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 
In October of last year, 
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. 
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, 
Last July, we posted about 
We recently 
Until a few days ago, everything seemed promising for the award-winning UK yacht builder 
In 2016, we posted about a 
This morning around 8:32 a.m. an alert went out over an AccuWeather app to cell phones from the Gulf Coast to Maine — “Severe Weather Alert: Tsunami Warning … in Effect Until 9:48 AM ET. ” Fortunately, no massive wave was inbound for the East Coast.