The Costa Concordia has begun her final voyage from the Tuscan island of Giglio to the scrapyard in Genoa, Italy, the port city where the ill-fated cruise ship was built. The ship sank and partially capsized in January 2012 after striking a reef. Thirty two passengers and crew died. Read more here. Thanks to David for contributing to this post.
Celebration in Giglio as Costa Concordia heads for scrapheap
Yoo Byung-eun
Last April, we posted about the capsizing and sinking of the South Korean ro/ro ferry Sewol with the loss of over 300, dead and missing. Yoo Byung-eun, the effective owner and manager of Chonghaejin Marine Company, which operated the ferry, had been the subject of the country’s largest man-hunt since a Korean court issued an arrest warrant for him in May, on charges of embezzlement, breach of trust and tax evasion. That man-hunt ended with the announcement today that a body found on June 12 by a farmer in an apricot orchard in Suncheon, had finally been identified by DNA testing as Mr. Yoo.
The sinking of the ferry Sewol was tragically typical of similar ferry losses. The vessel appears to have been poorly loaded, sailed with inadequate stability and with cargo not properly secured. When the ferry began to capsize the captain was slow to respond, the crew failed to deploy life rafts and also instructed passengers to stay in the cabin — all actions that are believed to have dramatically increased the death rate.
If the ferry tragedy was typical, the ferry’s owner was not. Continue reading
PortSide New York, the organization behind the historic tanker Mary A. Whalen, is having an amazing marine hardware fundraising sale. From their press release:
If you think a full-sized bollard makes the perfect doorstop, or that a collection of shackles is the centerpiece your table is lacking, or you just need turnbuckles (you know who you are), we have an event for you!
PortSide NewYork has three tractor-trailers filled with industrial marine objects, and everything must go. Bring cash or credit card, and haul away your favorite or much-needed marine items – just make sure to top up the air in your tires.
Isabelle Autissier is a French sailor who has sailed around the world four times. In this TED talk, she shares some of what she has learned about life and living from the sailing the world’s oceans. She speaks of the importance of observing, understanding, and adapting to what nature gives, rather than trying to overpower the forces of the natural world. Definitely worth watching.
Two years ago we posted about how a team of scientists at the Texas A&M University Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation were using freeze-drying to preserve large sections of French explorer’s Robert LaSalle’s flagship, La Belle, which sank in Matagorda Bay in 1686. Now, the preserved sections of the ship are being moved from their labs in Bryan, TX to the Bullock Texas State History Museum, in Austin, TX.
In 1995, archaeologists discovered the wreckage of La Belle. The lower portion of the hull had been preserved from decay by being covered in mud. Excavating the hull risked immediate damage once the waterlogged timbers were exposed to the air. The team at Texas A& M used the biggest freeze-drying machine on the continent devoted to archaeology to prevent the three hundred year old wood from shrinking and cracking.
A few days ago, a trailer was posted on the internet for a four part documentary television series called, “No Ordinary Women.” The voice over for the trailer begins, “‘No Ordinary Women’ is the story about eleven women ready to do something that has never been done before. They will sail around the world in the Volvo Ocean Race, the toughest race there is.”
The only problem is that the voice-over implies that eleven women sailing around the world in the Volvo Ocean Race is “something that has never been done before.” The same theme has been picked up in other media sources. The Telegraph comments: “Ladies first: for the first time the Volvo Ocean race will have an all-female crew.” It makes for good copy, but simply isn’t true. The eleven women sailing for TeamSCA will be the third boat in the race with an all female crew.
Trailer “No ordinary women” – About Team SCA and their road towards the Volvo Ocean Race 2014-15
Stamp commemorating Floki and his ravens
The crows nest, as a shelter for the lookout on whaling ships sailing the icy waters of the Arctic, was by all indications, invented by Captain William Scoresby around 1807. (See yesterday’s post: Crow’s Nests : Part 1 — Melville & Captain Scoresby.) Nevertheless, many claim that the crow’s nest dates back much further. According to the “Origins of Naval Terminology” page on the America’s Navy website, the crow’s nest can be traced back to the Vikings. Their entry “crow’s nest” reads:
The raven, or crow, was an essential part of the Vikings’ navigation equipment. These land-lubbing birds were carried on aboard to help the ship’s navigator determine where the closest land lay when weather prevented sighting the shore. In cases of poor visibility, a crow was released and the navigator plotted a course corresponding to the bird’s flight path because the crow invariably headed towards land.
