Sixteen hostages were freed when the Danish warship HDMS Absalon attacked pirates in control of a hijacker vessel off the coast of Somalia late Sunday. Two crew from the hijacked ship were found to have severe injuries and subsequently died. The circumstances of … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
The silver and gold coins valued at $500 million that Odyssey Marine recovered from the wreck of the Nuestra Senora de las Mercedes have now been flown to Spain. American courts ruled that the coins had been removed illegally and that they … Continue reading
A French fishing vessel was the first ship to reach the stricken Costa Allegra, which has been drifting without power in the Indian Ocean, as the result of an engine room fire Monday. The fishing vessel took the cruise ship … Continue reading
The headlines from several media sources (see here or here) have referred to the Costa Allegra, the cruise ship adrift in the Indian Ocean after an engine room fire, as a sister ship to the Costa Concordia. A sister ship is generally defined as a “a ship of the … Continue reading
Sixteen months after the Carnival Splendor was blacked out by an engine room fire in the Pacific off the coast of Mexico, another Carnival owned cruise ship is drifting, dead in the water, after an engine room fire. The Costa Allegra, a cruise ship … Continue reading
Just as preparations for moving the world’s oldest surviving clipper ship, the City of Adelaide, to her namesake city in Australia, are getting underway, Peter Maddison, a former councillor from Sunderland, where the ship was built, has occupied the old clipper, … Continue reading
Last April we posted, Slavery at Sea ? Abuse of Sailors on New Zealand Chartered Fishing Vessels. Secret papers reveal the government has allowed fishermen from poor countries to be exploited in New Zealand waters. Workers are fishing in rusting boats turned … Continue reading
Last week we posted about a report by to the Russian magazine Vlast that claimed that “Russia [was] … on the verge of the largest man-made disaster since Chernobyl” when a fire broke out on December 29th, 2011 on the K-84 Ekaterinburg, a … Continue reading
The Charles W. Morgan was launched in 1841. She is America’s last surviving wooden whaleship and is the “crown jewel” of the Mystic Seaport Museum collection. She has been undergoing restoration at the Henry B. DuPont Preservation Shipyard at Mystic Seaport … Continue reading
The 15th Annual Fisher Poets Gathering is underway in Astoria, Oregon. As the name suggests, it is a gathering where poets of the sea swap verse, music and stories. Men and women tied to the fishing industry share original poems, … Continue reading
Matt Rutherford set out from Annapolis, Maryland last June 11th with an audacious goal. He intended to sail single-handed entirely around the Americas in a 27′ Albin Vega. He planned to sail a counterclockwise loop up the East Coast, cross the … Continue reading
Fifty two years ago, U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh and oceanographer Jacques Piccard dove to the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the bathyscaphe Trieste. They were the first, and so far, the only humans to have ventured to the deepest … Continue reading
Last week we posted about “Rum Running,” a new documentary which was broadcast last weekend on CBCs “Land and Sea.” It is now online and definitely worth watching. It is a fascinating look at when many sailors in Nova Scotia stopped fishing and became international smugglers during Prohibition in the … Continue reading
The Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine documents the rich and deep maritime history of the region and the town that was famous for its ship captains. The museum has a wonderful set of on-line, searchable, photography collections documenting the area’s ships, … Continue reading
The Pacific Ocean is indeed the world’s largest ocean. It is hard to grasp just how many fisherman from the myriad of islands in the Pacific become lost, are carried away by a storm, break down or run out of … Continue reading