Last year we posted about a very bad night for the schooner, Ada C. Lore. In the early morning hours of December 4, 2014, the Eastport, Maine breakwater pier where she was berthed suddenly collapsed onto the Ada C. Lore, doing … Continue reading
Category Archives: Ships
Given the current heated debate over Syrian refugees, it seems worthwhile to remember the ill-fated voyage of the German ocean liner St. Louis in 1939. The ship carried 908 Jewish refugees who were fleeing from Nazi Germany. The ship and its … Continue reading
The expedition cruise ship, Le Boreal, operated by French line Ponant, has been evacuated after a fire in the engine room. Fire broke out on the 264-passenger ship as she was sailing off the Falkland Islands early Wednesday. The passengers were transferred … Continue reading
We know that the ro/ro El Faro sank with all hands after it lost power in the path of Hurricane Joaquin in early October. The captain reported a hull breach. All 33 crew were lost. We may never know too … Continue reading
Good, if rather bittersweet, news for those of us around New York harbor. The windjammer Peking, a fixture of New York’s South Street Seaport for over 40 years, will be returning to its original home port in Hamburg, Germany for … Continue reading
Great news. The schooner Spirit of South Carolina is on her way home to Charleston, South Carolina. We recently heard from Meryl Huckabey: “As a long-time reader of oldsaltblog.com I am pleased to tell you that the Spirit of South Carolina, tall ship … Continue reading
The National Transportation Safety Board announced Thursday that U.S. Navy salvage tug Apache has located the bridge deck of El Faro roughly a mile from the main wreckage of the ro/ro cargo ship. 33 crew died when the 790-foot long ship sank in Hurricane … Continue reading
On November 7th, two balsa rafts set out from Lima, Peru, bound for Easter Island on the Kon-Tiki 2 expedition. The voyage is both an homage to Thor Heyerdahl’s famous voyage on the raft Kon-Tiki in 1947 and a voyage … Continue reading
At the beginning of October, the SS United States Conservancy announced that its board had retained the services of a broker to explore selling the SS United States for scrap “over concerns about the organization’s long-term ability to continue financing the … Continue reading
The Wavertree, an iron-hulled windjammer built in 1885, has been a museum ship in at New York’s South Street Seaport Museum since 1969. In May, the historic ship shifted to the Caddell Dry Dock in Staten Island to undergo stabilization and restoration. … Continue reading
The first reports from accidents are often wrong. In the case of the capsizing of the whale-watching boat, Leviathan II, off Tofino on Vancouver Island with the loss of six passengers, the initial reports from CBC News said that the vessel … Continue reading
From a press release from the National Safety Transportation Board (NTSB): A search team on board the USNS Apache has found the wreckage of a vessel that they believe to be the cargo ship El Faro, which went missing on … Continue reading
A beautiful Friday evening at the Sultana Downrigging Weekend in Chestertown, MD. The schooner Sultana, launched in Chestertown, Maryland, in 2001, serves as an educational vessel for schoolchildren as it travels around the Chesapeake Bay. Now in its fifteenth year, … Continue reading
In early October, the headline in the Philadephia Inquirer was Is the S.S. United States headed toward the scrap yard?. After years of attempting to save the iconic cruise ship, the SS United States Conservancy announced that the SS United States, … Continue reading
In 1998, the whale-watching boat Ocean Thunderer was hit by a wave and swamped, throwing all on board — three passengers and one boat operator — into the waters near Sea Lion Rocks, also known as Plover Reefs, off the western … Continue reading
Ben Talman, a reader and contributor to the Old Salt Blog, visited the Edwin Fox in Picton, New Zealand and took a series of wonderful photos of the historic ship. The Edwin Fox is an East Indiaman built in 1853 of teak in Calcutta, India. … Continue reading
MV Leviathan II, a 65′ whale watching boat, sank late yesterday afternoon, off the port of Tofino on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada. 27 were aboard when the vessel sank. Five are reported to have died and one person is … Continue reading
The US Coast Guard rarely gets enough credit for the remarkable work that they do in routinely rescuing mariners in often extremely dangerous conditions. A new movie, “The Finest Hours“, is coming out this winter, which tells the story of … Continue reading
Yesterday afternoon, the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) released an updated report on their investigation into the sinking of El Faro in Hurricane Joaquin in early October. The report notes: “In a recorded satellite phone call to the company’s emergency … Continue reading
Happy Trafalgar Day! Today is the 210th anniversary of the overwhelming Royal Navy victory over the French and Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar on 21 October 1805. After considerable research, Admiral Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory has now been repainted to more accurately … Continue reading