Thirty-three years ago today, on February 12, 1983, the collier SS Marine Electric loaded with 24,800 tons of steam coal, capsized and sank in a storm 30 miles off the coast of Virginia. Thirty-one of the 34 crew members died. While nothing … Continue reading
Category Archives: History
Originally posted on gCaptain. Reposted with permission. “The Finest Hours” is far from a perfect movie. Nevertheless, it recounts a remarkable story of heroism at sea that is well worth retelling. For anyone who has spent any time around ships, … Continue reading
On February 3, 1943, the troopship SS Dorchester was in a convoy bound for Greenland when it was torpedoed and sunk by a German U-boat. Of the 904 soldiers and crew aboard, 672 died. Among the dead were four US … Continue reading
In the late 60s and early 70s, hovercraft ferries were the ships of the future. Hovercraft, flying on cushions of air, operated across the English Channel carrying passengers and cars at speeds of 40 to 60 knots. Some imagined that one-day hovercraft … Continue reading
Numbers are fine but sometimes the best way to communicate scale is visually. The image above is what it would have looked like if the largest passenger liner of roughly 100 years ago, RMS Titanic, was followed closely by the … Continue reading
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
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