How should we think about the RMS Titanic? Was the ship, which sank with a loss of over 1,500, a major maritime tragedy? Or was it just the backdrop for a historical drama about wealth and class conflict – a sort of Downton Abbey on the North Atlantic? The questions came to mind when Australian billionaire Clive Palmer unveiled his plans for building Titanic II, a near replica to the ill-fated Titanic, with more lifeboats and at least one fewer iceberg. His vision of the ship, which he plans to have built in China and be in service by 2016, seems to lean decidedly toward historical melodrama.
Late Monday, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the anti-whaling extremists and reality TV show stars, the Sea Shepherds, are indeed pirates. In his ruling, Judge Alex Kozinski wrote: ” When you ram ships, hurl glass containers of acid, drag metal-reinforced ropes in the water to damage propellers and rudders, launch smoke bombs and flares with hooks; and point high-powered lasers at other ships, you are, without a doubt, a pirate… The activities that Cetacean [the Japanese whalers] alleges Sea Shepherd has engaged in are clear instances of violent acts for private ends, the very embodiment of piracy.”
Alaric Bond & Seymour Hamilton
Seymour Hamilton recently sat down for a trans-Atlantic interview with Alaric Bond. They discussed Bond’s Fighting Sail series of novels, in particular, and about writing nautical fiction, in general. It was a fascinating conversation. Seymour Hamilton is the author of the nautical fantasy series, The Astreya Trilogy. Alaric Bond has written five excellent novels in his Fighting Sail series. See our review of his latest – Patriot’s Fate.
Click on the arrow below to listen to the interview.
It is generally considered rude to look under a lady’s skirt, though when the lady is a ship in a drydock, it is usually OK. The three masted steel clipper Stad Amsterdam was built in 2000 and now after 13 years of service is undergoing a major overhaul at Damen Shiprepair in Vlissingen, the Netherlands. She should return to service sometime early June. It is a great opportunity to look at the graceful lines of her hull, normally hidden below the waterline. The ship was designed by Gerard Dijkstra who modeled her after the mid-19th century frigate Amsterdam. She has been described as a “modern extreme clipper in historical perspective.” She is a very fast ship capable of sailing along at an easy 15 knots. Video of the Stad Amsterdam under sail after the jump.
In the construction of replica sailing ships, the 18th century is reasonably well represented. The 17th also has not been left out. Replicas of Columbus’ ships have ensured that 15th century replicas still sail. Recently two replica ships from the 16th century have been in the news, one in the planning stages and the other nearly completed.
In around 1556, the Basque whaling ship San Juan sank in Red Bay in Labrador. In 1978, Parks Canada archaeologists discovered the wreck of the 250-ton ship, the oldest European wreck yet discovered in America, north of Florida. As reported by the Ottawa Citizen: The 450-year-old San Juan, a jumble of thick beams and broken barrels lying in shallow waters off the site of a 1560s-era whaling station in the Strait of Belle Isle, is to be resurrected by a team of Spanish maritime heritage experts planning to construct a full-scale, seaworthy replica of the original 16-metre, three-masted vessel.
Photo: Darren Hauck for The New York Time
Another post to be filed in the category “you can’t make this stuff up.” There is an article today on the front page of the New York Times titled, “Dope Tests in Ice Fishing? No, Beer Doesn’t Count.” It reports that after spending a week on a frozen lake, the competitors in the World Ice Fishing Championship all had to provide urine samples to the United States Anti-Doping Agency so that the agency could run tests to detect steroids and growth hormones. As noted by the Times, there are “drugs not normally associated with the quiet solitude of ice fishing.” Unlike in many other sports, competitive cycling comes immediately to mind, the drugs are not likely to help ice fishermen. “Fishing officials puzzled over whether doping would even help anglers jigging for panfish, roughfish and crappie.” The obvious question is why?
Scientists at the University of Birmingham are using drones on loan from NASA and a plane that once belonged to the Queen of England, now outfitted with electronics to study seaweed and climate change. They are studying how climate change is impacting natural processes. One area that they are examining involves chemicals created by seaweed and their impact on the ozone layer. Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the news along.
