Workers excavating at the new World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan have uncovered the remains of an 18th century wooden merchant ship. The ship was found 20 feet below street level, is roughly 30 feet in length and was probably buried intentionally as land fill. It … Continue reading
Category Archives: History
For anyone researching a particular ship, ShipIndex.org could prove invaluable. It offers a searchable database with 143,935 entries in the free database and 1,349,574 entries available with premium access. Having done a bit of searching, it looks both easy and powerful. ShipIndex.org … Continue reading
Forty years ago, on July 5th, 100,000 people lined the banks of the River Avon to witness the return of the SS Great Britain, or what was left of her. After spending 37 years on the seabed in the Falklands, she was a rusting … Continue reading
After a season’s delay due to lack of access to icebreakers, Parks Canada is renewing its search for Franklin’s ship’s Erebus and Terror. They will also be searching for the HMS Investigator, a ship which was caught in the ice … Continue reading
We recently posted about the centennial of Robert Falcon Scott‘s departure on his ill-fated expedition to reach the South Pole. Now the Australian National Maritime Museum will host a new exhibit, the Quest for the South Magnetic Pole. The quest to … Continue reading
We are five days late but nevertheless would like to wish Commander William Donald Aelian “Bill” King a most happy 100th birthday. He is only living submarine commander from World War II. He initially served on the battleship, HMS Resolution, and later becoming … Continue reading
Famous steam drifter celebrates 80th birthday in Yarmouth The world’s last surviving steam drifter, the Lydia Eva, will be celebrating her 80th birthday in Great Yarmouth on Sunday. As well as celebrating her birthday, the weekend will also mark … Continue reading
In October of 1898, the wooden steamship L.R. Doty disappeared in Lake Michigan in a storm with seventy mile an hour winds and thirty foot waves. Her crew of 17 and two ship’s cats were lost. A group of … Continue reading
In 1898, the Chauncy Maples was built at the shipyard of Alley & McLellan in Glasgow. She was then disassembled into 3,481 parts and shipped out for reassembly at Monkey Bay as a missionary/hospital steamer on Lake Malawi. Now, one hundred and … Continue reading
For those in the UK, the Yesterday Channel is beginning a new documentary series, The Channel Islands at War, next week on Monday 28th, Tuesday 29th and Wednesday 30th of June. The Channel Islands at War … Continue reading
Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of Captain Scott‘s departure from Cardiff on his ill-fated expedition to reach the South Pole. The tall ship Stavros S Niarchos sailed across Cardiff Bay, reenacting the departure of Scott’s ship, the Terra Nova. The Royal Navy’s HMS … Continue reading
Zeb Tilton was a legendary schooner captain from Martha’s Vineyard. “Zeb-Schooner Life,” a documentary of his life and times is being screened tonight at 6:30 by the National Maritime Historical Society at the Hendrick Hudson Free Library in Montrose, NY. Commentary will … Continue reading
One hundred and six years ago today, June 15th, 1904, the Paddle Steamer General Slocum caught fire in the East River and burned killing an estimated 1,021 of the 1,342 people on board. The steamer was carrying members of St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church … Continue reading
Late last month, the secret was revealed – when Bob Ballard discovered the Titanic in 1985, he was actually on a secret mission to find two sunken US submarines, the USS Thresher and USS Scorpion, both of which had sunk in the Atlantic in … Continue reading
Yukon protects Klondike shipwreck site Just months after a team of archeologists revealed their discovery of a historic Klondike shipwreck in waters north of Whitehorse, the Yukon government has declared the sunken A.J. Goddard sternwheeler a historic site symbolizing the … Continue reading
The SS Robin, built in 1890, is the last remaining steam coaster in the world. She will soon be moved to a custom built pontoon barge which will support the old ship and serves as space for a floating museum. … Continue reading
Today is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Jacques Cousteau. It is hard to overstate Cousteau’s influence as an inventor, writer, filmmaker, explorer and ecologist. His first book, the Silent World, written with Frédéric Dumas in 1953, was a memoir which … Continue reading
Last Thursday, the mellifluous blast of the SS Normandie‘s steam whistle once gain reverberated across the piers of the South Street Seaport in New York. The blowing of the steam whistle celebrated the anniversary of the arrival of French luxury liner to New York seventy five years … Continue reading
British explorer Robert Falcon Scott was born today in 1868. He died, along with his four companions, on the way back from the South Pole in 1912. They had successfully reached the pole, only to learn that they had been beaten … Continue reading
I’ve just finished reading Julian Stockwin’sInvasion, the tenth of his Kydd series, which features among its cast of characters, Robert Fulton and his Nautilus of 1800. While the Nautilus is often called the first “practical” submarine, it was not the … Continue reading