The Norsemen carried the birds in a cage secured to the top of the mast. Later on, as ships grew and the lookout stood his watch in a tub located high on the main mast, the name “crow’s nest” was given to this tub. While today’s Navy still uses lookouts in addition to radars, etc., the crow’s nest is a thing of the past.
“The Arctic Expedition — the Crow’s Nest” 1875
The first of a two-part post on crows nests. Who would have thought that a crow’s nest deserves such attention?
A reader commented on the lack of a crow’s nest in the video of the Charles W. Morgan under sail that we posted over the weekend. While whaling ships and crow’s nests are closely associated in modern culture, most American whaling ships did not fit crow’s nests for their lookouts. The lookouts on the Charles W. Morgan probably watched for whales standing in open iron hoops.
The first crow’s nest is credited to Captain William Scoresby Snr., who said to have invented the barrel like shelter for whale ship lookouts in Arctic waters in 1807. William Scoresby and his son of the same name sailed from Whitby in North Yorkshire, UK, in the Greenland whale fishery. Before the introduction of the crow’s nest, also apparently known as a “hurricane house,” sailors made their own shelters of canvas. Here is Captain William Scoresby, Jr., son of Captain William Scoresby, Snr, describing the evolution of the crow’s nest. (He notably seems less concerned with the welfare of the sailors standing watch than he does the captain, who must also spend time at the masthead, from time to time.)
Congratulations to Joan Druett! Her crime thriller, The Beckoning Ice, the fifth of her Wiki Coffin series of maritime mysteries, is one of the longlisted titles for the 2014 Ngaio Marsh Award. We reviewed The Beckoning Ice in December 2012. An excerpt from that review:
The Beckoning Ice is part nautical adventure, part murder mystery, and part thriller, as well as thoroughly researched historical fiction. A multi-award winning nautical historian and novelist, Joan Druett brings a historian’s eye for detail and a novelist’s imagination, sense of character, plot and pacing to the novel. The tension only keeps building and the actions never waivers. The Beckoning Ice is a marvelous read. Highly recommended.
Two and a half years ago, the cruise ship Costa Concordia ran aground, sank and capsized with the loss of 32 passengers and crew, off the island of Giglio in the Tyrrhenian Sea off Tuscany. This morning, the ship was re-floated as salvors pumped compressed air into 30 large steel tanks welded to both side of the stricken ship. In roughly a week, the cruise ship will be towed to Genoa to be scrapped. The salvage of the Costa Concordia, which has cost $1 billion dollars, is one the largest salvage operations ever performed.
Today is the 155th anniversary of the birth of Captain William Thomas Shorey, a famous captain in the last days of whaling, who was affectionately nicknamed “Black Ahab” by his crew. Shorey was born in Barbados in 1859 and ran away to sea as a young man. He learned navigation from a British ship captain and became a ship’s officer by the age of 21. After only a decade at sea, he rose to command whaling ships sailing out of San Francisco.
In 1886 Shorey married Julia Ann Shelton, daughter of one of the leading black families in San Francisco. Together they had five children and Captain Shorey occasionally took his family to sea with him. Captain Shorey was known as a skilled and lucky captain. Nicknamed “Black Ahab,” unlike Melville’s captain, Shorey had a reputation for “happy ships” and as a captain that brought his ships and crews home safely. Returning to port in 1907 after surviving two typhoons, the crew testified that “nothing but Captain Shorey’s coolness and clever seamanship saved [it from] a wreck.”
As the whaling industry collapsed with the advent of cheap petroleum, Shorey retired from whaling in 1908. He died in the Spanish flue pandemic of 1919 at the age of 60.
What a wonderful juxtaposition. The whaling ship Charles W. Morgan, built in 1841, and recently rebuilt by the Mystic Seaport Museum, sailing with humpback whales as they migrate across Stellwagen Bank off Massachusetts. No harpoons were in evidence and the whales did not seem threatened in the slightest by one of the more successful whale ships of her day.
New London’s Sailfest kicked off yesterday and will continue through Sunday, Jul 13th. It is billed as Southeastern Connecticut’s premier summertime event attracting over 300,000 people over the three-day festival. The festival features a major fireworks display, amusement rides, and over 200 vendors lining the downtown streets. Sailfest produces multiple stages of free entertainment with musical genres ranging in Rock, Celtic, Hip Hop, and Blues. Kids enjoy free shows at the City Pier stage. Sailfest also showcases the 4th largest fireworks display in the Northeast, sponsored by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation. It is unclear whether the schooner Amistad will be attending. Saturday – 10:00am-11:00pm & Sunday – 9:00am-6:00pm.
