The first time I visited Mystic Seaport Museum, in addition to spending time on the historic ships, I recall spending quite a while talking to the docent in the village cooperage. The production of barrels, for the storage of oil on whalers, as well as for the storage of water and other provisions, is one of the crucial but often overlooked skills and technologies that made whaling, and indeed life at sea possible. Here is a short video about the cooperage at Mystic Seaport.
In a speech yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened the United States with a new generation of nuclear weapons. Putin showed video animations of nuclear warheads raining down on Florida from a new design of an intercontinental cruise missile that he described as “invincible.” Perhaps even more disturbing was the presentation of a “doomsday” torpedo designed to create a 500-meter tsunami that could contaminate a large section of coastline with radiation, making the area unlivable for up to a century.
The new weapon, called Status-6 by the Russians and dubbed Kanyon by the CIA, is described as an unmanned nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed underwater vehicle able to deliver a thermonuclear cobalt bomb of up to 100 megatonnes. It is said to have a top speed of 100 km/h (54 kn), with a range of 10,000 km (5,400 NM.) Russian Oscar Class submarines are said to be capable of carrying up to four of the torpedoes secured externally.
Alexander V. Ezhkov, the owner of the ill-fated Polina Star III, has a story to tell about his experience with the yacht builder Oyster Marine.
Ezhkov has put up a website to detail what took place from when in 2012, he ordered the 90′ Polina Star III, a new Oyster 885. The site details what transpired from her delivery in 2014, to her sinking and capsize in 2015 after her keel fell off while sailing in the Mediterranean off the Spanish coast.
The tale continues with Ezhkov’s attempt to reach a settlement with Oyster, ending in the firm’s surprise liquidation in early February of 2018. To read the story on his web site, HOW IT WENT DOWN — THE OYSTER STORY, click here.
It is a fascinating and disturbing story. Continue reading
Next Wednesday, March 7th, at 6PM, Neil and Ariel Weisbrod‘s new documentary, “Secrets of a Frozen Ocean“, will have its world premiere at the New York City International Film Festival at the Producer’s Club 358 W 44th Street, NY, NY 10036.
“Secrets of A Frozen Ocean” follows 75 year old, Yngve Kristoffersen, a Norwegian Scientist who sets out on a dangerous 13 month expedition in a small hovercraft together with Audun Tholfsen. Their destination was the most remote areas of the Arctic . It is his last chance to fulfill his lifelong dream and prove a theory about an asteroid hitting the Arctic Ocean millions of years ago. Along the way they encounter extreme weather, hungry Polar Bears, and mechanical difficulties. The theory which inspired the expedition was based on data collected by Dr. John K. Hall on the US Ice Station T3 in the late 1960’sThe documentary is a mix of groundbreaking science and wild adventure. Continue reading
2017 was a disastrous year for the North Atlantic right whale and 2018 looks no better. In fact, it could be worse. Last year 17 North Atlantic right whales, died which is more than died in the past five years combined. Even worse, during this year’s breeding season, which typically runs from November through February, no newly-born calves have been sighted.
The Boston Globe quotes Barb Zoodsma, a biologist who oversees the right whale recovery program in the Southeast for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “This is the worst-case scenario. This season appears to be a total bomb. You don’t have to be a math major to see that things are going in the wrong direction.”
Last weekend, gold ingots and coins valued at $40 million salvaged from the wreck of the SS Central America went on display for the first time at the 2018 Long Beach Coin, Currency, Stamp & Sports Collectible Expo. (The gold is for sale if you have the cash at your disposal.)
SS Central America was a 280-foot paddlewheel steamer operating between New York and Aspinwall during the California Gold Rush. The ship sank in a hurricane off South Carolina in 1857, killing 425 passengers and crew and sending 30,000 pounds of California gold coins, ingots and gold dust to the sea floor. The lost gold was valued at $2 million or roughly $300-400 million in current dollars. News of the loss shook the US financial markets and contributed to the Panic of 1857.
Around 1779, a portrait of two young women was commissioned by William Murray, 1st Earl of Mansfield. The women were Elizabeth Murray and her cousin Dido Elizabeth Belle. For its day, the painting was controversial, even shocking.
Dido Elizabeth Belle was a dark-skinned mixed-race woman while her cousin was a fair skinned English woman, and yet in the painting, they were represented as having equal status. Both are dressed in fine gowns. Typically in a painting of the period, servants or others of a lesser class would be painting lower in the composition. Belle and Murray are painted as equals, as indeed they were, at least in William Murray’s household.
