Sad news reported by ClassicSailboats.org. The 114-year-old sailing yacht Iolaire was lost off Ibiza in late July. She ran ashore after an uncontrolled jibe and sank. The crew escaped without injury. Iolaire, previously owned for over half a century by … Continue reading
Category Archives: History
Today is “National Rum Day” in the United States. Why? Why not? In observation of the day, it seems worthwhile to consider the role of rum at sea. Before there was rum, there was water. The problem with water was … Continue reading
Forty years ago today, on the third day of the 605-mile Fastnet Race, an unexpectedly strong storm struck the fleet with tragic results. The fleet of 303 sailing yachts had set off on August 11,1979 in clear weather with calm … Continue reading
For Throw Back Thursday (TBT) and in belated honor of yesterday’s National Lighthouse Day, here is a repost from several years ago about Hamilton’s lighthouse. The Cape Hatteras Lighthouse, marking the shoals which have become known as the “graveyard of … Continue reading
At about 9AM on January 15, 1942, the British tanker Coimbra, bound from Bayonne, NJ for Halifax, laden with 8,038 tons of lubricating oil, sank after being struck by two torpedoes fired by the German submarine U-123 off the southern shore … Continue reading
Coast Guard Day in the United States is this Sunday, August 4th, commemorating the founding of the U. S. Coast Guard as the Revenue Marine on August 4, 1790, by the Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. On the ex-USCG … Continue reading
The good news is that last month there was a debate in the UK’s House of Lords about what to do with the wreck of the Liberty ship SS Richard Montgomery, which sank loaded with munitions in the Thames estuary … Continue reading
In January 1968, the French submarine Minerve was underway in the Mediterranean on her way back to her home base in Toulon. Communications from the submarine advised that she would be at her berth in about an hour. Then mysteriously, the diesel-electric … Continue reading
Earlier this year, technicians operating a robotic camera surveying a route for a natural gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea, were surprised to find a 500-year-old shipwreck virtually intact on the seafloor. The ship was found at a depth of … Continue reading
Sailors have navigated by the stars since the dawn of time. Now, fifty years after Neil Armstrong first set foot on the Moon in the Apollo 11 mission, we shouldn’t forget that even the Apollo astronauts relied on sextants to … Continue reading
A world war was raging and German U-boats were sinking merchant ships faster than they could be built, so the United States government decided to build an emergency fleet of standardized ships. The goal was to build the ships quickly … Continue reading
On April 23rd, 1945, the patrol boat USS Eagle 56 was towing targets for US Navy bomber exercises off the coast of Maine. At about noon, there was an explosion around amidships which broke the patrol boat in half. Of … Continue reading
Forty miles south of Washington, D.C., close to Nanjemoy, Maryland is a fleet of ghost ships — the wrecks of hundreds of ships in Mallows Bay, a shallow bay on the Potomac River. It is considered to be the largest … Continue reading
Yesterday we posted about the sinking of the restored pilot schooner Elbe No.5, ex-Wander Bird, following a collision with a container ship near Stade, Germany on the Elbe River. The schooner, launched in 1883, had just completed a $1.7 million … Continue reading
The Battle of Midway, fought from June 3 — 7, 1942, seventy-seven years ago this week, was a major American victory in the Pacific theater in World War II. Only six months after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Midway was … Continue reading