Remembering Robert Smalls – Former Slave, Pilot of the Planter, First Black Captain in the US Navy & US Congressman

Posted on by February 11, 2025

Here is a story well worth retelling; an updated repost in honor of Black History Month; 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:
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Black History Month — First Black Liberty Ship Captain, Hugh Mulzac, Says No To Jim Crow

Posted on by February 16, 2024

Hugh Mulzak served as the first Black Liberty ship captain in World War II. When offered the command, he refused to sail with a segregated crew. An updated repost in honor of Black History Month.

Born in 1886 on Union Island in Saint Vincent Grenadines, he went to sea at 21 and served on British, Norwegian, and American sail and steam-powered ships. After studying at the Swansea Nautical College in South Wales, he earned a mate’s license in 1910. He served as a deck officer on four ships during World War I.

In 1918, he became a naturalized US citizen and in 1920 sat for his Master’s license, earning a perfect score on the test. Despite his experience and qualifications, he was generally only able to find work aboard American ships as a messman or cook. Mulzak has been described as “the most over-qualified ship’s cook in maritime history.”

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Russian Landing Ship Caesar Kunikov Sunk Off Crimea Sunk by Ukrainian Drone ‘Wolfpack’

Posted on by February 15, 2024

Newsweek reports that Ukraine’s latest strike on Russia’s naval forces in the Black Sea was inspired by World War II submarine tactics, according to one Ukrainian military expert, as the Kremlin counts the cost of yet surprise maritime attack.

Ivan Stupak, a former officer in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and now an adviser to the Ukrainian parliament’s national security, defense, and intelligence committee, told Newsweek on Wednesday that the overnight sinking of the Ropucha-class Caesar Kunikov landing ship took lessons from history.

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Celebrating Frederick Douglass on Valentine’s Day — “I Will Take to the Water”

Posted on by February 14, 2024

Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of both the day and Black History Month, here is an updated repost about Frederick Douglass. But what does Valentine’s Day have to do with Frederick Douglass?  As a slave, Douglass never knew the date of his birth, so he chose to celebrate it every year on February 14th.

Frederick Douglass was born around 1818. From an early age, he developed a close attachment to ships and the sea. His path to freedom led directly through the docks and shipyards of Baltimore, Maryland.

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Update: Ship’s Bell Recovered from Wreck of USS Jacob Jones, First US Destroyer Lost in Combat

Posted on by February 13, 2024

In August 2022, we posted that British divers had located the wreck of the USS Jacob Jones in over 100 meters of water, 40 miles off the Isles of Scilly. The ship, a Tucker Class destroyer, was sunk during World War I by a German U-boat on December 6, 1917. USS Jacob Jones was the first US destroyer ever to be lost to enemy action and went down in 8 minutes. 64 of her crew of 110 were lost in the attack.

Now, the ship’s bell of the USS Jacob Jones has been recovered by the Salvage and Marine Operations (SALMO) unit, a special salvage unit with the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defense at the request of the US Naval History and Heritage Command (NHHC).

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On Lincoln’s Birthday — Lincoln’s Improved Camel Patent

Posted on by February 12, 2024

Nantucket Camel Ride

Today is the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birthday on February 20th, 1809.  He is know for rising from poverty, working as a rail splitter, and as a self-taught country lawyer before being elected as a congressman and ultimately as president. As commander in chief during a bloody civil war, he preserved the union and became known as the “Great Emancipator’ for his role in ending slavery. 

Lincoln is less well-known as an inventor, yet he is the only president in this country’s history to have a patent issued in his name. Here is an updated repost of the tale of a patent granted to Abraham Lincoln for a device to lift boats and ships over sandbars.

In the early 1800s, the entrance to the harbor of the great whaling port of Nantucket had shoaled in. Fully loaded whaling ships could not cross the bar and return to the docks beyond Brandt Point. For years the ships anchored offshore and were lightered, the barrels of whale oil loaded into smaller boats that could make it across the bar.

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Remembering Jesse L. Brown, First African-American Naval Pilot

Posted on by February 10, 2024

In honor of Black History Month, an updated repost about the first African-American pilot in the US Navy, Jesse L. Brown.

The story goes that when young Jesse Leroy Brown worked in the cotton fields of Mississippi beside his sharecropper father, whenever he saw a plane in the sky above, he would declare that one day, he would be a pilot. No one took him seriously.

Nevertheless, the young man, born in born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1926, made a name for himself as an athlete in high school and won honors as a math student. In 1944, Jesse Brown was enrolled as the only black student in the engineering program at Ohio State University.

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Has Amelia Earhart’s Long-Lost Plane Been Found in the Pacific?

