SS Edmund Fitzgerald, an American Great Lakes ore carrier, sank in Lake Superior in a storm on November 10, 1975, 42 years ago today. The crew of 29 were lost when the freighter sank loaded with 26,000 tons of taconite, iron ore pellets, in 530 … Continue reading
Category Archives: Ships
There was a joke, of sorts, in the Clipper Round the World Race, that in the over two decades of racing around the world, only one boat has ever sunk. It was the boat least likely to sink, at least … Continue reading
Here is a fascinating tour of the Volvo Ocean 65Team Brunel, one of seven identical yachts now racing around the world in the Volvo Ocean Race. The Volvo Ocean 65s are high-performance one-design racers created by Farr Yacht Design and … Continue reading
An update on a previous post — in August, we posted about Pen Hadow’s latest expedition to the Arctic. Hadow is best known for being the only person to walk solo to the North Pole and back without being resupplied. … Continue reading
How dirty are cruise ships? How much pollution do they really create? It is hard to tell. Several years ago we posted about a claim by the Friends of the Earth which asserted that cruise ships “flushed more than a … Continue reading
HMS Warrior is a fascinating ship. It may be heresy to say so, but when I visited Portsmouth, I spent more time on HMS Warrior than I did on Nelson’s Victory. Warrior is a 40-gun steam-powered armored frigate built for the Royal Navy in 1859–61. … Continue reading
On Wednesday, the dock landing ship USS Ashland rescued two woman sailors and their two dogs from their sailboat roughly 900 miles southeast of Japan. The sailboat had been spotted by a passing Taiwanese fishing boat, which alerted the navy. The two … Continue reading
A year ago last March, marine archeologists determined that the wreck of a ship found off the coast of Oman was the Esmerelda, one of the ships in a fleet led by Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1502. The wreck … Continue reading
A fleet of seven teams of racers set off this morning from Alicante, Spain bound for Lisbon, on the first leg of the Volvo Ocean Race 2017-2018. The eleven leg race will visit 12 cities in six continents, ending next July in The Hague, Netherlands. The teams … Continue reading
The Sultana Downrigging Weekend and Tall Ship and Wooden Boat Festival has grown to be one of the largest annual Tall Ship gatherings on the East Coast. Now in its 17th year, it is held on the Chester River in Chestertown, … Continue reading
Part of one of Roman Emperor Caligula‘s ceremonial Nemi ships has been recovered from an unexpected location. The New York Times reports that a four-by-four piece of mosaic flooring from one of the ships has been “sitting in … the Park … Continue reading
The 200′ long three-masted square-rigger SSV Oliver Hazard Perry was departing from a local dockside festival on Sunday evening when she lost power while maneuvering in very close quarters in Newport Harbor, Rhode Island. The steel ship drifted into four boats. No one … Continue reading
The first autonomous container ship, the 120 TEU feeder vessel, MV Yara Birkeland, will be launched in 2018. The ship will also be battery-powered and emissions-free. After a period of testing with a crew, the ship is expected to go … Continue reading
In March of 2018, the barque Picton Castle will set off on its seventh world voyage — an epic year-long voyage under sail. Berths are available for trainees for the full year-long voyage or for individual voyage legs. Beginning in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada, Picton … Continue reading
I had kind of lost track of the replica Revolutionary War sloop Providence. In January 2015, she was blown off her jackstands by blizzard winds while on the hard in Newport, RI, incurring significant damage to her hull and rigging. … Continue reading