The French Prize by James Nelson — a Review

Posted on by July 27, 2015

frenchprizeFor fans of his “Revolution at Sea Saga,” Jame’s Nelson’s The French Prize is an introduction to the next generation. Isaac Biddlecombe, the Revolutionary War naval hero of the previous saga, has a son, Jack, coming of age in the young American republic. The novel is set during the so-called Quasi-War, an undeclared war fought almost entirely at sea between the United States of America and the French Republic from 1798 to 1800.  Jack Biddlecombe is a skilled sailor and ship’s officer, while also a bit of a hot-head and a brawler. He has been given his first command, the merchant ship Abigail, bound for Barbados. Concerned about the danger of French privateers in the West Indies, the ship owner has six pound cannon installed on the deck of the ship. Oddly, the ship owner also happens to be one of his father’s political rivals. As Jack sails for the West Indies, toward the guns of a French warship, he is wholly unaware of the layers of political intrigue that surround the voyage.

In addition to duels, storms, and battles at sea, Nelson gives Jack Biddlecome an engaging passenger for the trip in the form of William Wentworth, of the “Boston Wentworths”, the son of wealth and position, who seems in equal parts amused, annoyed and intrigued by the young captain. When they aren’t literally trying to kill each other, they become allies of sorts. I would not be surprised to see William Wentworth in future books of the series. The French Prize is a fun and engaging read.

The Glory and the Danger of Open Water — Thoughts on Two Missing Teens

Posted on by July 28, 2015

capsized boatOn Friday, two 14 year old boys went missing in the Atlantic off Jupiter, FL. Their 19′ boat was found capsized on Sunday night. The Coast Guard, and now the Navy, is continuing the search for the teens, Austin Stephanos and Perry Cohen.

The missing boys reminded me of how easily that could have been me, almost a half century ago. Open water can be such a glorious and also very dangerous place if you are young, adventurous and think that you know what you are doing.

When I was around 15, my family moved to Treasure Island on the west coast of Florida. I got a job cleaning boats at a local marina and saved enough to buy an old 16′ runabout with a 33 hp outboard motor.  Most of the time I used the boat to run around the sheltered waters of Boca Ciega Bay, but I would often head out through John’s Pass into the Gulf of Mexico to go fishing or just cruise around offshore.

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‘Sea Slaves’: the Human Misery that Feeds Pets and Livestock

Posted on by July 27, 2015

Slave labor on fishing boats, particularity in Asia, has been a serious problem for many years. In 2011, we posted about reports that the crews of of chartered fishing vessels operating in New Zealand waters were being systematically abused and robbed of their pay. More recently, the AP investigated the abuse of seamen in Thai shrimping business. They found that Thai and Burmese fishermen were being held against their will and often beaten or killed on trawlers catching “trash fish” also know as bycatch, to supply Thai shrimp farms. The bycatch is also used to make pet food and food for livestock.

Now in the third of his series, Outlaw Ocean, Ian Urbina, of the New York Times, writes of ‘Sea Slaves’: the Human Misery that Feeds Pets and Livestock.  Well worth reading.  A short video companion to the article:

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Will Pollution Limit Faroe Island Pilot Whale Hunts?

Posted on by July 26, 2015

pilotwhaleAround the world, pollution is a serious threat to whales. Ironically, on the Faroe Islands, pollution may help to curtail whaling, where protests have failed.  The residents of the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic have been hunting pilot whales for almost a thousand years, since about the time of the first Norse settlements on the islands. The yearly hunt has been the subject of considerable controversy for some time. The Faroe islanders argue that the pilot whales are not endangered and that the hunt is wholly sustainable. Protests against the hunt have hardened the resolve of many on the islands to continue it.