Posted on by February 9, 2024

Image: Deep Sea Vision

In 1937, Amelia Earhart and her navigator Fred Noonan set off on a quest to circumnavigate the globe. Having completed most of their journey, Earhart’s plane disappeared over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island.

In the intervening 87 years, neither of their bodies nor their plane have been definitively recovered — remaining a compelling mystery and generating countless theories as to what may have happened.

Recently, a high-tech unmanned underwater drone, operated by Deep Sea Vision, an ocean exploration company based in South Carolina, surveyed more than 5,200 square miles of ocean floor between September and December. The drone captured compelling sonar images of what could be Earhart’s Lockheed Electra aircraft at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

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Black History Month Repost — William Tillman and the Privateer Jefferson Davis

Posted on by February 8, 2024

An updated repost in honor of Black History Month. 

William Tillman was one of the first black heroes of the American Civil War. He was not a soldier but rather a 27-year-old  cook-steward on the schooner S.J. Waring.  On July 7, 1861, the schooner was captured by the Confederate privateer Jefferson Davis while about 150 miles from Sandy Hook, New York.  Captain Smith, the master of the S.J. Waring was taken aboard the Jefferson Davis, and a five-man prize crew was put aboard the schooner, with orders to sail her to a Southern port where the ship and her cargo would be sold.

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Japan Captivated by Escape of Orcas Trapped in Drift Ice Off Hokkaido, as Annual Dolphin Slaughter Continues

Posted on by February 8, 2024

The good news is that a pod of orcas trapped by drift ice in waters off Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido appears to have successfully escaped.

Earlier this week, drone footage showed the pod of around a dozen orcas trapped by drift ice, The animals packed closely together and sticking their heads out of the water to breathe.

BBC reports that the footage was also shown on Japanese TV, prompting a wave of public concern for the animals this week and calls for government assistance. One environmental group even petitioned the Japanese government to deploy an icebreaker to help free the trapped orcas.

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British Antarctic Survey Testing Drone Plane to Survey Unmapped Regions of the Southern Continent

Posted on by February 6, 2024

Photo: Windracers & British Antarctic Survey

This week, a team arrived at Rothera Research Station, on Adelaide Island to the west of the Antarctic Peninsula, ready to start testing the new Windracers ULTRA autonomous drone in Antarctica. If successful, the new drone platform could represent a major addition to the British Antarctic Survey’s scientific capability on the frozen continent – offering the potential to do more science at a lower cost, with a lower carbon footprint than traditional crewed aviation.

Designed for extreme environments, the Windracers ULTRA UAV (uncrewed aerial vehicle) is a fully autonomous, twin-engine, 10-metre fixed-winged aircraft, capable of carrying 100 kg of cargo or sensors up to 1000 km. Incorporating a high level of redundancy, the ULTRA can continue to fly even if one of the engines or components is damaged or fails, and has been designed to be fixed in the field with a minimal number of parts.

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Black History Month — John Henry Turpin : Pioneer, Survivor, and Overlooked Hero

Posted on by February 5, 2024

An updated repost in honor of Black History Month. 

John Henry Turpin was one of the first Black Chief Petty Officers to serve in the United States Navy. He was also a survivor of two naval disasters — the catastrophic explosions of the USS Maine in 1898, and USS Bennington in 1905.  He was one of 12 sailors nominated for the Medal of Honor for their efforts in rescuing their fellow crew members on the Bennington.

Turpin was born in Long Branch, NJ in 1876. He enlisted in the Navy at age 20, as a messman, one of the only positions available to Black sailors at the time. 

Almost two years later, on February 15, 1898, Turpin was serving in the mess hall of the USS Maine at anchor in Havana Harbor, Cuba when it mysteriously blew up. He was picked up from the waters of the harbor along with 89 other crew members. They were the only survivors of the explosion out of 350 total crew.

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Black History Month Repost — Harriet Tubman & the Great Combahee Ferry Raid

Posted on by February 2, 2024

Born a slave, Harriet Tubman escaped from enslavement and became a leading “conductor” on the “Underground Railroad” which helped slaves escape from bondage in the South to freedom in the North and in Canada, prior to the Civil War.  

Nicknamed “Moses,” she is said to have made more than nineteen trips back into the slave-holding South to rescue an estimated 70 of the enslaved.

Tubman’s greatest rescue mission, however, came when she planned and helped lead a Union riverboat raid at Combahee Ferry in South Carolina on the second of June, 1863, freeing over 720 slaves.

In honor both of Harriet Tubman and Black History Month, here is an updated repost about the Great Combahee Ferry Raid.

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Ukrainian Sea Drones Sink Russian Missile Corvette Ivanovets

Posted on by February 1, 2024

The Defense Blog reports that a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian missile corvette Ivanovets appears to have caused a massive explosion in Kyiv’s largest strike against Russia’s navy since December.

