Apex Boats — the Unlikely and Dangerous Naval Drones of World War II’s Operation Dragoon

Posted on by August 18, 2024

Apex boat, Operation Dragoon

Based on the recent conflicts in the Black Sea and the Red Sea, it appears highly likely that the future of maritime warfare will be shaped by the use of naval drones. This made me wonder when the first naval drones were used in combat.

To the best of my knowledge, the first naval drones used in combat were the Apex boats used in Operation Dragoon, the Allied amphibious landing in the South of France during World War II, eighty years ago last week.

These drones were modified radio-controlled landing craft, loaded to capacity with high explosives, intended to be used to clear beach obstacles and mines. The Apex boats were moderately successful yet proved at times to be almost as dangerous to the Allied soldiers and sailors as they were to the Nazi defenders.

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Lost Wreck of WW1 Warship HMS Hawke Found in ‘Remarkable’ Condition

Posted on by August 17, 2024

The BBC reports that the wreck discovered off the Aberdeenshire coast is believed to be the lost Royal Navy warship HMS Hawke sunk by a torpedo during World War One.

The wreck of the Edgar-class protected cruiser was discovered by a team of divers about 70 miles east of Fraserburgh earlier this week in “remarkable” condition.

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Young Humpback Whale in Boston Harbor Briefly Delays Ferry Service

Posted on by August 15, 2024

The  Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) said Wednesday that a juvenile humpback whale swimming and breaching in Boston Harbor may cause minor delays to ferry service through Thursday, August 15.

CBSNews reports that the 2-year-old whale, estimated to be between 35 and 40 feet long, has been in Boston Harbor since the end of July. It likely followed prey into the harbor, explained Linnea Mayfield, the naturalist manager for Boston Harbor City Cruises. 

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US Coast Guard Can’t Crew All Its Ships Due to Recruiting Shortage

Posted on by August 12, 2024

Last week, US Coast Guard Vice Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday spoke at the Brookings Institution and addressed the service’s enlisted force’s ongoing 10 percent manning shortage.  Entering the fiscal year, the Coast Guard was about 3,000 members short of end strength numbers. “That’s the backbone of the Coast Guard,” Lunday said.

Due to the shortfall, the Coast Guard “can’t crew all our ships” and has had to “temporarily shutter some of our smaller stations,” the vice commandant said.

“We had to lay up three of our major cutters because we don’t have enough enlisted personnel to crew them.” Since the action, the service has shifted funds from other parts of the budget to bolster recruiting and retention.

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Boaty McBoatface Returns From 55 Day Undersea Voyage

Posted on by August 11, 2024

Boaty McBoatface, referred to as the UK’s most famous robot, recently returned to Scotland after 55 days on a more-than-2,000km undersea scientific odyssey from Iceland, studying the pace of climate change. 

BBC reports that the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) was hunting for marine snow – “poo, basically” in the words of one researcher. This refers to tiny particles that sink to the ocean floor, storing huge amounts of carbon.

The deep ocean, referred to as the “twilight zone”, is enormously mysterious. Acting as the eyes and ears of the scientists, Boaty went there on the longest journey yet for its class of submarine. 

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Fire & Explosion on Container Ship YM Mobility Berthed in Ningbo, China

Posted on by August 9, 2024

Containers caught fire and exploded on the 6,589 TEU YM Mobility today at around 1:40 PM, local time, while berthed at the Port of Ningbo, China. A statement by Yang Ming, the ship’s operator, said that preliminary findings suggest that an explosion occurred in a container loaded with dangerous goods on board. Immediate fire-fighting measures have been taken at the scene, the fire has been brought under control

China Central Television (CCTV), citing preliminary findings from authorities, said the goods included lithium batteries and tert-Butyl peroxybenzoate, an organic compound that is flammable and explosive and should not be stored in an environment over 30C (86F), as reported by Reuters. 

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Great Barrier Reef Threatened by Highest Ocean Heat in 400 Years

Posted on by August 8, 2024

In a new study, published in the journal Nature, scientists say that sea surface temperatures over the past decade in and around Australia’s Great Barrier Reef are the highest on record for 400 years. The study concludes that these increased temperatures, driven by climate change, now pose an “existential threat” to the vast coral reef.

Extreme heat has caused five mass coral bleaching events in the past nine years alone.

“The science tells us that the Great Barrier Reef is in danger – and we should be guided by the science,” Prof Helen McGregor, from the University of Wollongong, told BBC News.

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Cocaine Worth $1 Million Swept Ashore in Florida Keys by Hurricane Debby

Posted on by August 7, 2024

Hurricane Debby brought high winds and storm surge as it traveled up and ultimately came ashore on the Gulf Coast of Florida. It also washed packages of cocaine worth more than $1 million ashore in Islamorada in the Florida Keys, officials said.

Debby, which slammed into the state as a Category 1 hurricane but has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, washed the drugs ashore in the Florida Keys, U.S. Border Patrol acting chief patrol Agent Samuel Briggs II wrote on social media.
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Unexpected Cetacean Spectator in Olympic Surfing Competition in Tahiti

Posted on by August 6, 2024

Most of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games have been held in Paris. The surfing competition, however, took place some 9,800 miles from Paris in the French Polynesian island of Tahiti. 

