Tragedy in the Mozambique Channel — Two Sailors Found Dead in Possible Pirate Attack

Posted on by December 4, 2025

Australian sailor Deirdre “Cookie” Sibly, 67, and French sailor Pascal Mahe have been found dead on the yacht Acteon, sailing in the Mozambique Channel, around 200 miles north east of Beira, Mozambique.  Acteon is a 50-foot sloop registered in France. The pair, both described by relatives and friends as highly capable mariners, had left Reunion Island in June with the intention of reaching South Africa, stopping in Durban before continuing to Cape Town.

A distress signal was transmitted from the yacht on the evening of Nov 26. A nearby cargo vessel responded and notified French authorities after attempting without success to make contact with those on board. The ship’s crew approached the drifting yacht but could not safely board. That ship was then joined by a cargo ship and a maxi yacht to assist. There was no sign of life on the boat when the first responding ship attempted to make contact.

Sailors from one of those vessels eventually managed to get onto the Acteon on Nov 28 at 10 a.m., where they discovered the bodies of a man and a woman. 

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Trump Regime Attempting to Scapegoat Admiral For Illegal Second Strike on Venezuelan Boat

Posted on by December 2, 2025

The criminal clown circus that is the Trump regime continues to spin out of control with lethal consequences.

The Washington Post reports that during an attack on an unidentified Venezuelan vessel on September 2, the US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a spoken directive “to kill everybody,” according to two people with direct knowledge of the operation.

After an initial rocket attack on the craft left two survivors clinging to the burning wreckage, the Special Operations commander overseeing the — the opening salvo in the Trump administration’s war on suspected drug traffickers in the Western Hemisphere — ordered a second strike to comply with Hegseth’s instructions. The two men were blown apart in the water.

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Trump Ready to Pardon Honduran Drug Kingpin While Threatening a War With Venezuela

Posted on by December 1, 2025

President Trump is threatening to start a war with Venezuela, allegedly to counter drug trafficking to the United States. At the same time, the would-be king has announced his intention to pardon the notorious drug kingpin and former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández. In a Federal Court last year prosecutors argued that Hernández “paved a cocaine superhighway to the United States.” Hernández was convicted of flooding the US with more than 500 tons of cocaine and was sentenced to 45 years in prison. 

Venezuela, by contrast, is not considered an important player in drug production, even though it allows cartels to use the country as a transit point.

Trump has also ordered attacks on Venezuelan and Colombian boats alleged to be running drugs into the United States. In these attacks, at least 83 people have been killed in 21 strikes on 22 vessels. Eleven of these vessels were in the Caribbean Sea and 11 in the Eastern Pacific. Secretary of Defense Hegseth ordered the military to “kill them all.”

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Trump Threatens to Execute Veteran Lawmakers for Calling on Military to Follow the Law

Posted on by December 2, 2025

Last week, Sen. Mark Kelly, Sen. Elissa Slotkin, and House Reps. Jason Crow, Maggie Goodlander,and Chris Deluzio and Chrissy Houlahan filmed a short PSA video message to members of the military. Each of the lawmakers is a veteran of the military or intelligence communities. 

Their message was simple and direct — “You can refuse illegal orders. You must refuse illegal orders.”

The message was nothing new or even controversial. It was taken directly from the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), in which service members are required to obey lawful orders but must refuse orders that are patently illegal. An illegal order is one that violates the Constitution, US laws, or international law, or directs the commission of a crime or unethical act, such as war crimes or the intentional harming of civilians. Refusing an illegal order is a duty, and obeying one can result in criminal prosecution. 

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Thanksgiving Repost — Whaling Ships, Sarah Josepha Hale, Mary’s Lamb & a Liberty Ship

Posted on by November 26, 2025

Happy Thanksgiving to those on this side of the pond and below the 49th parallel. (The Canadians celebrated the holiday in October.)

What do whaling ships, a child’s nursery rhyme, a female magazine editor, and Abraham Lincoln have to do with Thanksgiving? An updated repost.

Until the Civil War, Thanksgiving was a sporadically celebrated regional holiday.  Today, Thanksgiving is one of the central creation myths associated with the founding of the United States, although it is not universally admired. The story is based on an account of a one-time feast of thanksgiving in the Plymouth colony of Massachusetts during a period of atypically good relations with local tribes. 

