The Loss of the Christmas Tree Ship, November 23, 1912

Posted on by November 23, 2019

One hundred and seven years ago today, the three-masted schooner Rouse Simmons, under the command of Captain Herman Schuenemann, sank with the loss of all hands in a winter storm in Lake Michigan. The schooner, known as the “Christmas Tree Ship,” carried a cargo close to 5,000 Christmas trees to be sold in Chicago.

Selling Christmas trees had been part of the Schuenemann businesses for several decades. Captain Schuenemann sold his trees directly from the dock by Chicago’s Clark Street Bridge using the slogan, “Christmas Tree Ship: My Prices are the Lowest.”  Schuenemann strung electric Christmas lights from the ship’s masts and had a tree atop the mainmast. Herman, his wife Barbara and their three daughters also made and sold wreaths, garlands, and other holiday decorations from the ship.  The trees were sold for between 50 cents and $1, but Captain Schuenemann, who came to be known as “Captain Santa”, also gave away some of the trees to needy families.

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Clipper Ship Cutty Sark Launched 150 Years Ago Today

Posted on by November 22, 2019

On Monday, November 22, 1869, the composite clipper ship Cutty Sark, built for the Jock Willis Shipping, Line was launched from the Scott & Linton shipyard on the River Leven in Scotland. The Cutty Sark, one of the last tea clippers to be built, and one of the fastest and, perhaps most remarkably, is one of only two clipper ships to survive today. Now fully restored in a drydock in Greenwich, UK, the historic tea clipper is the centerpiece of a year-long celebration of its 150th anniversary.

Because there are, to my knowledge, no photographs of the Cutty Sark’s launch, here is a news-reel video of her “last voyage” — on her way to Greenwich to be restored in 1953.  

CUTTY SARK’S LAST VOYAGE

For other Cutty Sark posts, click here.

New Staten Island Ferry, SSG Michael H. Ollis, Launched at Eastern Shipbuilding

Posted on by July 5, 2020

Eastern Shipbuilding Group, Inc., Panama City, FL launched the SSG Michael H. Ollis, the first of three new 4,500-passenger ferries for New York City’s Staten Island Ferry system. The Ollis Class ferries will be double-ended, with an overall length of 320 feet, beam of 70 feet, and draft of 13 feet at the design load at the waterline.

Designed by Elliott Bay Design Group, Seattle, WA, the three ferries will carry only passengers on the 5.2 mile route between the St. George Terminal on the north shore of Staten Island and Whitehall Terminal in lower Manhattan. Each of the ferries will be fitted with four diesel engines that will drive two Voith Schneider Propellers. 

With over 25 million riders per year, the Staten Island ferry service is the single busiest ferry route in the United States. The new Ollis Class ferries will replace the MV Andrew J. Barberi , the MV Samuel I. Newhouse and the 54-year-old John F. Kennedy.

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Update: Buyer Reported for Former Soviet Sub Docked Next to Queen Mary

Posted on by November 20, 2019

Last March, we posted about a Foxtrot-class Soviet-era submarine for sale in Long Beach, CA. Known as the Scorpion, the diesel-electric patrol submarine built in the Soviet Union in 1971, has been a museum ship berthed next to the hotel-ship Queen Mary for the past two decades.

Now, the LA Times is reporting that a buyer for the old sub has been found. The buyer, who remains anonymous,  is expected to remove the vessel by May. To do so will apparently require the removal of part of the stone breakwater which currently surrounds both ships. 

The submarine is owned by Palm Springs-based NewCo Pty Ltd., which is leasing it to Los Angeles real estate and development company Urban Commons, the operator of the Queen Mary as a hotel and tourist attraction.

NOAA Phasing Out Paper Chart Production

Posted on by November 19, 2019

When I bought my new-to-me old boat, I bought several booklets of paper charts covering the waters from the Chesapeake to Maine. Over the last few years, I have never used them. Never, not once. Instead, I have chart plotters on a laptop, two tablets, and my phone. My paper charts have stayed buried at the bottom of the cabinet beneath the chart table. Nevertheless, I still had mixed feelings when I read that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) is phasing out the production of traditional paper nautical charts.

