2020 has been quite a year so far. A global pandemic, economic collapse, a derecho in the Midwest, and out of control wildfires in California. What next? Now, for the first time in recorded history, we may see two hurricanes … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
The Associated Press is reporting that the RV Polarstern, a German icebreaker carrying scientists on a year-long international expedition in the high Arctic, has reached the North Pole after making an unplanned detour there due to lighter-than-usual sea ice conditions. … Continue reading
Steve Bannon, ex-Trump adviser and campaign chief executive, was arrested on Wednesday, aboard the Lady May, a 152′ aluminum luxury yacht, owned by exiled Chinese billionaire Guo Wengui. The yacht was cruising in Long Island Sound near Westport, CT, when … Continue reading
The 99-year-old four-masted steel bark Sedov is sailing home by an unusual route. She is sailing North from Vladivostok and transiting the Arctic by the Northern Sea Route to reach her home port of Kaliningrad. Crossing the Arctic will be … Continue reading
The Capesize bulk carrier Wakashio, which ran hard aground on a reef in Mauritius on July 25, broke in two this Sunday. The bow of the ship has been taken under tow and moved away from the reef. Reports are … Continue reading
Martin Creamer, who died recently at the age of 104, was a retired professor of geography at Glassboro State College, now Rowan University, in Glassboro, N.J. He is best remembered, however, for sailing around the world on a 36-foot sailboat … Continue reading
In May of this year, we posted Scrambling to Save an Engine for the Historic Tanker Mary A. Whalen. The post described how the historic tanker Mary A. Whalen was in dire need of parts to restore its diesel engine. … Continue reading
Earlier this year, we posted “The Incredible Journey of Belugas Little White and Little Grey,” about the 6,000-mile transport in June 2019 of the two whales by air, land, and sea from an aquarium in Shanghai to a new home … Continue reading
Comment/Replies to Posts are now back. We have also shifted to a much more mobile-friendly format, which is to say that the blog should be easier to read from a phone or tablet. There is still some tweaking and updating … Continue reading
USS Essex, a Wasp-class amphibious assault ship, recently arrived in Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor. Rather than carrying just helicopters, MV-22 Osprey tiltrotors, or even F-35B Lightning II fighter jets, the ship had a deck load of historic World War II warplanes. … Continue reading
How does a modern ship with radar and GPS manage to run hard aground on a well-marked reef? In the case of the Capesize bulker Wakashio that ran aground on the reef at Pointe-d’Esny off Mauritius on the evening of … Continue reading
In June of last year, we posted about the sailing cargo ship Kwai that had collected more than 40 tons of plastic waste and “ghost nets” from the Pacific Garbage Patch. Ghost nets are abandoned fishing gear that continues to … Continue reading
On July 25, the MV Wakashio ran hard aground on a coral reef in Mauritius. The large capesize bulker was bound From China to Brazil to load cargo and was empty, operating in ballast when it struck the reef. On … Continue reading
When HMS Victory went into drydock in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard in 1922, she was supported by 22 steel cradles. In the almost 100 years that she has remained on the dock, the historic ship’s 3,500-tonne hull had been to … Continue reading
Having grown up on the Gulf Coast of Florida, I can say without hesitation that a hurricane is the most magnificent and absolutely the most terrifying of all events in nature. Recently NOAA announced that their Atlantic forecast is for … Continue reading
A recent news item brought to Gilligan’s Island, a situation comedy broadcast on US television for three seasons in the 1960s. The premise of the program was that a small tourist boat on a “three-hour tour” was swept away in … Continue reading
USS Ling is a US Navy Balao-class submarine. The sub is currently sitting in the mud in the Hackensack River at the former location of the defunct New Jersey Naval Museum in Hackensack, New Jersey. The Ling has no access … Continue reading
Sandy Hook ship pilot, Captain Timothy M. Murray died following a fall while boarding a tanker arriving at the Port of New York and New Jersey on Wednesday. His death is the second pilot fatality in less than a year. … Continue reading
The events leading up to the catastrophic explosion in Beirut, Lebanon that killed more than 135 and injured 5,000, began in November 2013, when the cargo ship MV Rhosus, loaded with 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, made an unplanned stop … Continue reading
Yesterday, a massive explosion in the port of Beirut, Lebanon killed at least 100 people and injured thousands. The blast destroyed buildings in the port district while the shockwave shattered windows and overturned vehicles across the city. An estimated 300,000 … Continue reading