Of all the various holiday greeting from shipping ventures this season this has to be my favorite. A Moss Rosenberg design LNG ship transformed to a Christmas ball carrier. From the Maasmond Maritime. … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
A glimpse at the new Mary Rose museum, hosted by Alan Titchmarch. The museum is intended to open in 2012, the 500th anniversary of the delivery of the Mary Rose. Alan Titchmarsh explores the Mary Rose Museum and encourages fundraising … Continue reading
Sing with me now – “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a Phaeocystis globosa.” OK, it may not be a melodic as “a partridge in a pear tree,” but it may be more interesting. Dr. Richard … Continue reading
Last June, we posted about Jessica Watson’s book and album release. Jessica Watson is the now 17 year old Australian sailor who can rightly claim the title of the “youngest to sail solo and unassisted around the world.” … Continue reading
The real victims of piracy are invariably the seafarers who are held for ransom often under grim conditions for long periods of time. From a statement relased by the Round Table of international shipping associations – and the International Transport … Continue reading
An intriguing article about how scientists are using CT scans to build a 3D picture of the ferocious predator which terrorized the oceans 150m years ago. Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing it along. Colossal pliosaur fossil secrets revealed by CT … Continue reading
David Hayes passed along a video of the USS Pegasus, a hydrofoil patrol boat that was billed as the “vanguard of the new navy,” thirty five years ago. While the Pegasus was not the first of many hydrofoils as was intended in 1975, the development … Continue reading
The Maritime Blog and the Professional Mariner are pointing to two Marine Safety Alerts issued by the Coast Guard today which may suggest that the fixed CO2 system on the Carnival Splendor failed. The Safety Alerts do not identify the ship by … Continue reading
The U.S. Coast Guard is posting the top 11 rescue/mission videos of 2010. Starting today they will be posting one video per day. There are three ways to vote for your favorite video. Either “like” the video on the Coast Guard Youtube … Continue reading
The photos and video clip are almost a week old but nevertheless seem like an excellent way to welcome in the winter. This ice sculpture is the Cleveland Harbor West Pierhead Lighthouse on Lake Erie. Happy Winter Solstice to everyone North of … Continue reading
Fifteen-year-old Dutch sailor, Laura Dekker, arrived in St. Maarten after a 2,200 nautical-mile voyage from the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa. She sailed from Gibraltar on August 21 and spent two months in the Canary Islands waiting for the hurricane … Continue reading
Sailors in the western hemisphere will see the first lunar eclipse to fall on the solstice in the last 456 years. According to NASA, the last time the two celestial events happened at the same time was in AD 1554. Solstice Lunar … Continue reading
Though often confused with flying fish, the Japanese flying squid, Todarodes pacificus, uses jet propulsion to leap out of the sea and fly up to 65ft to escape predators. Graham Ekins, 60, a retired deputy head teacher from Boreham, Essex, … Continue reading
Perhaps foreshadowing our own information age, World War II’s “Battle of the Atlantic” between German submarine wolf-packs and Allied convoys was largely won and nearly lost by the code breakers of Bletchley Park. In 1940, Alan Turing had begun to … Continue reading
The brigantine Soren Larsen was built in Denamrk in 1948 and traded extensively in Baltic, British and European ports until 1972. In the 1970s she starred in the popular BBC television drama series, The Onedin Line. She has also … Continue reading