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Deep-Sea Mining — Electric Cars, Electronics & Climate Change

Posted on by November 18, 2019

Graphic: IUCN

Deep-sea mining may provide the material necessary to create our latest and greatest electronics, electric cars and battery backup systems. The mining may also damage the environment and worsen climate change. 

In 2018, we posted about the discovery of huge deposits of rare-earth metals in seabed mud off the Japanese island Minamitorishima, located 1,150 miles southeast of Tokyo. The discovery could have a major impact on both the Japanese and the world economy. Rare-earth metals are essential to modern technologies and are used in smartphones, hybrid vehicles, rechargeable batteries, wind turbines, light-emitting diodes, compact fluorescent lamps, screen display panels, and many medical and military technologies.  

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Documentary: Cosmic Birth — We Went to the Moon, But Discovered Earth

Posted on by November 19, 2019

Friday night I had the great pleasure to meet Orly Orlyson and to watch the US premiere of Cosmic Birth, the remarkable documentary that he co-directed, at the Explorer’s Club in Manhattan. Orly is an entrepreneur and the founder of The Exploration Museum in Húsavík, Iceland – a museum dedicated to the history of human exploration. 

In addition to exhibits on Viking exploration and on the race to reach the South Pole, the Exploration Museum features exhibits on the Apollo astronauts. What does the Moon landing have to do with a museum in Húsavík, an Icelandic town 30 miles from the Arctic Circle? It so happens that when NASA searched the globe for the most similar terrestrial landscape to the moon on which astronauts could train, they chose the lava fields outside of Húsavík. During the summers of 1965 and 1967, 32 astronauts trained on the basaltic outcroppings in preparation for landing on the lunar surface.  

Now, just over 50 years since the astronauts first traveled to Iceland and then to the moon, Cosmic Birth follows some of these Apollo astronauts back into the Icelandic highlands where they reflect on their epic missions to another world.

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LA Times: Coast Guard Rejected Calls for Stricter Safety Rules Prior to Deadly Dive Boat Fire

Posted on by November 16, 2019

The dive boat Conception was a death trap.  It was a wooden vessel with a single narrow and steep stairway from the lower berthing deck and a small emergency exit hatch. When a fire broke out on September 2, 34 people sleeping on the lowering berthing deck died in the blaze.

The Conception was also inspected and approved by the US Coast Guard as meeting all requirements of a Subchapter T, Small Passenger Vessel.  Recently, an investigation by the Los Angeles Times revealed that the Coast Guard had repeatedly rejected the National Transportation Safety Board’s (NTSB) recommendations for stricter fire safety regulations in this type of vessel.

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Update: Liberty Ship SS John W. Brown Still Looking For a New Berth

Posted on by November 15, 2019

A year ago, we posted about the search for a berth for the Liberty ship John W. Brown. Now, the ship, the last surviving troopship from World War II, must find a new home by the end of the year due to the expiration of its current lease on Pier C on Clinton Street. From the Project Liberty Ship press release:

For several years the ship was housed at a Clinton Street pier owned by the state of Maryland, but that pier was sold and the lease arrangement that enabled the Brown to stay at that pier expired. The new pier owners generously offered S.S. JOHN W. BROWN an alternate berth at Pier C on a temporary basis and have been cooperative and flexible with Project Liberty Ship’s uncertain and ever-developing future. However, the current lease agreement, despite several extensions, is expiring at the end of 2019. Continue reading →

Eugene Ely & the First Aircraft Take-Off and Landing From a Ship

Posted on by November 14, 2019

On November 14, 1910, one hundred and nine years ago today, pilot Eugene Burton Ely successfully took off in a biplane from the deck of the light cruiser USS Birmingham in the waters off Norfolk, Virginia, becoming the first pilot to fly a plane from the deck of a ship. He flew roughly three miles and landed onshore. 

