Earlier this month, Canada apologized for turning away the MS St. Louis filled with Jewish German refugees fleeing the Nazis in 1939. Canada was not alone in turning away the refugees. The United States and Cuba also refused the refugees access.
With immigration and refugee policy at the center of significant policy disagreement, 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 passengers 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. The voyage has been the subject of at least one book and two movies. The movie, Voyage of the Damned, in 1974 was based on the book of the same name by Gordon Thomas and Max Morgan-Witts. A second movie, The Voyage of the St. Louis, was released in 1995. Here is an A&E documentary from 1998, narrated by Patrick Tull.
Yesterday, the House of Representatives, in a provision of a U.S. Coast Guard reauthorization bill, voted to grant a waiver exempting the riverboat 
Recently retired 
On Sunday, two Ukrainian naval gunboats and a tug departed from the Black Sea port of Odessa, bound to Mariupol in the Sea of Azov. As they approached the Kerch Strait, connecting the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, 
This is a bizarre story which we have been following for, literally, 
The U.S. Navy’s new supercarrier, the 
Andrew Fitzgerald, the last of the four-man crew of the Coast Guard Motor Lifeboat 
Of the more than 2,700 Liberty ships built during World War II, only two are still operational in the United States. One, the John W. Brown, now docked in Baltimore, may become homeless when its five-year agreement for free berthing at Rukert Terminals’ Pier C in Canton, Maryland expires at the end of next September.
One year after the submarine 
We recently 
For several years, autumn and winter winds have carried a ghost fleet of derelict boats to the coast of northern Japan. Many of the boats were empty, although some carried corpses.