This year’s nominee from Iceland for best foreign film in the Academy Awards is The Deep (Djúpið) directed by Baltasar Kormákur. The movie is based on a true story. In 1984, a fishing boat sank off the south coast of Iceland. Four of the five fisherman drown in the icy water. Only Guðlaugur Friðþórsson, the 22 year old helmsman, (called Gulli in the film) survived, swimming in the 5° C ocean for a nearly unbelievable six hours and then walking barefoot for another two hours across through ice and snow before finding help. Guðlaugur Friðþórsson became equal parts national hero and scientific oddity. Subsequent MRIs revealed that his body fat was almost like the fat of a seal, several times thicker and two to three times more dense than that of the average male. Perhaps the legend of the selkie is not so far fetched.
For almost a month, the small cruise ship MV Lyubov Orlova has been adrift in the Atlantic Ocean, a “ghost ship” without power, lights or passengers, except for the rats left aboard. The 295′ ice strengthened cruise ship, built in Yugoslavia in 1976, has been abandoned twice – once by her owners in St John’s, Newfoundland in 2010 and once by Transport Canada. The ship was recently spotted drifting over a thousand miles off the coast of Ireland.
The US Coast Guard has wrapped up eight days of hearings on the sinking of the replica of the HMS Bounty on October 29th of last year. Two died in the sinking, crew member Claudine Christian and Captain Robin Waldridge whose body has never been found. The hearings, which were streamed live on-line, were gripping, at times difficult to watch and yet hard to turn away from. For those who missed them, the first several days are posted on Youtube by Wavy TV 10, while days three through eight have been posted on Youtube by Zach Lash.
A wonderful video of the Swedish ship Götheborg sailing in the Roaring Forties. The ship is a replica of the Swedish East Indiaman of the same name which sank in 1747. The ship is described as the world’s largest operational wooden sailing vessel.
Trevor Grill was a self employed builder from Port Isaac on Cornwall’s rugged north coast, who enjoyed getting together with friends to sing sea shanties and folk songs. The group came to call themselves the Port Isaac’s Fisherman’s Friends and they performed at various gigs, from bars to folk festivals, in the area for around fifteen years. Then in 2010, they were thrust into the spotlight when Universal Records offered then a recording contract worth £1 million.
Trevor Gills died earlier this month in an accident at a concert hall in Guildford, Surrey, where he had been due to perform with the Fisherman’s Friends. He was 54. The band’s tour manager, Paul McMullen, also was killed in the accident. Grills is survived by his wife, Lesley, and three sons, Mark, Paul and Josh. Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing along the sad news. Below, Trevor Grills leading the Fisherman’s Friends in “The Last Leviathan.”
A huge group of an estimated 10,000 dolphins was sighted off the coast of San Diego last week. Captain Joe Dutra, of Hornblower Cruises, called the gathering of adult and juvenile common dolphins a “super mega-pod.” Dolphins typically travel in pods of 15 to 200 animals. Last month an unusually large pod of 23 gray whales was also seen migrating off the Southern California coast.
Photo: John David Mercer/AP
In an announcement that raises as many questions as it answers, U.S. Coast Guard marine casualty investigation team leader, Lt. Cmdr. Teresa Hatfield, said in a conference call with reporters that the fuel oil return line in the No. 6 diesel engine on the Carnival Triumph leaked fuel oil onto a hot surface. The leaking fuel oil ignited and caused the fire which disabled the ship, stranding 4,229 passengers and crew. Lt. Cmdr. Hatfield said further than the automatic fire suppression system activated immediately and that the redundant electrical systems kicked in, yet had no explanation why the power was knocked out to the entire ship. There was also no word as to what caused the fuel oil return line to leak. The Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board will likely wrap up their work on the ship by the end of the week. Because the ship is Bahamian flagged, the Bahamas Maritime Authority is leading the inquiry.
The Carnival Splendor suffered a similar disabling black-out in November 2010 after a crankcase explosion on the No. 5 diesel engine caused a fire in the after engine room which disabled the ship. Thanks to Phil Leon for contributing to this post.