The Ukrainian Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR) has released footage capturing the destruction of the Russian Tarantul-III class missile corvette Ivanovets of the Black Sea Fleet at anchor in Donuzlav Lake in Crimea.

“This operation became possible with the support of the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine and the United24 platform. The enemy’s vessel was stationed in Donuzlav Lake in temporarily occupied Crimea. As a result of multiple direct hits to the Russian ship’s hull, it sustained damages incompatible with further navigation – Ivanovets listed aft and sank,” stated GUR.
 
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Update: Final Disposal of FSO Safer Stopped by Houthi Crisis in Red Sea

Posted on by January 31, 2024

The current shipping crisis in the Red Sea, precipitated by Houthi drone and missile attacks, has stopped the final disposal of the decrepit FSO Safer, a floating oil storage and offloading vessel, moored in the Red Sea north of the Yemeni city of Al Hudaydah.

Fortunately, the over one million barrels of oil once stored in the ship, which would have been an ecological disaster if spilled, had been transferred to another tanker by the United Nations by August of 2023, only a few months before the outbreak of the current hostilities.

The final part of the clean-up — the removal of the 48-year-old decaying tanker to be scrapped has had to be put on hold due to the increased risk and resulting increased costs of operating in the region.      

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Mysterious 19th Century Shipwreck Washes up on Newfoundland Beach

Posted on by January 30, 2024

Gordon Blackmore was out hunting seabirds early in the morning on Cape Ray beach on the southwestern tip of Newfoundland, Canada when he saw the capsized wreck of a large wooden ship that had washed ashore in shallow water.

Neil Burgess, president of the Shipwreck Preservation Society of Newfoundland and Labrador, suspects the ship was freed by a combination of coastal erosion and the force of post-tropical storm Fiona, which destroyed homes in the region last year.

Large ocean swells last week may finally have nudged the wreck free, pushing it towards the shore, he told the CBC.

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Drone Capture of First Ever Video of Newborn Great White Shark?

Posted on by January 29, 2024

Screen capture: The Malibu Artist/Carlos Gauna

Carlos Gauna is a filmmaker and professional photographer based in Southern California who has shot an impressive portfolio of drone videos of sharks for his YouTube channel TheMalibuArtist.

On July 9, 2023, Carlos captured some truly remarkable video and photos of a very small pale white shark swimming not quite half a kilometer off the coast of Carpinteria, CA.

He had already seen large great white sharks in the area but this small shark was unlike anything he had ever seen.

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Icon of the Seas, World’s Largest Cruise Ship Sets Sail, Raising Concerns Over Methane Emissions

Posted on by January 28, 2024

On Saturday, the world’s largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas, set sail from Miami on its maiden voyage. The nearly 1,200-foot-long and 250,800 gross-ton behemoth can accommodate close to 8,000 passengers across 20 decks.

The ship is the first Royal Caribbean vessel to be powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG), which the company claims sets a new standard for sustainability with the use of energy-efficient technology designed to minimize the ship’s carbon footprint and move closer to the company’s goal of introducing a net-zero ship by 2035.

That being said, environmental groups say methane leakage from the ship’s engines is an unacceptable risk to the climate because of its short-term harmful effects. (Natural gas is predominantly made up of methane.) 

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On Holocaust Remembrance Day — MS St. Louis and the “Voyage of the Damned”

Posted on by January 27, 2024

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, an updated repost, remembering the tragic voyage of the German passenger liner St. Louis in 1939. The ship carried 908 Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany.

The ship and its passengers departed from Hamburg but were denied entry to Cuba, the United States, and Canada. Finally, the ship turned around and returned to Europe. Despite the US government’s refusal to accept the refugees, private Jewish aid groups in the United States did manage to place most of the refugees in Belgium, France, and Holland, to avoid returning them to Nazi Germany. Tragically, many were later captured when the Nazis invaded. Two-hundred-and-fifty-four of the refugees are believed to have died in the German death camps.

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Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Director Peter Christopher Awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia

Posted on by January 26, 2024

Congratulations to Clipper Ship City of Adelaide Director Peter Christopher, on being awarded the  Medal of the Order of Australia for his services to Maritime History.

Peter Christopher convened the first meeting of Adelaide volunteers to save the City of Adelaide in July 2000 and worked tirelessly since in the preservation and restoration of this important piece of maritime history.  His vision and dedication continue to be a driving force in the planned Seaport Village project at Dock 2, Port Adelaide.

Peter Christopher is also the author of 7 books on shipwrecks and riverboats, and co-author of another 2. Continue reading →