Two months later, on January 18, 1911, Ely landed his Curtiss Pusher biplane on a platform on the armored cruiser USS Pennsylvania anchored in San Francisco Bay, becoming the first pilot to land a plane on a ship.  He stopped the plane using the first-ever tailhook arresting gear, designed and built by circus performer and aviator Hugh Robinson.

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Lobster on the Line — Trade War Threatens Maine Lobstermen

Posted on by November 13, 2019

After several near boom years, the Maine lobster fishery is being slammed by the current trade war between the United States and China. From June 2018 to June 2019, after the duties were in place, live lobster exports to China tumbled 84 percent. In the same period Canada’s lobster sales to China reached record highs. Lobster represents the largest export for the state of Maine by value.

The Washington Post reports that in the first half of 2018, before the tariffs, lobster sales to China from the United States and Canada were about even, roughly $84 million, according to data from the Lobster Council of Canada.

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The Navy’s Patents on UFO Tech and Compact Cold Fusion

Posted on by November 12, 2019

In recent weeks there been considerable interest generated by an application for a patent filed by the US Navy for a compact cold fusion nuclear reactor. For decades, “cold fusion” has been the holy grail of clean energy research. Progress was being made but the great breakthrough was always 25 or 50 years away, receding into the future like a shimmering chimera. If the Navy really has the secret of cold fusion, the ability to harness the power of the stars in a stable and compact space, it could literally change the world. 

From what can be seen in the patent application, (and so far it is only an application. A patent has not been granted) there is considerable work to be done before the device is workable, if it ever is.  One other thing is notable about the application. As reported by the War Zone, “This latest design is the brainchild of the elusive Salvatore Cezar Pais.”

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Lost Submarine USS Grayback Located After 75 Years

Posted on by November 11, 2019

Imaged: Lost 52 Project

The submarine USS Grayback, one of the most successful US Navy submarines in World War II, has been located in 1,400 feet of water off Okinawa. The submarine was sunk in February 1944, on her tenth war patrol after sinking 21,594 tons of Japanese shipping. 

The New York Times reports that the Grayback was thought to have gone down in the open ocean 100 miles east-southeast of Okinawa. But the Navy had unknowingly relied on a flawed translation of Japanese war records that got one digit wrong in the latitude and longitude of the spot where the Grayback had probably met its end.

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USS Nimitz, USS Roosevelt & the Giant “Tic Tacs” — Navy Videos of “Unexplained Aerial Phenomena”

Posted on by November 10, 2019

The videos have been flying across the internet for several years. They are purported to be F-18 gun-camera footage taken in 2004 from planes flying off the carrier USS Nimitz and in footage from 2015 from planes off the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The videos show unidentified flying objects which have been described as looking something like bright, white giant Tic Tacs, approximately 30 to 46 feet long. The objects appeared on radar and were observed visually. 

The Navy has now confirmed that the videos are real. They prefer to describe what was observed as a UAP, an “Unexplained Aerial Phenomena” rather than as a UFO, “Unidentified Flying Objects,” which has come to imply extraterrestrials. Nevertheless, whichever term is used, it suggests that the Navy is taking the observations seriously.

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Manhattan Waterfront in 1937 — The Frayed Frontier of This Golden Island

Posted on by November 7, 2019

Last week, we posted a video promoting the Port of New York and New Jersey made in the 1950s. Here is a similar if very different video made by RKO focussing on the Manhattan waterfront around 1937, at the height of the Great Depression.

While praising “magic Manhattan” the narrator describes the waterfront as “the frayed frontier of this golden island,” while in the same sentence calling it the “greatest on earth.” One part of the video contrasts the “opulence and prosperity” of the rich with the “jungles of the less fortunate,” the waterfront shantytowns of the wretchedly poor in the “dead-end of Manhattan.” The short film is a fascinating snapshot of that time in history.

1930s Manhattan Waterfront – 1937