This year, as in years past, protesters from Sea Shepherds have been arrested for attempting to interfere with the hunt.  Other conservation groups, notable WDC, Whale and Dolphin Conservation, have abandoned the confrontational approach taken by the Sea Shepherds, who are best known for their reality TV show.  WDC state on their website:

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Kick ’em Jenny – Ready to Rock Out From Underwater

Posted on by July 25, 2015

kick'emjennyBack in 2011, we posted a short quiz: Is Kick’em Jenny a Dutch rockabilly singer, a Dutch Celtic Symfo-Folk band or an active submarine volcano on the floor of the Caribbean Sea? The answer is yes to all three. I am not sure what the first two are up to these days, but the underwater volcano is acting up.

Kick’em Jenny, is located off the northern coast of Grenada, in the Lesser Antilles, and is roughly 600 feet underwater. As reported by CNN, officials raised its threat level Thursday to orange, which means it could erupt with less than 24-hour notice. An eruption could sink ships and hurl hot rock and ash into the air. Kick’em Jenny started rumbling on July 11, and has produced more than 200 small earthquakes since then, according to the Seismic Research Centre at the University of the West Indies.

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Fifty One Years Ago, Trawler Snoopy and Eight Crew Casualties of Torpedo Alley

Posted on by July 24, 2015

snoopyFifty one years ago this week, on July 23, 1964, the scallop trawler Snoopy was trawling off Currituck Sound, NC.  During World War II that stretch of the coast earned the grim nickname, Torpedo Alley, when German U-boats sank nearly 400 ships in the area, killing over 5,000 merchant seamen. That Friday night, Torpedo Alley would claim eight more sailors, among the last causalities of the unrestricted submarine warfare of World War II.

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Stowaways — Complicated, Messy, Expensive and Possibly Dangerous

Posted on by July 23, 2015

stowawayFirst published in gCaptain.

Recently, the New York Times published Stowaways and Crimes Aboard Aboard a Scofflaw Ship, the first of a four part series, by Ian Urbina. At the core of the article, Urbina tells the story of two South Africans who have the misfortune to stowaway onboard a Greek reefer ship whose owner is notorious for shady dealings. Only one of the stowaways ultimately survives. The account is vivid, well researched and well told. Nevertheless, it doesn’t and really can’t capture the full scope of the problem of stowaways in shipping today.

The good news is that most shipowners and ship owning corporations are not the sort of shoddy fly-by night operators described in Urbina’s article. The bad news is that dealing with stowaways on shipboard is usually expensive, complicated and in some cases dangerous.

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Lucy Bellwood’s Baggywrinkles: A Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea

Posted on by July 22, 2015

lucybaggywI have long been a fan of Lucy Bellwood. A tall ship sailor and cartoonist; she is talented, smart and funny. Her  wonderful series, Baggywrinkles, based on the time she has spent working aboard replica 18th-century tall ships, has appeared an issue at a time online. She is now raising money via Kickstarter to publish the entire series, including new and as yet unseen work, as Baggywrinkles: A Lubber’s Guide to Life at Sea.

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Fanning to Shark — “Thanks For Not Eating Me!”

Posted on by July 21, 2015

Shark attacks are rare. Shark attacks on live television are virtually unprecedented, which is why the video of an encounter between Australian champion surfer, Mick Fanning, and a large shark in the waters off South Africa caught on live TV spread so rapidly across the internet, like chum on the virtual ocean. While competing in the J-Bay Open, viewers were horrified to see a large shark fin suddenly appear next to Fanning, who then a few seconds later appears to be dragged underwater. Amazingly, Fanning fought off the shark and escaped unscathed.  While suffering emotional trauma, Mick Fanning is OK.  If the shark had bitten Fanning, it easily could have been otherwise. When asked what he would say to the shark, Fanning replied, “Thanks for not eating me!”

Surfer fights off shark attack on live TV

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SSV Oliver Hazard Perry on Her Maiden Voyage

Posted on by July 21, 2015

Last weekend, Oliver Hazard Perry, America’s newest and largest civilian sailing school ship sailed into Portland harbor in Maine on her maiden voyage, to participate in the Tall Ships Portland 2015 festival, which wrapped up yesterday.  Based in Newport, RI, the ship is the first ocean-going full rigged ship to be built in the United States in 110 years.  The video below from WGME Channel 13 provides some great background and a tour of the new ship.

