Photo: Will Van Dorp
The Newtown Creek was recently sold at auction. At 324′ long and 49.6′ wide, she is a lovely coastal tanker that traversed New York harbor’s waters for close to a half century. For a vessel of her size and type, I always found the Newtown Creek to be particularly attractive. With relatively fine lines, a sharp bow, and a grey hull with rub rails that made the ship seem longer and sleeker than she was, it was perhaps even more pleasing that her appearance didn’t give away her job, which was carrying sewage sludge from various points around the harbor. Many of us, however, did not call her a sewage tanker or even a sludge tanker, but preferred the more delicate term “honey tanker.” The name is adapted from the US Army trucks that used to empty latrines. The trucks were called sarcastically, “honey wagons.” So, calling the Newtown Creek a “honey tanker” seemed to fit, both for her cargo and because, at least to some eyes, she was a sweet little ship.
Last May we posted about the donation of the schooner 64’5″ Fiddler’s Dream to the 
In my new novel, 
What should a ghost ship be made of? Why not water, wind and light? That is precisely what the designers at the Romanian Art collective 
The hospital ship 
One of the more interesting questions about Louis Jordan’s ordeal is “why didn’t he drift farther north on the Gulf Stream?” Jordan was dismasted in his Alberg 35 sailboat, named Angel, somewhere off the North Carolina coast in January and drifted for 66 days until he was spotted by a German container ship roughly 200 miles east of the North Carolina shore. Jordan was somewhat north of where he entered the Atlantic but the primary direction that his boat drifted, dismasted and with a damaged rudder, was easterly. How is this possible?
A 
These days just about anything with a mast or two is called a “tall ship.” Some are and many are not. One ship that definitely qualifies is Rhode Island’s 
This would be funny, if it weren’t sad. Last week the German container ship, 
On Monday, the 
Dalniy Vostok