Yang-sui, in a need of a good polishing
One of the great stories from ancient history is of Archimedes Burning Mirrors. Legend has it that Archimedes designed a series of curved mirrors to reflect and focus the rays of the sun and that these mirrors were used to set a fleet of Roman ships on fire during the Siege of Syracuse in 214–212 BC. Historians have often dismissed the story as a fanciful folk-tale. In January of this year, however, we posted of a modern, if accidental version of the burning mirrors in the form of London’s “Walkie Scorchie,” a glass office tower whose curved surface has been reflecting focussed sunlight, and has melted cars and fried eggs on the sidewalk. A month later we also posted about a very intentional version of the “burning mirrors” at the Ivanpah Solar Thermal Power Facility, which is currently the world’s largest solar thermal power system.
Recently, author John Perlin wrote the discovery of Bronze Age Chinese hand-sized “burning mirrors” in his book Let It Shine: The 6,000-Year Story of Solar Energy. Perlin writes: During the sixth century BCE, Confucius wrote about the common use of curved mirrors shaped from shiny metal to concentrate the rays of the sun for making fire. These became known as yang-suis – translating to solar ignitors, or burning mirrors.
Photo: Reena Rose Sibayan/The Jersey Journal
The Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance is hosting its seventh annual City of Water Day festival this Saturday, July 12th, at multiple locations in New York Harbor. Festivities will run from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. This year Hoboken is joining in the fun, hosting free kayak and ferry rides, along with a multitude of children’s activities, concerts and boat tours at Maxwell Place Park. A free ferry between Maxwell Place Park, Paulus Hook in Jersey City and Governors Island will make five round-trip journeys throughout the day. No tickets are required, but all passengers must disembark at every stop.
I believe that this is the first straight-out restaurant review that we have done on the Old Salt Blog. Then again the Grand Banks Oyster Bar on the schooner Sherman Zwicker is not your typical restaurant. Sherman Zwicker is a 142′ long wooden auxiliary fishing schooner, originally built in 1942 for dory fishing on the Grand Banks. She is now alongside Hudson River Park’s ‘Pier 25 in Manhattan with an oyster bar named Grand Banks on her deck and a soon-to-open exhibition by New Draft Collective in her hold. The schooner is said to be the largest wooden vessel now afloat in New York.
National Geographic has published breathtaking photographs and video of the Swedish warship Mars, which exploded and sank in the first battle of Öland in 1564. Because the ship sank in the dark, cold waters of the Baltic Sea, where the water is brackish and contains relatively little oxygen near the bottom, the ship is amazingly well preserved.
The Mars was believed to be one of the largest ships of her day. When the ship sank she carried a fortune in silver coins, as well as 800 to 900 sailors, all of which ended at the bottom. The wreck of the Mars has long been sought after. There is a legend that a specter rose from the inferno when Mars sank, to guard the ship against ever being discovered. After 450 years, perhaps the legendary specter has retired. At least one silver coin has been recovered. Also numerous bones have been found at the wreck site from the ill-fated sailors and soldiers who went down with the ship. There is video of the shipwreck after the page break.
HMS Pickle is for sale on Ebay, with a minimum opening bid of £69,500.00, no reserve and five days left in the auction. The topsail schooner is a replica of the first ship to bring the news of Nelson’s great victory and tragic death at Trafalgar back to England.
We last posted about HMS Pickle when she was for sale back in 2008 when the asking price was £350,000.00. From the Seller’s Notes of Ebay: “Pickle is in need of some work to bring her up to scratch.” Apparently while in good shape below the waterline, the schooner needs a few new deck planks and beams. Click here to learn more.
Attack victim being carried through surf
This weekend, Steven Robles, 40, was swimming off Manhattan Beach in Southern California on Saturday morning when he was attacked by a juvenile 7′ long great white shark. He suffered a single bite wound on the right side of his rib cage and was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center and then released to recover at home. If that was the entire story, it would be easy just to write it off as an another example of how dangerous great whites can be. The story ends up being a bit more complicated, however.
An amazing video of Hannah Whiteley kiteboarding in South Africa from Scuttlebutt Sailing News. Enjoy.