On November 29, 1781, the British slave ship Zong was desperately short of potable water, in part due to an error in navigation and in part due to an incompetent cooper. Captain Luke Collingwood, in command of the ship, ordered … Continue reading
Category Archives: History
In a dense fog, at about 9:00 AM on May 20, 1899, the 270-foot steamer Florida was nearly cut in half by the George W. Roby. The ship is sitting upright approximately 200 feet below the surface of Lake Huron, off … Continue reading
Happy Evacuation Day! On this day in 1783, the last shot of the American revolution was fired by a gunner on a departing Royal Navy ship at jeering crowds gathered on the shore of Staten Island, at the mouth of New … Continue reading
There is something truly magical about Bristol Pilot Cutters. A video by Stephen Morris about the pilot boats of Bristol. Working Sail Working Sail – Builders of Traditional Wooden Pilot Cutters Annabel J – Classic Sailing Holidays … Continue reading
On this day in 1776, Governor Johannes de Graaff of St. Eustatius returned the salute fired by the American brig Andrew Doria, which is considered to be the first international acknowledgment of the independence of the new republic of the United … Continue reading
I recently came across a video of the Viking longship replica Saga Oseberg tacking across the wind. Before seeing the video I would have thought that the only way to tack a longship, to bring the wind from one side … Continue reading
This morning we posted about a new video game, Assassins Creed IV : Blag Flag, which takes notable liberties with history. One of the characters in the game, Edward Thatch, is based on the historical pirate, Edward Teach, better known as … Continue reading
My younger son, a senior in high school, mentioned to me a few mornings ago that the newest version of the historical action-adventure video game, Assassins Creed, which is Assassins Creed IV – Black Flag, has a feature that lets … Continue reading
October 21st is a busy day in nautical history. In addition to being the anniversary of the Battle of Trafagar of 1805, it was also the day that the the USS Constitution was launched in 1797. A three-masted US Navy heavy frigate, … Continue reading
Happy Trafalgar Day – the celebration of the victory won by the Royal Navy, commanded by Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, over the combined French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805. Nelson died in his greatest victory. … Continue reading
Toward the end of September, we posted about Matson’s molasses spill in Hawaii and then the Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919. We would be remiss if we did not also post about the London Beer Flood which occurred on … Continue reading
Monitor HMS M33, only surviving warship from the Gallipoli campaign of World War I, has received £1.79m from the UK’s Heritage Lottery Fund to allow the ship to be restored in time for the 100th anniversary of the campaign. GALLIPOLI … Continue reading
This is the tale of two very different men, from different places and different times. The first was a Welshman named John Roberts, though he took the name Bartholomew when he began his wildly successful but extremely short career as … Continue reading
We recently posted about a serious molasses spill in Honolulu harbor which has killed 26,000 fish and may have longer term consequences for the harbor ecology. Rick Austin was kind enough to forward an article about a far larger and … Continue reading
On Wednesday I raised the question – is history just a sea story? I found in researching my novel, Hell Around the Horn, that two memoirs written about the voyage of the British windjammer, British Isles, on which the novel … Continue reading
What is history? What is fiction? These seem to be straightforward questions. The conventional answer would be that history is what happened and fiction are the stories that we make up. In writing my recent novel I was faced with … Continue reading
Of all the things worth remembering on 9/11, one incredible event is often overlooked. After the attack, all the bridges, tunnels and rail lines in and out of New York City were shut down. Somewhere between 300,000 and one million people … Continue reading
Two hundred years ago today, in what would become known as the Battle of Lake Erie, a squadron of ships under the command of Oliver Hazard Perry defeated and captured a Royal Navy squadron at Put-in-Bay in Lake Erie off the … Continue reading
In 1970, fisherman discovered a shipwreck in about 85 feet of water, ten miles off the Absecon Inlet on the New Jersey coast. For more than 40 years, divers have visited the unidentified wreck. Now the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration … Continue reading
Oliver Hazard Perry‘s message to his superiors was brief: “We have met the enemy and they are ours; two ships, two brigs, one schooner and one sloop.” Perry’s victory at the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, was one … Continue reading