Today, March 8th, is celebrated as International Women’s Day (IWD), commemorating women’s fight for equality and liberation along with the women’s rights movement. International Women’s Day is intended to focus on issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights, and violence … Continue reading
Millennium Challenge 2002 Just over two decades ago, the United States ran a major war game exercise called Millennium Challenge 2002 (MC02). Millennium Challenge was a hybrid exercise that combined live troops, real ships, and aircraft. Massive computer simulations operated … Continue reading
In a time when the US Navy seems incapable of designing and building ships that are not significantly over budget and behind schedule, it is good to remember Raye Montague, a pioneering American naval engineer who helped revolutionize the way … Continue reading
Around 650 years ago, off the eastern tip of Singapore, a trading vessel slipped beneath the waves and vanished from history. It carried bowls painted with ducks and lotus flowers — porcelain so exquisite that even the Chinese emperor sought … Continue reading
Donald Trump bragged that his administration would recruit “only the best people.” Instead, his regime is the very definition of a kakistocracy, a system of government run by the least qualified, most unprincipled, or worst citizens. Trump’s unhinged Attorney General, … Continue reading
Why am I a slave? I will run away. I will not stand it. Get caught or get clear, I’ll try it. I may as well die with ague as with fever. I have only one life to lose. I may as well be killed running as die standing. Only think of it: one hundred miles north, and I am free! Try it ? Yes ! God helping me, I will. It cannot be that I shall live and die a slave. I will take to the water…
Continue readingRobert Smalls is an American hero, well worth celebrating every day of the year, not only during Black History Month. An updated repost in honor of the remarkable story of Robert Smalls. On May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old … Continue reading
Updated: Several blog readers pointed out that in focusing on the history of Harriet Tubman and her leadership in the Great Combahee Ferry Raid, I failed to mention the bridge over the Combahee River named in her honor. (Thanks, Doug … Continue reading
As we posted recently, the Coast Guard has been busy breaking ice in New York Harbor. The current forecasts suggest that the frigid weather is likely to continue for several more weeks, so the ice breaking is also expected to … Continue reading
In the winter Northern hemisphere, US Coast Guard icebreaking tugs have been hard at work breaking ice in harbors along the East Coast, including New York Harbor.
Continue readingLast month, the US Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star (WAGB 10) began icebreaking operations in the Southern Ocean in support of Operation Deep Freeze 2026. The deployment also marked the cutter’s 50th year of commissioned service. This milestone was further … Continue reading
Trump recently announced that the Navy will begin the construction of “two brand new, very large, the largest we’ve ever built battleships.” He claims that the new battleships, which he has named after himself, the Trump Class, will be “the … Continue reading
The last time the expedition cruise ship Coral Adventurer was in the news was in October, when the ship sailed from Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, leaving Suzanne Rees, an 80-year-old passenger, behind on the remote island, where she … Continue reading
An interrupted broadcast of a football game, a newsbreak during a performance by the New York Philharmonic, a weather report followed by an announcement from President Roosevelt that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. Reports of attacks on the Philippines. Here … Continue reading
Australian sailor Deirdre “Cookie” Sibly, 67, and French sailor Pascal Mahe have been found dead on the yacht Acteon, sailing in the Mozambique Channel, around 200 miles north east of Beira, Mozambique. Acteon is a 50-foot sloop registered in France. … Continue reading