A few years ago, we posted about the RMS Warrimoo, which is remembered, as the story goes, for crossing the intersection of the international dateline and the equator at precisely the turn of the century from 1899 to 1900. In … Continue reading
Category Archives: Lore of the Sea
The pandemic has been brutal to the restaurant industry. Likewise, the small-scale oyster growers of Barnegat and Delaware bays have been extremely hard hit as restaurants cut back on their orders or shut down altogether. One bit of good news, … Continue reading
A new blue whale population has been discovered in the Arabian Sea and Western Indian Ocean according to a study recently published in the journal Endangered Species Research. The conclusion is based not on sightings or DNA samples, but rather … Continue reading
Almost a decade ago, the container ship MV Rena ran hard aground on Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga on New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty. The ship, carrying 2,100 containers and 1,700 tonnes of heavy fuel, would break up resulting in New Zealand’s … Continue reading
Salvors on the heavy-lift barge VB-10,000 have begun making the second cut through the hull of the stranded car carrier Golden Ray which rolled over in shallow water shortly after departing the Port of Brunswick, Georgia on St. Simons Sound … Continue reading
A Christmas repost from a few years ago. Spirobranchus giganteus are beautiful underwater creatures, only about 1.5 inches tall, which look like tiny decorated Christmas trees. They are almost too attractive to be described as what they are, tube-building polychaete … Continue reading
We hope everyone is having a joyous holiday season. Here is a repost of a beautiful version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s poem “Christmas at Sea,” performed by Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner, better known as Sting. Sting – Christmas At Sea … Continue reading
Every year, the Christmas Ship, with the support of the US Coast Guard and volunteer groups, delivers Christmas trees to families in need in Chicago’s communities. This year was no exception, but because of the pandemic, it was a bit … Continue reading
In November we posted that the world’s largest iceberg, dubbed A68a, was drifting on a collision course with the island of South Georgia. The iceberg calved from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice-shelf in 2017. The berg weighed roughly one trillion tons … Continue reading
Ship scrapping is a slow and methodical process. A ship is typically run up on the scrapping ways, which can be a concrete platform or a sloping sandy beach. As burners cut away the upper sections of the ship, it … Continue reading
According to an ancient sailors’ legend, we are in the middle of the Halcyon days – seven days of calm on either side of the winter solstice. The legend says that the halcyon bird builds a floating nest on the … Continue reading
One of the great things about writing historical fiction is discovering odd sets of facts, often buried in the archives, that capture both the desperation and the madness of a given time. Often, as the cliche goes, you just can’t … Continue reading
On Monday night, December 21, the planets Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer together in the night sky than they have on any night since March 4, 1226. At their closest alignment, the planets will be a tenth of a … Continue reading
Severe weather off the east coast of Australia has left beaches in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales and on the Gold and Sunshine coasts covered in a thick layer of sea foam, attracting crowds of curious locals, … Continue reading
At roughly this point in the last sailing of the Vendee Globe in 2016-2017, 5 boats had been forced to retire after being damaged by collisions with UFOs, unidentified floating objects. In this year’s race, 18 of the 33 boats … Continue reading