A Facebook video by my friend Frank Hanavan showing him inserting a ship in a bottle (after the page break) got me thinking about, well, ships in bottles. When, where and why did sailors start putting ships in bottles? After … Continue reading
Category Archives: History
In 1871, a fleet of 33 American whaling ships became stuck in the ice off the coast of Alaska. Over 1,200 whalers were rescued by the seven ships which managed to avoid being trapped in the ice floes. Remarkably, all … Continue reading
Hashima Island lies nine miles off the port of Nagasaki, Japan. Between the seawall which encircles the small island and the abandoned apartment blocks rising from it, many think that it looks like a battleship, earning the nickname, Gunkanjima, or … Continue reading
Anti-terror police in the UK are suddenly concerned that the SS Richard Montgomery, a Liberty ship which sank over seventy years ago loaded with high explosives in the Thames estuary, might be a potential target for terrorists. Reportedly, the government … Continue reading
Battles at sea usually last a few hours. Battles in court can last far, far longer. In the Battle of Santa Maria on October 5, 1804, when a British squadron attacked a Spanish treasure fleet, the ship Nuestra Señora de … Continue reading
Today in theaters in the US, the movie “In the Heart of the Sea” opens. It is based on Nathaniel Philbrick’s book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. (I will be reviewing the movie tomorrow.) … Continue reading
Minutes before the beginning of the attack on the warships of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Japanese Imperial Navy planes bombed the nearby U.S. Naval Air Station on the east coast of Oahu, destroying twenty-seven Catalina PBY seaplanes on … Continue reading
Ninety-eight years ago today, on the morning of December 6, 1917, the French freighter SS Mont-Blanc collided with the SS Imo, a Norwegian ship chartered to carry relief supplies to Belgium, in the Narrows, a strait connecting the upper Halifax Harbour … Continue reading
Today, Colombia’s President Juan Manuel Santos announced that it has found the wreck of the galleon San José, what some have called the “holy grail of shipwrecks.” He announced the discovery on Twitter. In June of 1708, during the War of … Continue reading
Happy Thanksgiving! As a “Throwback Thursday” — Thanksgiving edition, here is a short video of the voyage of the Mayflower II across the Atlantic in 1957, under the command of Captain Alan Villiers. Voyage of the Mayflower II, 1957 … Continue reading
This weekend the US Coast Guard recovered 10,000 gallons of benzene from the wreck of a tank barge that sank 78 years ago in Lake Erie. The Coast Guard has pumped the first of 8 tanks on the wrecked barge. In … Continue reading
Around 1847, Henry Manning, a London carpenter, started building houses in components that could be easily stowed on ships and reassembled by emigrants on the other side of an ocean. Several hundred “Manning cottages” were shipped to Australia. It turns … Continue reading
Given the current heated debate over Syrian refugees, it seems worthwhile to remember the ill-fated voyage of the German ocean liner St. Louis in 1939. The ship carried 908 Jewish refugees who were fleeing from Nazi Germany. The ship and its … Continue reading
Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, better known as Hedy Lamarr, was born to Jewish parents in Austria on November 9th, 1914, one hundred and one years ago today. At the height of her movie career, she was known as the “most beautiful … Continue reading
Ben Talman, a reader and contributor to the Old Salt Blog, visited the Edwin Fox in Picton, New Zealand and took a series of wonderful photos of the historic ship. The Edwin Fox is an East Indiaman built in 1853 of teak in Calcutta, India. … Continue reading
The US Coast Guard rarely gets enough credit for the remarkable work that they do in routinely rescuing mariners in often extremely dangerous conditions. A new movie, “The Finest Hours“, is coming out this winter, which tells the story of … Continue reading
Happy Trafalgar Day! Today is the 210th anniversary of the overwhelming Royal Navy victory over the French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. After considerable research, Admiral Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory has now been repainted to more accurately … Continue reading
Yacht designer Halsey Herreshoff at the Herreshoff Marine Museum in Bristol, Rhode Island, describing how his grandfather Nathanael Greene Herreshoff carved rather than drew the boats that he designed. The more interesting question may not be how Captain Nat carved … Continue reading
When Nathanael Green Herreshoff was around 16, he began to work for his elder brother, John Brown Herreshoff, in his boat yard in Bristol, RI. To work as an apprentice was a traditional way to learn the skills and techniques … Continue reading
For the past fifteen years, the three masted barquentine motorsailer Peacemaker has been owned by the Twelve Tribes, a religious community, often referred to as a cult. The 158′ Class A “tall ship” served as floating ambassador for the fundamentalist group, which … Continue reading