In honor of Black History Month, a post about the first African-American pilot in the US Navy, Jesse L. Brown. The story goes that when young Jesse Leroy Brown worked in the cotton fields of Mississippi beside his sharecropper father, … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
On the morning of April 16, 2014, the ro-ro/passenger ferry MV Sewol, traveling from Incheon to Jeju in South Korea, capsized and sank. Of the 476 passengers and crew, 304 died, including 250 students on a class trip. Questions as … Continue reading
UPDATE: The illness which sickened a passenger was determined not to be the coronavirus and the 6,000 passengers and crew were allowed to disembark from the Costa Smeralda. Two cases of the coronavirus, not related to the cruise ship, were … Continue reading
Four years ago, we posted about an attempt to use “big data” to crack down on illegal fishing. Google partnered with SkyTruth and Oceana to produce a new tool, Global Fishing Watch, to track global fishing activity. The problem is that to avoid … Continue reading
On January 28, 1915, the US flag four-masted bark William P. Frye was sunk off the coast of Brazil by the Imperial German Navy raider SMS Prinz Eitel Friedrich. As a US-owned vessel, William P. Frye was a neutral ship. The US would … Continue reading
More than thirty years ago, I sat on the rotting planks of the old Pier 17 in the East River in Manhattan and listened to Bernie Clay and the X-Seaman’s Institute sing a song about the schooner Alice S. Wentworth. … Continue reading
The tall ships from Grays Harbor Historical Seaport Authority, Lady Washington and the Hawaiian Chieftain, engage in a mock battle sail. A wonderful video by GHHSAmedia from about a decade ago. Lady Washington/Hawaiian Chieftain: Columbia River Battle Sail … Continue reading
Around 1607, colonists in the Popham Colony built the pinnace Virginia, the first English-built ship in what is now Maine and possibly in all of the English-colonized areas of North America. Now over 400 years later, a recreation of the … Continue reading
On New Year’s Eve, in 20-foot seas and high winds, the 130′ crab boat Scandies Rose operating off the Alaska Peninsula, developed a starboard list and suddenly capsized. Two of the seven crew were able to don exposure suits and … Continue reading
Both the US Navy and the Chinese Navy are working to develop “ghost fleets” of drone ships. The US Navy has been working on developing unmanned vessels since at least 2016. Four years ago, we posted about Sea Hunter, the … Continue reading
I suppose if you plan on smuggling a painting by Picasso worth close to $29 million, using a superyacht might be a stylish choice. For Spanish billionaire Jaime Botin, however, it didn’t work out too well. Forbes reports: Despite a … Continue reading
The International Maritime Organization (IMO), the UN agency responsible for regulating shipping, has set the ambitious goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions from ships by 50% from 2008 levels by 2050. Around the world, engineers, ship owners and managers, universities, … Continue reading
Today, on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, the US Navy officially named the newest of the future Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, not after a president, a senator, an admiral or a historic battlefield. Instead, they named the carrier after … Continue reading
Here is wonderful drone footage by Ryan Smith of the Massachusetts Maritime Academy‘s school ship TS Kennedy as it departs for its Sea Term 2020. The ship sails down Buzzard’s Bay bound for Panama where it will transit the Canal. … Continue reading
Congratulations to Ewan, Jamie, and Lachlan MacLean, three brothers from Edinburgh, Scotland who rowed across the Atlantic in just 35 days. They departed from La Gomera, in the Canary Islands on 12 December and completed the 3,000-mile row to Antigua … Continue reading
Will the Titanic II ever be built? And if so, when will it sail? Back in 2012, billionaire Australian businessman Clive Palmer announced the construction of a modern “replica” of the doomed passenger liner RMS Titanic which sank after striking … Continue reading
On Tuesday around 3:35 PM the Coast Guard in Galveston, TX was notified that a fishing boat, the 82′ long Pappy’s Pride, had collided with the 600-foot chemical tanker Bow Fortune. The fishing boat had capsized and four crew were … Continue reading
We are having a relatively warm January with significantly fluctuating temperatures. Similar weather conditions 101 years ago, coupled with a shoddily built storage tank, caused the Great Boston Molasses Flood, which inundated Boston’s North End sending a wall of molasses, … Continue reading
There are so few well-done documentary series involving ships and the sea that it seems worth pointing out that the excellent Disasters at Sea has been picked up for a second season. The series is produced by Exploration Production Inc. … Continue reading
Six years ago, we posted about research that documented that when dogs defecate, they usually align their bodies along the magnetic north-south axis, not unlike the needle of a magnetic compass. It turns out that dogs are not unique in … Continue reading