I recently saw two stories in the press that happen to overlap.
Captain Reinhard Hardegen
The first story was the report of the death of Reinhard Hardegen at 105 years old. Hardegen was believed to have been the last surviving German U-boat commander from World War II. He also ranked among the most successful U-boat captains of the war, sinking 22 merchant ships with a capacity of 115,656 GRT, over five patrols.
Two of Korvettenkapitän Hardegen‘s patrols were on the East Coast of the United States as part of Operation Drumbeat. With US and Canadian patrol ships diverted to protect British shipping, five German U-boats attacked shipping along the North American East Coast from Newfoundland to the Caribbean. In less than seven months, U-boat attacks destroyed 22 percent of the tanker fleet and sank 233 ships in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. The U-boats killed 5,000 seamen and passengers, more than twice the number of people who perished at Pearl Harbor. On Hardegen’s two patrols in command of U-123 during Operation Drumbeat, he sank eighteen ships totaling over 100,000 GRT.
For many years, scientists had thought that great white sharks traveled north and south along the Pacific coast of America, feeding in waters close to shore. Then researchers at Stanford University’s Hopkins Marine Station began tagging white sharks with satellite tracking tags. Rather than staying along the coast, great whites were traveling a thousand miles out into the Pacific in the winter and spring and congregating in an area which the researchers nicknamed the “
Ever dream of sailing the Pacific on an inter-island trading ship? Well, the Auxiliary-Sail Trading Vessel Tiare Taporo, based in the Cook Islands is looking for crew. This sounds like a fascinating opportunity for the right individuals. From a notice by 
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In 1614, Dutch sailor 
Manta Point is a popular dive spot off the southernmost shore of Nusa Penida Island, near Bali, Indonesia. Divers are attracted by the large number of manta rays which congregate there. On March 3rd, a British diver, Rich Horner, found far more than mantas at Manta Point. He found himself swimming in a sea of plastic garbage. His video of swimming through the mass of debris and trash has gone viral. It is disturbing to watch. The video is the bad news. The good news or perhaps the less bad news is that the video doesn’t tell the whole story. 
The deaths of 17 sailors in the separate collisions with merchant ships of the Arleigh Burke-class destroyers USS Fitzgerald and the USS John S. McCain has raised fundamental questions about the seamanship of US naval officers on the two ships, and by implication, the fleet as a whole. A three-month internal review conducted by senior U.S. surface fleet leaders of the seamanship and ship handling skills of new deck officers has yielded deeply concerning results.
Norfolk’s forty-second annual 
Although we speak of the internet as being in “the cloud,” an 
French-born swimmer 
I am aware of only one man who was praised by both Eisenhower and Hitler. A 
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