Here is a story well worth retelling. An updated repost from 2012. The remarkable story of Robert Smalls.
On May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old slave, who served as the pilot of the Confederate armed transport, CSS Planter, led eight fellow slaves in an audacious flight to freedom. They seized the CSS Planter, steamed it out past the batteries and forts of Charleston harbor and turned it over to the Union naval blockade. Smalls would go on to become the first black captain of a U.S. Navy vessel, a South Carolina State Legislator, a Major General in the South Carolina Militia, a five-term U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Collector of Customs.
Harper’s Weekly of June 14, 1862 recounts the escape:
Continue reading
For years, naturalists have found the shells of giant shipworms, but have not located the giant shipworm itself. Last spring, that changed. Giant shipworms were discovered buried in the mud in a Philippine mangrove swamp.
Two important facts about the giant shipworm, whose scientific name is Kuphus polythalamia. They are not worms at all, but a variety of bivalve mollusk. Also, they do not eat the wood from ships. They are related to other shipworms, which have indeed been the bane of sailors for all of history, but these giants do not eat wood.
Photo: Jeanna Shepard
As Black History Month winds to a close it seems worthwhile to recall Captain William A. Martin, the best remembered black whaling ship captain from Martha’s Vineyard. He is often referred to as the only black whaling captain from the island. Nevertheless, historian Skip Finley suggests that at least five black whaling captains had ties to Martha’s Vineyard. Of the roughly 2,500 masters of American whaling ships under sail, at least 63 were men of color.
William Martin was born in Edgartown in 1830, just one generation away from slavery. Educated in a local school which taught young boys how to read, write and navigate, Martin made his way into the whaling trade because of his skill as a writer. Rather than ship as a seaman, Martin signed on the Edgartown ship Europa as the first mate and ship’s log-keeper in 1853. In 1857, after his voyage on the Europa, he married a Native American woman named Sarah Brown.
The timeline for when humans first took to the seas keeps getting moved back. A few years ago, stone tools were found on the island of Crete which were dated to 130,000 years ago. Likewise, stone implements on the island of Flores in Indonesia have been dated back to 700,000 to 800,000. Both Crete and Flores could only have been reached by some sort of boat or raft. Likewise, human remains and stone tools found in Spain dating to over a million years ago may indicate that some ancient hominin navigated the hazardous Straits of Gibraltar from Morocco.
Recently, a researcher has offered a new theory, suggesting that Homo erectus, a hominid predecessor to modern Homo sapiens, could have been a sailor and might have been the first to develop language in order to communicate while underway on a boat.
A 30′ long stump of what is probably a hemlock tree has been floating vertically, bobbing up and down, in Crater Lake, in south-central Oregon in the western United States, for more than 120 years. How much longer it has been floating, no one knows. Carbon dating suggests that the log is around 450 years old. The floating stump has been given the name the Old Man of the Lake.
Joseph S. Diller, the first geologist to study crater lake near the turn of the 20th century, described the floating tree stump in a report dated 1896. About 30′ long overall and two feet in diameter at the waterline, the stump floats about four feet above the water. It is buoyant enough to support a person’s weight. Why has the log floated vertically for so long? No one really knows.
Yesterday, we posted about four barrels of rum from Lunenburg’s Ironworks Distillery which are being carried around the globe by the barque Picton Castle on its seventh circumnavigation. The sea voyage is expected to nicely age the rum. Of course, distilled spirits being sent to sea to mellow and age is nothing new. William Bunting reminded me of a passage from his excellent book, Live Yankees, the Sewalls and their Ships involving rum and politics.
Arthur Sewall, in addition to being a shipbuilder and ship owner, was also a bank president, director of a railroad, and the Democratic Party vice presidential candidate in 1896 on William Jennings Bryan’s first run for president. There is a story about how Arthur managed to acquire the seat on the presidential ticket and it involves ocean-aged rum. From Live Yankees:
When the barque Picton Castle embarks on its seventh circumnavigation this April, it will have a special cargo of four barrels of rum from Lunenburg’s Ironworks Distillery stored in the hold. If all goes well when the ship returns to Lunenburg in May of 2019, she will be carrying the same four barrels, and the rum will be better for it.
