A 30′ long stump of what is probably a hemlock tree has been floating vertically, bobbing up and down, in Crater Lake, in south-central Oregon in the western United States, for more than 120 years. How much longer it has been floating, no one knows. Carbon dating suggests that the log is around 450 years old. The floating stump has been given the name the Old Man of the Lake.
Joseph S. Diller, the first geologist to study crater lake near the turn of the 20th century, described the floating tree stump in a report dated 1896. About 30′ long overall and two feet in diameter at the waterline, the stump floats about four feet above the water. It is buoyant enough to support a person’s weight. Why has the log floated vertically for so long? No one really knows.
Yesterday, we posted about four barrels of rum from Lunenburg’s 
When the barque 
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.