NPR reports that while Brazil’s Tatiana Weston-Webb and Costa Rica’s Brisa Hennessy were waiting for waves in the surfing semifinals, they spotted an unexpected spectator — a humpback whale breaching not far offshore.

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Update: A23a, the Iceberg “That Refuses to Die,” Caught in Antarctic Vortex

Posted on by August 4, 2024

In January, we posted about an iceberg designated A23a, the world’s largest, which had begun to drift on the Antarctic Circumpolar Current into “iceberg alley.” As it drifted, it was being eroded by waves and melting in the relatively warmer waters of the Southern Ocean. The impact of the waves carved huge arches and caves in the 400-meter-high walls of the iceberg.

The expectations were that the berg would continue to melt as it drifted and would begin to break up, with luck, missing the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia.  

Instead, A23a went precisely nowhere, as reported by the BBC. It remains in place just north of South Orkney Islands, turning in an anti-clockwise direction by about 15 degrees a day. And as long as it does this, its decay and eventual demise will be delayed.

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More Baltic Bubbly — 100 Sealed Bottles of Champagne Discovered in 19th Century Shipwreck

Posted on by August 1, 2024

A team of Polish divers discovered the wreck of a 19th-century vessel laden with about 100 sealed bottles of champagne.  The shipwreck is in the Baltic Sea in 60 meters of water about 20 nautical miles south of the Swedish island of Öland.

“I think we have a treasure,” Tomasz Stachura, leader of the Polish diving group Baltictech, posted to Facebook after the team’s July 11 discovery.

Stachura, who specializes in underwater photography, said the ship was in “very good condition” and “brimming with historical treasures, including crates of champagne, baskets of mineral water and porcelain,” according to the Washington Post.

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Scientists Discover “Dark Oxygen” on the Deep Ocean Floor

Posted on by August 1, 2024

A bed of manganese nodules offshore of the Cook Islands

About half the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean.  It was long presumed that this oceanic oxygen was produced by photosynthesis, the process by which green plants use sunlight to synthesize foods by absorbing carbon dioxide and water, emitting oxygen as a byproduct. For at least a decade, however, researchers have observed significant levels of oxygen in the dark, deep ocean, far too deep for sunlight to reach and therefore too deep for photosynthesis.

New research published in the journal Nature Geoscience reveals that nature has devised a way to produce oxygen without the involvement of plants. It’s “an amazing and unexpected finding,” Daniel Jones, a researcher at the National Oceanography Center in the United Kingdom who wasn’t involved in the study, tells CNN’s Katie Hunt.

Rather than relying on sunlight and plants, the new research concluded that “dark oxygen” is being produced in the deep ocean, apparently by electrolysis involving lumps of metal on the seafloor.

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Sperm Whale Killed by Ship in Strait of Gibraltar

Posted on by July 31, 2024

The whale’s severe injury was apparent in footage captured shortly after the incident. Photo: CIRCE

Yesterday, we posted about the sinking of the British sailing yacht Bonhomme William last week, following an attack by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar. Fortunately, the crew were rescued without injury. 

Two days later, a sperm whale encountered a ship with a more tragic outcome. According to the BBC, the endangered sperm whale – nicknamed Julio by scientists – was killed in a collision with a vessel in the busy Strait of Gibraltar.

Researchers say this is the fifth sperm whale to die after being struck by a ship since they started monitoring the population in the area more than 10 years ago.

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New Orca Attacks — Yachts Sunk Off Gibraltar & Damaged Off Coast of Brittany

Posted on by July 29, 2024

The mystifying attacks on sailboats by a pod of Iberian orcas continue.

The crew of the British yacht Bonhomme William had to be rescued after an orca sank their vessel in the Strait of Gibraltar, according to Spanish authorities. It is the latest in a long-running series of “interactions” between orcas and midsize sailing yachts off the coast of Spain.

Maritime Executive reports that the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre at Tarifa received a distress call from the yacht Bonhomme William on Wednesday night. The crew reported that their vessel had been disabled by orcas, which had hit it several times, and was adrift about two miles off Punta Camarinal in the strait’s western entrance.

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Robert L. Allen, Chronicler and Champion of Black Sailors in Port Chicago Disaster & Mutiny, Dies at 82

Posted on by July 28, 2024

Robert L. Allen, who definitively told the story of 50 Black sailors who were convicted of conspiracy to commit mutiny for refusing to continue to load munitions onto cargo ships after explosions had blown apart two ships at a California port during World War II, died on July 10 at his home in Benicia, in Northern California. He was 82.

On July 17, 1944, two ships being loaded with munitions in Port Chicago, California exploded. Over 4,000 tons of bombs, shells, depth charges, and fuel erupted in two shock waves that were felt by seismographs at the University of California, Berkeley. The second, larger shock wave was equivalent to a 3.4 magnitude earthquake. The calamity killed 320 people of which 220 were black seamen.

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