Happy Juneteenth! Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Juneteenth is also the newest Federal holiday. The legislation was signed into law by President Biden in 2020. The holiday commemorates when emancipation … Continue reading
Category Archives: Lore of the Sea
Sometimes the final miles can take the longest to travel. A full decade after being carried by heavy-lift ship over 10,000 nautical miles from Scotland to her namesake port city, City of Adelaide, the oldest surviving composite clipper ship in … Continue reading
A heartwarming story for a Monday. Here is a short video of a sperm whale in the Indian Ocean that approached a group of divers, seemingly asking for help. The whale swam directly up to them, mouth agape and dragging … Continue reading
The schooner Bowdoin, built for Arctic exploration in 1921, is headed for the Arctic for the first time since 2008, more than 100 years since her first such expedition. The schooner, owned by Maine Maritime Academy (MMA), is sailed by a … Continue reading
A striking painting of the Falklands War has prompted a search to find the artist behind it. Recently, Jon Rickman-Dawson, facilities manager for HMS Raleigh, a training establishment for new recruits to the Royal Navy, discovered an unusual mural hidden … Continue reading
Japan Today reports that 24 year old, Hirotsugu Kimura, has become the youngest Japanese to complete a solo voyage around the world on a sailboat without making any port calls or receiving supplies; breaking a thirty-year-old record. Kimura, a former Maritime … Continue reading
On Wednesday four Russian naval vessels; a nuclear-powered submarine, a frigate, an oil tanker, and a rescue tug; arrived in Cuba for military drills. The vessels’ visit has been seen as a show of force amid Moscow’s tensions with the … Continue reading
The wreck of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s “last ship” Quest has been discovered on the seafloor off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. When I first read the news, I did a double-take. Just over two years ago, the wreck of Shackleton’s … Continue reading
At least 49 people from the Horn of Africa have died and 140 are missing after their boat capsized off the coast of Yemen, according to the UN’s International Organization for Migration (IOM). Among the dead were six children and … Continue reading
A woman was attacked by a shark on Friday afternoon while swimming in the Gulf of Mexico near Watersound Beach in Walton County, Florida. The victim, a woman in her 40s, sustained critical injuries on her midsection and left arm, … Continue reading
On Wednesday morning at 11:46 a.m. the container ship MSC Michigan VII departed the North Charleston Container Terminal in Charleston, South Carolina, with its engine set to “dead slow ahead” as it moved down the Cooper River toward the Arthur … Continue reading
I am aware of only one man who was praised by both Eisenhower and Hitler. A repost on the 80th anniversary of D-Day. General Dwight David Eisenhower said “Andrew Higgins … is the man who won the war for us. … Continue reading
A federal judge dismissed the most recent felony convictions of five retired military officers who had admitted to accepting bribes from Leonard Francis, a Malaysian contractor nicknamed “Fat Leonard,” in one of the biggest corruption scandals in Navy history. The … Continue reading
The Department of Justice announced yesterday the arrest of Robert P. Burke, a retired four-star Navy Admiral, on criminal charges in a bribery scheme that allegedly awarded a sole-source contract to a company in 2021 in exchange for a $500,000-a-year … Continue reading
Back in 2021, we posted about Mohammed Aisha, the First Officer of the MV Aman, who had been stranded on the ship for almost four years, stuck off the Egyptian coast after the ship’s owners in Bahrain faced financial difficulties. … Continue reading
A recent article in the journal Oceanus, hosted by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), raises the question, “Are offshore wind farms harming whales?” The short answer is “no.” They write: A collection of seemingly grass-roots organizations claim that offshore … Continue reading
BBC reports that after decades of legal wrangling, the Colombian government has started exploring the wreck of the 18th-century Spanish galleon San José, dubbed the “holy grail of shipwrecks.” The South American nation has also declared a protected archaeological area around … Continue reading
The USS Harder, said to be the US Navy submarine that sank the most Japanese warships during World War Two, has been found in the South China Sea, some 80 years after it was sunk. The Harder, a Gato class … Continue reading
We recently posted about the sinking of the cargo schooner De Gallant early Tuesday morning, 22 nautical miles north of the Bahamas island of Great Inagua, with eight sailors on board. Six of the crew were rescued from life rafts … Continue reading
After more than seven years in US waters, the longship Draken Harald Hårfagre, known as the world’s largest Viking ship currently sailing, is returning home to Norway. The 115-foot-long ship left its temporary home at Mystic Seaport Museum on Sunday, … Continue reading