A repost in honor of Black History Month. William Tillman was one of the first black heroes of the American Civil War. He was not a soldier but rather a 27-year-old cook-steward on the schooner S.J. Waring. On July 7, … Continue reading
Category Archives: History
With the arrival of the newly elected administration, Harriet Tubman, abolitionist and underground railroad “conductor” is back in the news and may, before too very long, grace our currency. In 2016, the Treasury decided to put the image of Harriet … Continue reading
I recently watched “The Dig,” a new movie on Netflix, starring Carey Mulligan and Ralph Fiennes about the excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial in Suffolk, England. Now the Sutton Hoo Ship’s Company is undertaking to recreate the great king’s ship … Continue reading
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, here is an updated repost from several years ago, remembering the ill-fated voyage of the German passenger liner St. Louis in 1939. The ship carried 908 Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany. The ship and its … Continue reading
An updated repost, a look back at the twin miracles on the Hudson from twelve years ago today. On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency water landing in the Hudson River. If the plane’s pilots, Captain … Continue reading
Here is a fascinating short video of British riveted steel shipbuilding in the 1940s. The shipyard in the film is the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company in Fife. The ship being built is thought to be either the MV Dalhousie or the … Continue reading
Last October, the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard completed the year-long dismantling of the US Navy nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Narwhal (SSN-671). Commissioned in 1969, the submarine was a one-of-a-kind, an experimental design that would become one of the most successful … Continue reading
Thanks to Captain Richard Bailey for mentioning the time ball on the Titanic Memorial in the Financial District of downtown New York City. We neglected to mention it in our post “Watching the Ball Drop — the Nautical Origins of … Continue reading
One of the great things about writing historical fiction is discovering odd sets of facts, often buried in the archives, that capture both the desperation and the madness of a given time. Often, as the cliche goes, you just can’t … Continue reading
Today, the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine have begun to be distributed in the United States. It seems like a good time to look back at the voyage of the orphan boys in the vaccine ship that sailed … Continue reading
An interrupted broadcast of a football game, a newsbreak during a performance by the New York Philharmonic, a weather report followed by an announcement from President Roosevelt that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Reports of attacks on the Philippines. Here … Continue reading
If you are fond of obscure and slightly absurd history, the Pig War of 1859 is the war for you. It involved a territorial dispute between the United States and Great Britain over the San Juan Islands of the Pacific … Continue reading
We recently posted about Constitution Grove, a 50,000-acre private forest maintained by the US Navy, in part to provide white oak trees used in maintaining the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat. The forest is part of … Continue reading
On Halloween, it seems appropriate to look at the legend of the Gray Man of Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, a benevolent ghost said to warn residents of coming severe storms and hurricanes. Those who heed his warnings are said to … Continue reading
On October 29, 1815, 205 years ago yesterday, the Demologos, the first steam-powered warship, was launched from Adam and Noah Brown‘s shipyard on New York’s East River. It was a steam-powered floating battery designed by steamboat pioneer Robert Fulton to … Continue reading