The actual history of what happened in 1621 bears little resemblance to what most Americans are taught in grade school, historians say. There was likely no turkey served. There were no feathered headdresses worn. And, initially, there was no effort by the Pilgrims to invite the local Native American tribe to the feast they’d made possible.

Thanksgiving only became a national holiday in 1863.  Before the celebration spread across the country, Thanksgiving was most popular in New England. On 19th-century American whaling ships, which sailed from New England ports, they celebrated only the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Of the three holidays, Thanksgiving may have been the most popular. On Norfolk Island in the Pacific, they also celebrate Thanksgiving, the holiday brought to the island by visiting American whaling ships.

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Voyage of the Mayflower II, 1957

Posted on by November 26, 2025

Happy Thanksgiving!

On Thanksgiving eve, here is a short video of the voyage of the Mayflower II across the Atlantic in 1957, under the command of Captain Alan Villiers. The reproduction was built in Devon, England, during 1955–1956, in a collaboration between Englishman Warwick Charlton and the Plimoth Patuxet Museum. The work drew upon reconstructed ship blueprints held by the American museum, along with hand construction by English shipbuilders using traditional methods.

Voyage of the Mayflower II, 1957

The Threat of Russian Spy Ship Yantar in UK Waters

Posted on by November 21, 2025

The Russian ship Yantar has aimed lasers at the crews of UK Royal Air Force aircraft in waters off the north of Scotland. While the Yantar has been a worrying presence around critical undersea infrastructure for years now, this development represents a concerning escalation by the Russians.

The Yantar is officially an oceanographic research vessel. As it is bristling with surveillance equipment as well as serving as the mother ship for manned and unmanned deep-sea submersibles, it could more accurately be described as a spy ship. It is believed to be surveying the seabed and mapping vital undersea infrastructure.

The submersibles are believed to be able to sever communications cables and to damage pipelines miles beneath the ocean’s surface. The Yantar has been lingering in the waters around the UK and Ireland for the last year. 

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Loose Wire on Container Ship Dali Caused Blackouts, Resulting in Key Bridge Tragedy

Posted on by November 19, 2025

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said that a single loose wire on the 984-foot-long container ship MV Dali caused an electrical blackout that led to the 10,000 TEU ship veering and contacting the nearby Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, which then collapsed, killing six highway workers. 

On March 26, 2024, at about 0129 local time, the 984-foot-long Singapore-flagged container ship MV Dali was transiting out of Baltimore Harbor when it experienced losses of electrical power, propulsion, and steering.. The ship struck Pier 17, the southern pier that supported the central span of the Francis Scott Key Bridge.

Investigators found that the pilots and the bridge team attempted to change the vessel’s trajectory, but the loss of propulsion so close to the bridge rendered their actions ineffective. A substantial portion of the bridge subsequently collapsed into the river, and portions of the pier, deck, and truss spans collapsed onto the vessel’s bow and forward-most container bays.

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Search Ends for Royal Fleet Auxiliary Sailor Missing Off Irish Coast

Posted on by November 16, 2025

The search for a crew member who was lost overboard from the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) tanker Tidesurge, off the north-west coast of the Republic of Ireland, has ended without finding any sign of the missing sailor.

First Sea Lord General Sir Gwyn Jenkins said in a statement that “after an extensive search for a missing crew member of a Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship’s company, the individual has not been found and the search has been ended.”

He added that “my thoughts are with the family and friends of those involved in this tragedy and I would like to thank all those in the Royal Navy, the RNLI and Irish Coast Guard who took part in the search and rescue with such determined efforts.”

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Phoney Admiral, Festooned with Medals, Arrested at Remembrance Sunday Event in Wales

Posted on by November 15, 2025

While it is often said that the British Royal Navy has more admirals than warships, the claim is a misleading simplification. It all depends on how one defines “admirals” and “warships.”

In recent years, the Royal Navy has employed around 40 admirals serving in various capacities. Many of these officers, however, hold non-seagoing, administrative, or international diplomatic positions. Defining the rank of admiral more narrowly, there are roughly 14 officers of the rank of Rear Admiral and above serving in the Navy command.

The Royal Navy is currently operating a fleet of around 17-18 major surface combatants (destroyers and frigates). The number of ships rises to over 70 vessels when fleet submarines, mine countermeasures vessels, patrol ships, and various support vessels are included in the count. So the “more admirals than warships” claim is true only if one defines “admirals” broadly and “warships” rather narrowly.

