Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing on this intriguing video of a group of German reenactors on the Willow Wren. The note with the video reads, (imperfectly translated by Google,) “Maritimes reenactment in 1807 of the Danish South Sea aboard the … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
The age of wooden ships and iron men is long gone. We appear to be square in the era of tall ships and stupid lawyers. From the SeaCoastonline: The American Sail Training Association sent a letter to the Piscataqua Maritime … Continue reading
The Prins Willem, the replica Dutch East Indiaman destroyed by fire a few days ago, was an unusual ship. She was built in 1985 in in Friesland in 1985 as an exhibit at the Nagasaki Holland Village open-air museum in Japan. … Continue reading
We hope everyone has a great time at today’s 7th Annual Boothbay Boat Builders Festival. All should keep a a weather eye out as there are rumors of an attack by the Pirates of the Dark Rose, followed by a … Continue reading
Last February we posted about a “junkraft” built by Dr. Marcus Eriksen and his team of 15,000 plastic bottles, 30 sailboat masts, an airplane fuselage which they sailed 2,600 miles from Los Angeles to Hawaii to make a point about the … Continue reading
A windfall, a sudden and unexpected occurrence of good fortune, literally refers to fruit or timber knocked down by the wind. Here is an intriguing story of a literal windfall from the Maritime Texas blog. … Continue reading
A beautifully shot and edited short video. Jon Kane’s comments: I did this film for my friend Buck McAllister who’s family owns McAllister Towing tug boat company. I shot the film with one camera, in real time, during the towing … Continue reading
A short video of sailing on the schooner A.J. Meerwald in New York harbor. The A. J. Meerwald is a Delaware Bay oyster schooner launched in 1928. Sailing on the Schooner A.J. Meerwald in New York Harbour … Continue reading
Louis Arthur Norton’s book Captains Contentious – The Dysfunctional Sons of the Brine is an entertaining reminder that history is finally about individuals, dedicated to the causes in which they believe, as well as serving their own needs and obsessions. … Continue reading
In his Aubrey/Maturin series, Patrick O’Brian wrote of HMS Surprise, a small British frigate, originally captured from the French. Over several books, the Surprise became almost as beloved a character, in her own way, as Jack Aubrey and Doctor Maturin … Continue reading
I am not even quite sure what a “Ferrython” is, but this seemed like an appropriate image for a Friday afternoon. From the Australian National Maritime Museum’s Flickr photostream as spotted on the Sea Fever blog. … Continue reading
Falls of Clyde is the only surviving iron-hulled four-masted full rigged ship and the only surviving sail-driven oil tanker in the world. She was launched in 1878 in Port Glasgow, Scotland, for the Fall Line . The ship was towed to Hawaii … Continue reading
In a comment on a prior post, Fiddler’s Green, Redwing mentioned White Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War, by Herman Melville. I had never read the novel. I am now doing so and enjoying it very much. (It can … Continue reading
This afternoon, at the 21st Annual Indie and Small Press Book Fair, I had the pleasure of meeting Thad Koza, a wonderful photographer of tall ships. I bought a copy of his Tall Ships 2009 Calendar and plan on buying his book, Tall … Continue reading
From Dione Chen writing in the Museum of Underwater Archeology site: “The Free China is a historic century-old Chinese sailing vessel on the verge of extinction. An authentic Fujian junk used during the first half of the 20th century to … Continue reading