On the heels of the centennial of the sinking of the Titanic, Australian mining billionaire Clive Palmer has announced his plans to build a 21st-century replica of the Titanic and sail it from England to New York accompanied by the Chinese navy by the … Continue reading
Category Archives: Ships
You can’t make this stuff up. A container ship owner and ship manager are suing a California pharmacy for selling prescription drugs to a harbor pilot prior to an allision with a bridge five years ago. On a very foggy morning in … Continue reading
Updated: Sad news. Yesterday afternoon, the crew of the 91-foot tugboat, Steven Scott, called the Coast Guard to report that they hadn’t seen their captain for nearly an hour and believed that he had fallen overboard. This afternoon the US Coast … Continue reading
This has been a busy day for Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. They braved heavy rain and driving winds to name the Gloriana, a new 94-foot ornately carved royal barge, decorated with gold leaf. The Gloriana is … Continue reading
In December, 2008, we posted about “A Junk at Risk.” The Free China, a historic century-old Fujian sailing junk, was on the verge of being scrapped. The junk made international headlines in 1955 when an inexperienced crew of five Chinese … Continue reading
Earlier today we posted about an article by Andrew Gilligan, the Telegraph‘s London Editor, in which he referred to the Cutty Sark restoration as “a clucking, Grade A, Bernard Matthews-class turkey.” For a more positive perspective on the restoration one could turn to the … Continue reading
After a long commercial career, the 1869 composite clipper ship Cutty Sark became a museum ship in a drydock in Greenwich in 1954. Then in May 21, 2007, a fire broke out that burned a significant portion of the ship. After a 5 … Continue reading
There are over five hundred miles of waterfront in New York harbor. The Mary A. Whalen only needs around 200 feet of it to tie up, yet for the last six years, the historic tanker and PortSide New York, the non-profit educational … Continue reading
In February, Costa Lines invited ten companies to bid on salvaging the Costa Concordia (see our previous post.) Today, the salvage contract was awarded to Titan Salvage and Micoperi. Titan Salvage is a unit of Crowley Maritime Corporation and Micoperi is a Italian marine … Continue reading
Here is a cute trailer announcing the reopening of the composite clipper ship Cutty Sark in her drydock in Greenwich, UK. The ship built in 1869, caught fire on May 21, 2007 and has undergone a full restoration. The ship … Continue reading
The image is wonderful to think about. At the start of the London Olympics, the trireme Olympias, with 170 of Britain’s finest rowers at the oars, was to proceed down the Thames bearing the Olympic flame. But it is not to be. As … Continue reading
Princess Cruises said it deeply regrets that its ship the Star Princess passed by a fishing boat adrift in the Pacific Ocean and failing to rescue the dying men on board. The cruise line is blaming a “breakdown in communication,” claiming … Continue reading
In February, we posted about the rescue of the three fishermen, drifting in the Pacific, by the cruise ship, Seaborne Odyssey. There are now reports of a similar story with a tragically different outcome. Passengers aboard the cruise ship, Star Princess, are claiming that the ship ignored a drifting boat in distress in the Pacific off the Galapagos, leaving … Continue reading
When US Coast Guard inspectors came aboard the bulk carrier M/V Aquarosa in Baltimore in February of 2011, a junior engineer slipped them a note, which read, “I have sometheng to till you but secret.” The engineer, Salvatore Lopez, from the Philippines, had collected evidence of the illegal … Continue reading
As we posted a few days ago, OpSail 2012 kicks off today in New Orleans. In addition to the USCG Cutter Eagle, two lesser known tall ships will be participating — Indonesian Navy’s steel three masted barquentine Dewaruci, and the Ecuadoran Navy’s steel three-masted … Continue reading
Bolivia is poised to de-flag fifteen ships linked to the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) just weeks after these ships were flagged into the Bolivian registry. The ships had previously been registered in Malta and Cyprus. Facing international sanctions over its … Continue reading
Very few of the bodies of the 1514 passengers and crews who died on the Titanic were ever recovered. Recently released photographs, which raise the question of whether or not here are human remains at the wreck site, have become central to a … Continue reading
The 47th Operation Sail, OpSail 2012 gets underway tomorrow, April 17th and will continue through the 23rd, in the port of New Orleans, LA. It will feature the tall ships Dewaruci from Indonesia, the BAE Guayas from Equador and the … Continue reading
Today, on the anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic with the loss of 1,514 lives, it would be appropriate for a learned historian at an august university to sit down to ponder the commercialization of history and to consider how our consumer culture … Continue reading
In June of 1912, Joseph Conrad wrote “Some Reflections on the Loss of the Titanic” for the English Review. While best known as a novelist, his comments reflect his years as a ship’s officer in both sail and steam. He finds little … Continue reading