We recently posted videos of the 110-year-old battleship USS Texas currently being repaired and refurbished in drydock at the Gulf Copper Shipyard in Galveston. The Texas is the oldest remaining dreadnought battleship and only one of six surviving ships to have served … Continue reading
Category Archives: History
Ancient trade routes in the Mediterranean have long been a mystery. How was it that sailing ships of antiquity, that could not sail well to weather, succeeded in carrying grain and other cargoes from the east to Rome against the … Continue reading
The legend of the Kraken, a giant cephalopod from Greek and Norse mythology that attacked ships and dragged sailors to their doom, is many hundreds of years old. Here is an unlikely, but apparently true, story of the US Navy … Continue reading
Herbert “Bert” Jacobson was 21 when he died in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Over 80 years later, he was finally laid to rest yesterday in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia. He was one of … Continue reading
An updated repost. There is a line from a Paul Simon song, “these are the days of miracle and wonder.” One might not think to apply that lyric to the events of 9/11, 21 years ago today. Yet for at … Continue reading
We recently posted about “hunger stones” revealed by falling water levels in the Rhine and Elbe rivers, as well as the emergence of a graveyard of sunken German warships filled with explosives and ammunition in the Serbian section of the … Continue reading
One of the worst droughts in European history has exposed a graveyard of sunken German warships filled with explosives and ammunition in the Serbian section of the Danube River. More than 20 hulks have emerged near the port town of … Continue reading
Eighty-one years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the identification of fallen US sailors is ongoing. Recently, the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency identified the remains of two sailors missing in action since Dec. 7, 1941. Petty Ofc. 2nd Class Claude … Continue reading
British divers have located the wreck of the USS Jacob Jones in over 100 meters of water, 40 miles off the Isles of Scilly. The ship, a Tucker Class destroyer, was sunk during World War I by a German U-boat … Continue reading
Over 750 years ago, a medieval ship loaded with a cargo of limestone, carved gravestones, and mortars for grinding, sank off the Dorset coast a mile away from the nearest harbor. Now the so-called Mortar Wreck has been granted the … Continue reading
Alexander Hamilton suggested in The Federalist Papers that “a few armed vessels, judiciously stationed at the entrances of our ports, might at a small expense be made useful sentinels of the laws.” When Hamilton became the first Treasury Secretary of the … Continue reading
Two herds of wild ponies have lived for hundreds of years on Assateague Island, a 37-mile-long Atlantic barrier island that crosses the border between the states of Virginia and Maryland. The Virginia side of the island is just east of … Continue reading
Yesterday was the start of the Discovery Channel’s ever-popular Shark Week. Along the coast of Long Island, NY and the New Jersey Shore, we are well into what could be called “Shark Month” with multiple shark sightings. Since the unofficial … Continue reading
Fifty-two years ago today, 100,000 people lined the banks of the River Avon in Bristol as the SS Great Britain returned to her birthplace. In the intervening years, the rusting hulk was meticulously restored to her former glory and now … Continue reading
An updated repost fitting for the day. Happy 4th of July! Those of us in the United States celebrate the anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th 1776. Immediately after declaring independence from Great Britain, the representatives in the Continental Congress drank a toast … Continue reading
The BBC reports that explorers have found the deepest shipwreck ever identified, a US navy destroyer escort sunk during WWII. The USS Samuel B Roberts went down during the Battle Off Samar in the Philippine Sea in October 1944. It … Continue reading
Happy Juneteenth, the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Juneteenth National Independence Day is also the newest Federal holiday. The legislation, passed by both the House and Senate, was signed into law by … Continue reading
In 2010, we posted about the mystery of the “beeswax ship,” the wreck of a Spanish galleon that left shards of Chinese pottery and blocks of beeswax in the sand of an Oregon beach. Now, National Geographic reports that timbers … Continue reading
The carrier USS Kitty Hawk has arrived at a scrapping yard in Brownsville, Texas after an epic 16,000-mile journey from Washington state. The carrier, too large to fit through the Panama Canal at over 280 feet wide, was towed around … Continue reading
The wreck of HMS Gloucester, a 50-gun, third-rate, Royal Navy warship, which sank in 1682 while carrying the future king James Stuart, has been identified off the coast of Norfolk. According to Prof Claire Jowitt, a specialist in maritime history … Continue reading