, perhaps this is a good time … Continue reading
Given all the reporting on piracy off the Horn of Africa, we hear very little about another crisis – the flood of refugees fleeing the instability and chaos of Somalia’s clan wars. Last year 74,000 people crossed the Gulf of Aden in smugglers’ boats to reach Yemen, according … Continue reading
Yesterday we posted that scientists are not sure where all the plastic floating in the vast Atlantic and Pacific garbage patches is going. Sadly, the answer is probably not that a big vacuum cleaner is vacuuming the stuff up to recycle it. Nevertheless, here is a great story about Electrolux, which … Continue reading
The Mariners Museum in Newport News, VA has a new exhibition: Endangered Species – Watermen of the Chesapeake, featuring extraordinary B & W portraits of watermen who work the waters of the Chesapeake Bay. For those of us not … Continue reading
We have previously posted about the plastic “garbage patches” in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans – great current vortexes where floating plastic trash has accumulated. As reported in Scientific American scientists studying the garbage patches have noticed that despite … Continue reading
Passengers should embark and disembark by the gangway only. Three stories, two of them tragic, of unusual arrivals and departures from cruise ships last week. On the Holland America cruise ship, Prinsendam, passengers were shocked when a powered hang glider made a crash landing on … Continue reading
Well planned passive resistance proved to be an effective tactic for the crew of the MV Lugela this weekend. Earlier this month we posted about the hijacking and subsequent recapture of the M/V Magellan Star from Somali pirates by US Marine commandos, after … Continue reading
An update on our post from last June on the SS Robin, an 1890 built steam coaster, the last of her kind and the oldest complete steamship in the world. She arrived in Tillbury last week aboard a a custom built pontoon barge in … Continue reading
The Australian Hospital Ship Centaur was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine off the coast of Queensland, Australia, on 14 May 1943. Of the 332 medical personnel and civilian crew aboard, 268 were killed. The exact position of the sunken ship … Continue reading
This sounds completely nuts. It might possibly work but there is the question of scale to be addressed. Hurricanes, or typhoons in the Pacific, need warm water to provide energy to the storm. The idea is to built a fleet of submarines to … Continue reading
In light of the recent claims in Louise Patten’s new book, Good as Gold , which we posted about earlier this week, we are very pleased to welcome Tim Maltin, author of 101 Things You Thought You Knew About the Titanic…But Didn’t, as guest … Continue reading
In September 2009, the United States General Services Administration put the Fairport Harbor West Breakwater Light, on Lake Erie, up for public auction via an online auction. The minimum bid is $10,000 with incremental bids of $5,000 required. The bidding was … Continue reading