While hundreds of thousands shiver waiting for the ball to drop in TImes Square, a few miles away at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, a small but likely warmer crowd gathers to hear Chief Engineer Conrad Mister blow his collection of steam whistles to welcome in the New Year. A video of last year’s event:
[embed width=”560″]http://youtu.be/ze8nc0SaldA[/embed]
Photo: Kevin B. Gray
The impact of the meltdown of nuclear reactors at the Fukishima Daiichi power plant, hit by the following the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami on 11 March 2011, is still unfolding. Last month it was revealed that fish caught near the crippled power plant were measured to have radiation levels 100 times above normal. The levels found ranged from 4,400 Becquerels per kg to 11,400 Bequerels per kg, against the maximum “safe” level of 100 Bequerels per kg.
This week eight sailors from the US aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan sued Tokyo Electric Power Co. The sailors claim that they were exposed to unacceptably high levels of radiation during disaster relief operations and that the utility lied about the dangers.
For a handful of ships, the great age of sail has not yet ended. In 2013, the Russian Navy sail training ship Kruzenshtern will call in 20 seaports in 11 countries and will take part in several international regattas. The ship, originally built in 1926 in Bremerhaven, Germany as the Padua is one of four surviving Laeisz Flying P liners and the last actively sailing. The Kruzenshtern, a four masted barque, is the second oldest windjammer still actively sailing, second only to the Russian sail training ship Sedov, built in 1921 as the Magdalene Vinnen II.
Tall ship Kruzenstern destinations for 2013
The other surviving Flying P liners are the Pommern; a museum ship in Mariehamn, Finland; the Peking, a museum ship in New York City’s South Street Seaport and the Passat, a museum ship in Lübeck’s sea resort of Travemünde, Germany.
Photo:SIMON BOTTOMLEY
In December we posted about NOAA’s Arctic Report Card 2012, which showed record low ice and snowfall in the Arctic. Nevertheless, some have pointed to the recent growth of Antarctic ice to suggest that climate change may not be a dramatic as feared. Nevertheless, a recent study by researchers from Ohio State University and other institutions, published in Nature Geoscience, has found that the Antarctic is warming at twice the rate previously predicted. Melting of Antarctic ice could significantly increase the rise of the sea levels around the world.
Photo:Librado Romero/The New York Times
Update: The port strike has been averted for now with a 30 day contract extension.
In early December we posted about the end of the eight day West Coast dock strike that shut down 10 of the port’s 14 container terminals in the port of Los Angeles/Long Beach, in one of the busiest traffic seasons of the year. Now the US is facing another dock strike, this time on the East and Gulf coasts, which could shut down 15 ports from Massachusetts to Texas. If an agreement is not reached between the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the ports by December 30th, the US could face its first coastwide strike since 1977.
While the media has focused on the upcoming “fiscal cliff,” the impact of tax and budget negotiations in Washington, the shutting down of containerized cargo on the East and Gulf coasts could be a “container cliff” with a major impact on the US economy.
Photo:AFP
The world did not end of on 12/21/12 as some had predicted. Nevertheless, there are still a few things to worry about. Last week, marine geologists from Australia’s James Cook University warned that a one cubic kilometer slab of the sea floor on the Barrier Reef may be on the verge of collapsing. The slab, the remains of an ancient underwater landslide, is in danger of slipping off the continental shelf. If is does so, it may cause a tsunami. Of course, the researchers cannot say if the slab will slide off tomorrow or within the next century.
Slab of Barrier Reef sea floor collapsing, could cause tsunami, say scientists
The custom of sending Christmas card is said to have originated in 1843 with Sir Henry Cole, a civil servant, who wanted to promote the new ‘Public Post Office.’ He arranged for his artist friend, John Horsley to design a card. Two batches totaling 2,050 cards were printed and sold that year for a shilling each. Royal Naval Christmas cards were not far behind. John MacFarlane in Nauticapedia has a fine selection of Christmas cards from Royal Navy ships. He writes:
The sending of Christmas cards to express seasonal greetings is a relatively new tradition but naval personnel have been sending these cards for more than 100 years. Many ships of the Royal Navy and commonwealth navies produced custom designed cards to reflect their ship’s identity.
We recently learned that good Saint Nicholas, long associated with Christmas and gift-giving, is also the patron saint of ships and sailors. The St. Nicholas Center notes: “Many ports, most notably in Greece, have icons of Nicholas, surrounded by ex-votos of small ships made of silver or carved of wood. Sailors returning safely from sea, place these in gratitude to St. Nicholas for protection received. In some places sailors, instead of wishing one another luck, say, “May St. Nicholas hold the tiller.”
The Defense News blog Intercepts recently posted a photo of nine “flattops” home for Christmas at Norfolk naval base. Of the nine, five are aircraft carriers – the DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER, GEORGE H. W. BUSH, ENTERPRISE, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, and HARRY S TRUMAN. The other four are the amphibious assault ships – BATAAN, WASP, KEARSARGE, and IWO JIMA. The amphibious landing platform dock NEW YORK and a T-AKE dry cargo ammunition ship are also in port as are a number of smaller cruisers and submarines. The Navy makes a point of trying to gives its shipboard crews a chance to spend Christmas with their families.
The MS Queen Elizabeth 2, which was purchased back in 2008 for conversion to a luxury hotel in Dubai, has reportedly been sold for scrap to Chinese interests for £20 million. The original conversion plans were scuttled by a credit crunch in Dubai shortly after the ship purchase. Last July we posted about a more modest hotel conversion plan for the QE2, which has now also fallen through.