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The Cost of Denial as Sea Levels Rising Faster Than at Any Time in the Last 4,000 Years

Posted on by November 15, 2025

In 2012, the North Carolina state legislature believed it had found the solution to the rising sea levels along its Atlantic coast. They would simply ignore it. They passed a law requiring government planning boards to use predictions of sea level rise based on linear projections from 1900. The increase in sea levels due to climate change would not only be ignored, but it would also be made illegal for land use planning purposes.

Guess what? It didn’t work. In the last five years, at least 27 houses in North Carolina’s Outer Banks have collapsed due to coastal erosion, strong storms, and rising sea levels. 18 of these collapses occurred during 2024 and 2025.

And it only gets worse. In 2024, a group of federal, state, and local officials released a report on managing threatened oceanfront structures, which found that 750 of nearly 8,800 oceanfront structures in North Carolina are at risk of oceanfront erosion. The report acknowledges that the issue “will inevitably worsen considering sea level rise forecasts.” Notably, the report does not mention climate change at all in its 20 pages.

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Ro-Ro Finnwave Catches Fire in English Channel

Posted on by November 13, 2025

A fire broke out in the early hours of Wednesday, November 12, in the engine room of the Finnwave (IMO: 9468932) in the English Channel, approximately 11 nautical miles southeast of Eastbourne, England. The 217.5-meter-long, 14509-dwt Finnish-flag Ro-Ro cargo vessel was bound to Zeebrugge from Rosslare when the fire broke out. The crew sent out a distress call with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) responding.

The crew was able to extinguish the fire without reported injuries, but was unable to restart the engine following the fire.  The ship’s crew was aided by a rescue boat from the RNLI Eastbourne station. The lifeboat arrived on scene and stood by while the Finnwave dropped anchor. 

Once Finnwave‘s anchor was secured, the Solent Coastguard cleared the RNLI rescue boat to return to base. No pollution or further damage has been reported, but an investigation into the cause of the engine fire is underway.

Murder on the High Seas — Trump Continues Illegal Attacks on Alleged Drug Smugglers

Posted on by November 7, 2025

The Trump regime continues its bloody attacks on alleged drug smuggling boats off the coast of South America.  Since the attacks began on September 1, the US Navy has killed at least 69 people on 18 vessels—10 in the Caribbean and 8 in the Pacific.

President Trump justifies the attacks by saying the United States is in an “armed conflict” with drug cartels and vowing to “destroy Venezuelan terrorists and trafficking networks.” Nevertheless the Trump regime has not provided any positive identification of those killed, nor evidence that the boats were carrying drugs. Neither have they sought congressional approval as constitutionally required.

This body count off South America compares to the killing of 18 merchant mariners by Houthi rebels in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden since 2023. The Trump regime has killed almost four times as many civilians in two months as the Houthi terrorists killed in over two years.

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Passenger on Expedition Cruise Ship Dies After Being Left Behind on Remote Island

Posted on by November 2, 2025

On October 24, the expedition cruise ship Coral Adventurer set sail from Cairns on a 60-day luxury voyage around Australia. One day later, at the ship’s first stop, at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef, things went tragically wrong. Suzanne Rees, an 80-year-old passenger, died after the ship sailed, leaving her alone on the remote island.

Passengers on the ship were offered snorkeling and island hiking excursions. Rees joined a hike to Cook’s Look, a lookout on top of a hill named after Captain James Cook, who passed by the island in 1770. 

The hike is described in a cruise brochure as  “a very difficult hike requiring a high level of fitness and good balance“. It was a hot and humid day — about 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit). While on the climb, Suzanne Rees felt ill and was asked to head back down to the ship, unescorted.

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Neoliner Origin, World’s First Commercial Sailing Ro/Ro, Completes Challenging Trans-Atlantic Voyage

Posted on by October 31, 2025

The world’s first commercial sailing ro/ro, the 136-meter Neoliner Origin, arrived in the Port of Baltimore on October 30, 2025, completing a challenging trans-Atlantic maiden voyage from Saint-Nazaire, France.  

According to Neoline, two days into the voyage, the top panel on the aft main sail, one of the ship’s four sails, was damaged during a severe Atlantic storm. The Neoliner Origin continued its journey in hybrid mode, sailing on the undamaged forward mast sails along with its diesel-electric engine power. 

Technicians were flown to Saint Pierre and Miquelon, a French archipelago south of the Canadian island of Newfoundland, to assist with the sail repairs before it proceeded to Baltimore.

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