Oliver Hazard Perry: Largest civilian sailing school in the United States

Outlaw Ocean — An Excellent New Series in the NY Times

Posted on by July 21, 2015

stowawayThe New York Times is featuring a new four part series, Outlaw Ocean, by Ian Urbina, which presents a vivid and disturbing look at crime at sea.  Definitely worth reading.

The first installment, Stowaways and Crimes Aboard Aboard a Scofflaw Ship, looks at the case of two desperate men from South Africa who have the bad luck to stowaway aboard the Dona Liberta, Greek refrigerated ship, notorious for not paying its crew, cheating creditors and fouling the oceans. Only one of the twos stowaways survived.

The second installment, Murder At Sea: Captured on Video, But Killers Go Free, begins with a highly disturbing video of men floating in the wreckage of some sort of boat, being shot by unseen gunmen on boats circling around them. The article looks at the impunity in which murders are committed on the high seas by pirates, smugglers and even rival fishing boats.

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What’s in a Name? Google Drops Chinese Name for Scarborough Shoal

Posted on by July 19, 2015

scarbshoalWhat’s in a name? Google has renamed a shoal located between the Macclesfield Bank and Luzon island in the South China Sea on their maps as Scarborough Shoal.  They had previously identified the hazard to navigation by its Chinese name, Huangyan Island.  Why does this matter to anyone?

The shoals, consisting of an atoll and a series of rocks and shallows, covering 58 square miles of the South China Sea, is claimed by China, Taiwan and the Philippines. In recent years, the South China Sea has become an area of conflict between China and its neighbors over conflicting claims over rights to fishing and oil reserves. The Philippines had complained to Google that the use of the Chinese name could suggest Chinese sovereignty, which the Philippines and Taiwan deny.  Of the at least seven names used to identify the shoals, Scarborough is the most diplomatically neutral. Indeed, it is the one name not used by any of the three nations which claim sovereignty over the rocks and islands that make up the shoal. The name is one of the more recent given to the shoals, named after the East India Co. tea-clipper which was wrecked there in September 12, 1784.

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Key & Peele’s Feminist Pirate Song (Just Barely NSFW)

Posted on by July 14, 2015

The sketch comedy team of Key and Peele have come up with what may be the very first feminist pirate song, examining issues of respect, equality and consent, as sung by a bunch of scurvy sea dogs. (It is just barely Not-Safe-For-Work. If you listen very carefully to the lyrics, there is one clinical reference to oral sex.) The chorus goes: “We’d say ‘yo ho!’ / But we don’t say ‘ho’ / ‘Cause ‘ho’ is disrespectful, yo!” Thanks to Irwin Bryan for pointing out the sketch.

Bitten by Blackfish, SeaWorld Responds with Falsehoods

Posted on by July 17, 2015

Seaworld continues to be bitten by the “Blackfish effect.”  In October of 2013, CNN aired “Blackfish,” a scathing documentary which looked at the almost 40 year history of orcas in captivity, leading up to the killing of SeaWorld trainer Dawn Brancheau in 2010 by the 12,000-pound orca, Tilikum, a whale previously associated with the death of two other people.  Since then, SeaWorld has been coping with the backlash from the documentary. The company has faced boycotts, lawsuits, falling tickets sales and an avalanche of bad press. Seaworld’s stock has fallen by more than half and, in terms of market capitalization, the company has lost roughly 1.7 billion dollars in value.

Recently, SeaWorld has launched a new campaign on television to rebut the claims that they abuse orcas. Unfortunately, the commercial is far less than accurate. Here is the commercial, as critiqued by Slate, providing counterpoint to the claims made by SeaWorld and its staff.