Why carry four barrels, 900 liters, of rum around the world? In the age of sail, wine would often spoil on long voyages. Distilled liquors, however, were often improved by the motion of the ship, as well as changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature. With luck the Ironworks’ ‘Round the World Rum will be nicely aged by the voyage.
Joseph Conrad once wrote about a conversation with an old sailor who had just signed off a ship. The sailor said something to the effect that “the ship was alright. The problem was the people on it.” The comment seems to apply to a recent 10-day South Pacific cruise on the Carnival Legend.
According to published accounts, there was a three-day running brawl on the cruise ship involving 23 members of an unruly family group, resulting in what some passengers are describing as a “bloodbath” and “the cruise from hell.” Exactly how it started and what happened is unclear but cell phone video of the fights in various parts of the ship are disturbing.
In October of last year, we posted about the rescue of two sailors and their dogs from the yacht, Sea Nymph. The two women were picked up by the dock landing ship USS Ashland roughly 900 miles southeast of Japan. They had set off from Hawaii bound for Tahiti almost 5 months before and had gotten lost and suffered damage to their engine and rig.
Recently, the Volvo Ocean racer, Turn the Tide on Plastic, competing in Leg 6 of the race from Hong Kong to Auckland, spotted a sailboat with no sails up. The boat turned out to be the abandoned Sea Nymph. They launched a drone and captured video of the boat and were able to positively identify it as the yacht abandoned last October.
One hundred and twenty years ago today, on February 15, 1898, a mysterious explosion ripped through the hull of the American battleship USS Maine, at anchor in Havana harbor in Cuba. The ship sank killing 266 of the 350 men aboard. The loss of the USS Maine heightened the tension between the United States and Spain. Cuba was a Spanish colony and the island was gripped in a rebellion against Spain. USS Maine was in Havanna to protect U.S. interests.
It was widely assumed at the time that the Spanish had placed a mine or launched a torpedo which sank the ship. The American press whipped up the American public with the slogan, “Remember the Maine. The Hell with Spain.” After initially attempting to continue with ongoing diplomacy, the US declared war on Spain on April 25, 1898. By August, Spain had ceded Cuba, along with the Philippines, Puerto Rico and Guam, to the United States.
While the sinking of the USS Maine helped in the US’s progression towards war with Spain, to this day, no one is entirely sure what caused the explosion. There have been at least six public and private investigations into the sinking which have reached contradictory conclusions.
For Valentine’s Day, here is a repost from a few years ago of a series of Valentine Islands, not all of which are tropical. Are they islands of love on the storm-tossed seas of life? Sadly, they probably are not, but they do look like Valentine’s Day hearts.
USS Zumwalt, guns but no ammo
I sometimes wonder if the world is going a bit mad. Take, for example, the case of icebreakers with cruise missiles and destroyers with guns but no ammunition.
Despite the increased strategic importance of Arctic, the US has only one heavy icebreaker in service and it appears to be held together by baling wire and the skill of its engineering personnel. The crew of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star recently completed a mission to cut a resupply channel through 15 miles of Antarctic ice in the Ross Sea despite suffering a turbine failure and flooding due to a major shaft seal leak. The crew were able to make repairs sufficient to complete the mission. The good news is that the Coast Guard is building a new heavy icebreaker which, if all goes well, will be launched in 2023.
What is weird about the new icebreaker, however, is that the Coast Guard is making provisions to allow the icebreaker to be outfitted with cruise missiles. That’s right, cruise missiles. Not for breaking ice, but presumably to allow the icebreaker to freelance as a warship, if necessary. I would think that breaking ice would be enough. The ship is called an icebreaker after all. Breaking ice is a big job all by itself.
In fabricating ships’ hulls and building seawalls and docks, the goal is to resist the power of the waves. Recently, however, engineers have been working on techniques to harness rather than resist the immense power of ocean waves. In the fall of this year, the Irish firm, OceanEnergy, will be installing their pioneering OE Bouy, which generates electricity from ocean waves, at the U.S. Navy’s Wave Energy Test Site on the windward coast of the Hawaiian island of Oahu. The 826-ton OE Buoy will be fabricated by Oregon’s Vigor Marine and will measure 125 feet x 59 feet with a draft of 31 feet. The buoy has a rated capacity of up to 1.25 MW in electrical power production.
The OE Buoy has been undergoing testing off the Atlantic Coast of Ireland several years. Ocean Energy is a portfolio company of Enterprise Ireland, the Irish government agency for the advancement of innovation, entrepreneurship and international business by Irish firms.