Depending on which news report you listen to, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford either can’t reliably land planes and is continuing in its dubious status as a “$13 billion berthing barge,” or, more optimistically, it may be ready … Continue reading
Category Archives: Ships
Here is a fascinating short video of British riveted steel shipbuilding in the 1940s. The shipyard in the film is the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company in Fife. The ship being built is thought to be either the MV Dalhousie or the … Continue reading
Last October, the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard completed the year-long dismantling of the US Navy nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Narwhal (SSN-671). Commissioned in 1969, the submarine was a one-of-a-kind, an experimental design that would become one of the most successful … Continue reading
The salvage of the stranded car carrier Golden Ray is accelerating. Salvors on the heavy-lift barge VB-10,000 are using a heavy chain to cut the ship into sections to be carried away by barge. The recently completed the second cut, separating … Continue reading
Thanks to Captain Richard Bailey for mentioning the time ball on the Titanic Memorial in the Financial District of downtown New York City. We neglected to mention it in our post “Watching the Ball Drop — the Nautical Origins of … Continue reading
A video for a Sunday afternoon. In March, the US Navy officially commenced Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2020 in the Arctic Ocean with the construction of a temporary ice camp, Camp Seadragon, and the arrival of two US Navy fast-attack submarines. … 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
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
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
Sail-assist propulsion on commercial ships is developing rapidly, featuring a range of technologies including rotor sails, rigid wing sails, ventilated turbo sails, and even conventional fabric sails. One thing that all these rigs have in common, however, is that when … Continue reading
A year ago we posted about the innovative ideas and products developed by the Dutch firm, eConowind. They have developed a Ventfoil, a fixed airfoil-shaped spar with an internal fan that uses boundary layer suction to generate thrust. Ventfoils can … Continue reading
Today, the first doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine have begun to be distributed in the United States. It seems like a good time to look back at the voyage of the orphan boys in the vaccine ship that sailed … Continue reading
This is a wonderful half-hour documentary hosted by Tom Cunliffe about Jolie Brise. Jolie Brise is a gaff-rigged pilot cutter/racing yacht built and launched by the Albert Paumelle Yard in Le Havre in 1913 to a design by Alexandre Pâris. … Continue reading
Mitsui O.S.K. Lines, Ltd. (MOL) has reached a coal transport deal with Tohoku Electric Power Co., Inc., which will use a new 99,000 DWT collier equipped with a retractable wing sail propulsion system, known as the Wind Challenger. Construction of … Continue reading