U.S. Coast Guard: Carnival Triumph fire sparked by fuel leak
Here is a time-lapse video of the assembly of an ice sculpture of a tall-ship being at Pickering Wharf in Salem, MA last Saturday as part of the 11th annual Salem So Sweet Chocolate and Ice Sculpture Festival. Sadly, the ice ship was partially dis-masted, which is to say, smashed by vandals, on Saturday night. Fortunately, the video remains.
Photo: BRUCE STOTESBURY, Times
Jeanne Socrates, a 70 year old British grandmother, has rounded the Cape of Good Hope on her sailboat, Nereida, in her attempt to become the oldest non-stop solo circumnavigator. She left Victoria, British Columbia in October and successfully rounded Cape Horn in January. She is now setting a course to round Australia’s Cape Leeuwin. This is Ms. Socrates’ third attempt at a solo non-stop circumnavigation. She has already completed two previous solo-circumnavigations but on each needed to put into port for repairs, after a grounding and a knock-down damaged her sailboat. Best of luck Jeanne. No doubt the third time is a charm. Thanks to Sheila and R. Bruce Macdonald for passing along the news. Click here to follow Jeanne’s progress.
Photo: Reuters
A large round hole in the ice of Lake Chebarkul, 80 kilometers west of the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in the Urals, may have been made by a fragment of the meteor which exploded in a massive fireball above the region on Friday. The shockwave from the meteor damaged 4,000 buildings and injured some 1,200 people, mostly from flying glass. Divers are scouring the bottom of Lake Chebarkul looking for fragments of the meteor. Thus far no other fragments have been found from the meteor in the region.
Photo: Deborah Feingold
On Monday, April 8 at 8:00 PM at the New York Academy of Medicine, Rosanne Cash is singing at a benefit concert to help save the schooner Lettie G. Howard.
Rosanne Cash is a gifted, Grammy award winning singer/songwriter and the Lettie G. Howard is an exceptionally beautiful schooner celebrating her 120th birthday this year. The Lettie G. Howard, a wooden Fredonia schooner built in Essex, Massachusetts in 1893, is, not surprisingly, showing her age. When she was drydocked at the Mystic Seaport in CT in 2012 to repair rot in her keelson, they discovered that the rot was far more extensive than originally thought. The cost of the repairs, of course, was also significantly higher than budgeted. (See our previous post – Help Save the Schooner Lettie G. Howard.) The South Street Seaport Museum has undertaken a capital campaign to raise $250,000 for critical repairs and restoration to the beautiful old schooner and is more than halfway to reaching that goal. Now, Rosanne Cash is raising her voice to to help raise the necessary cash, so to speak, to finish the job. Click here to learn more about the benefit concert. Donors at the Jib level and above will be invited to join Rosanne Cash for a champagne reception following the performance.
UPDATE: The Soldini Maserati team set a new New York to San Francisco sailing record of 47 days, 2 hours and 33 minutes, breaking the previous record by ten days.
Sometime Saturday, the Soldini team sailing the 70′ Maserati is expected to sail under the Golden Gate bridge, breaking the previous monhull speed record for sailing between New York and San Francisco by way of Cape Horn by roughly ten days. Soldini and his eight man crew set sail on Maserati from New York on New Year’s Eve. As of 16:00 EST Maserati was approximately 120 NM from the finish line at the Golden Gate Bridge. Congratulations to the Maserati team.
In October 2009, we posted “Rich Men’s Toys – Battleships, Helipads & Submarines,” about several mega-yachts, including the world’s largest, Roman Abramovich’s 557 feet (170 meters) M/Y Eclipse. The yacht arrived in New York harbor this week and is now tied up on the Hudson River in mid-town.
The yacht features an armor plated master suite and bullet proof windows in the accommodations area and bridge. She also has two heliports, an advanced radar system designed to warn of incoming missiles and a submarine which can also serve as an escape pod. There are accommodations for 24 guests, with a crew of 70 as well as two swimming pools, a movie theater and a dance floor.