End of an era for the QE2: Iconic cruise liner sold as scrap to Chinese for £20m
MV Iceberg 1
Wonderful news. Forces of Somalia’s semiautonomous Puntland region are reported to have raided the MV Iceberg I on Sunday and to have rescued 22 officers and crew who had been held hostage by Somali pirates for 33 months. The Puntland forces had laid siege to the ship for close to two weeks near the coastal village of Gara’ad in Mudung region. As we posted last October, the Panamanian-flagged ro/ro MV Iceburg 1 was hijacked by pirates about 10 nautical miles off the port of Aden, Yemen on March 29, 2010. Her crew of 24, of which 22 are believed to have survived, have been held hostage for 29 months. The ship’s owner Dubai-based Azal Shipping & Cargo has been accused of effectively abandoning the ship and her crew. One of the crew members, Wagdi Akram, committed suicide on October 27, 2010 by jumping overboard. The ship’s chief engineer is believed to have been killed by the pirates in March or June of 2011.
( Image from the Glen McLaughlin Map / December 17, 2012 )
In Volume II of the Encyclopædia Britannica published in 1768, the entry for California reads:
CALLIFORNIA, a large country of the West Indies, lying between 116° and 138° W. long. and between 23° and 46° N lat. It is uncertain whether it be a peninsula or an island.
For well over a century California was believed by many to be an island. Maps drawn by the most learned cartographers showed it separated from the mainland by the Mare Vermiglio, or Red Sea. In 1971, maps of California as an island caught the attention of Glen McLaughlin, an American businessman, who began researching and collecting them. Over 40 years his grew to be the largest private collection of such maps. In a part donation and part sale, McLaughlin has now turned over the collection to to to Stanford University’s Branner earth sciences library.
The nuclear submarine HMS Vigilant will apparently be spending the holiday season in the USA after damaging a rudder when test-firing a Trident missile in the Atlantic off the coast of Florida on October 23. The sub is reported to have returned to the US naval base at Kings Bay in Georgia, to investigate the damage and undergo repairs. The base is the U.S. Atlantic Fleet’s home port for U.S. Navy Fleet ballistic missile nuclear submarines armed with Trident missile nuclear weapons. HMS Vigilant was built at Barrow-in-Furness by Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering Ltd and commissioned in November 1996. The submarine, which carries Trident ballistic missiles, is the third Vanguard-class submarine of the Royal Navy.
All at sea: Clyde-based Trident sub stranded in US despite £300m overhaul
While celebrating passing one million pages views on the blog, it seems worthwhile to take a look back at the single most popular post. It was Sailor’s Tattoos – Pigs, Chickens, Swallows, and Tattooed Backsides, from December 1, 2008, which has been viewed almost 27,000 times. That is less than 3% of all pageviews but is still around three times higher than its closest competitor.
Sailor’s Tattoos – Pigs, Chickens, Swallows, and Tattooed Backsides
Tattoos have become very popular of late. Tattoo Facts & Statistics notes that “thirty-six percent of those ages 18 to 25, and 40 percent of those ages 26 to 40, have at least one tattoo, according to a fall 2006 survey by the Pew Research Center.” As popular as tattoos are with twenty and thirty somethings, sailors have been marking their bodies for most of history.
Many years ago a retired ship’s captain told me that his youth deckhands often had “HOLD FAST” tattooed across the knuckles of their hands so they wouldn’t fall when they went aloft. They also often had a pig tattooed on one foot and chicken the other which was supposed to protect you from drowning. He told me that he never figured out which foot was supposed to be tattooed with the chicken and which with the pig. He would say, with a twinkle in his eye, that he never got the tattoos because he was afraid of getting them on the wrong feet.
Yesterday morning, the tanker, Stena Primorsk, ran aground in the Hudson River about ten miles south of Albany, NY after suffering a steering gear failure. No oil was reported to have been spilled. There are a whole range of interesting aspects to this story, the least of which is the grounding. These are:
There was no oil spill. The Stena Primorsk is a Stena MAX design intended to incorporate high efficiency with environmental safety. This time it worked. The outer hull was damaged but the inner hull remained intact. The use of double bottoms on tankers was mandated by the Oil Pollution Act of 1990 (OPA 90) following the grounding of the Exxon Valdez and the resulting oil spill. The grounding of the Stena Primorsk is another example that OPA 90 is working.
To continue our celebration of the Old Salt Blog passing one million pageviews, today, December 20, and tommorrow, December 21, we are giving away free copies of the Kindle edition of my new nautical thriller, Hell Around the Horn. Click here to go to Amazon to download a free copy. If you are not a Kindle reader, we are also giving away ten copies of the novel in print. Click here to enter to win one of the copies.
Barista Uno on the Marine Cafe blog, posted this morning about a sad anniversary. Twenty five years ago today, the passenger ferry Dona Paz collided with the oil tanker MT Vector in the Philippines. With a likely death toll of over 4,000 people, the sinking of the Dona Paz was deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in history.
The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum was hit hard by Superstorm Sandy. This Friday, December 21, they will be reopening and are offering a special buy one general admission and get the second free coupon, to celebrate their return. Click here for the Friends & Family Coupon.
Tis’ the season when Santa shows up in the most unusual places. A small ship-load of Santas was recently observed running across the ice at the bottom of the world. Twenty crew members dressed as Santa (with at least one reindeer) from the ice patrol ship, HMS Protector, took part in a run on the ice surrounding Deception Island in the Antarctic. The event raised funds for the charity East Anglia’s Children’s Hospices (EACH). EACH has raised more than £34,000 from seven Santa runs earlier this month in the warmer climes of East Anglia.
The Soviet submarine S-6 which disappeared on patrol in September, 1941 was been identified on the floor of the Baltic by the Swedish military. The submarine was found southeast of the Baltic island of Oland, in what was, during the war, a heavily-mined area known as the ‘Wartburg minefield’.