What does J.P. Morgan, the American financier, and the passenger ships, RMS Titanic and SS United States have in common?
Everyone knows that White Star Line, the owner of the RMS Titanic, was a British Company. Fewer are aware that White Star was owned by an American. It was a wholly owned subsidiary of the International Mercantile Marine Company (IMM), an American holding company owned by J.P. Morgan. J. Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, sold the company to J.P. Morgan in 1902. The RMS Titanic, like all the other ships of the White Star fleet, was a British ship, and technically, as an American, J.P. Morgan could not own British ships. Nevertheless, Morgan took advantage of the loophole that his holding company, IMM, could own the company that owned the ships. For all intents and purposes, J.P. Morgan owned the Titanic. It was not one of his better investments, for reasons having nothing to do with icebergs.
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A menu of the last meal served to first-class passengers on board the Titanic has sold at auction for £76,000. The menu was dated April 14, 1912 and featured several courses, such as eggs Argenteuil, consomme fermier and chicken a la Maryland.
Two letters from the Titanic are in the news. One is a letter from Dr. John Edward Simpson, who died when the ship sank, He wrote to his mother on April 11, 1912, on notepaper headed RMS Titanic, and had it mailed from Cohb, Ireland, the last port of call prior to the ship sailing across the North Atlantic. 
So you want to build an unsinkable passenger liner? Well, there is an app for that! OK, not really, but 
For several years we have been 
After posting about far too many needless tragedies on poorly maintained third world ferry boats which sink and kill their passengers, here is something completely different, though still involving a ferry.
This story is so unlikely that it must be true. When the 
In the last days of the age of sail, British sailing ships, limejuicers, as they were known, had reputation as “hungry ships,” of offering poor quality provisions and not much of those. Whether that reputation was or was not wholly justified at the end of the 19th century, a new study now reveals that sailors in the Georgian Navy were well and amply fed for their day. Given that the British Navy had to feed upwards of 140,000 seamen and marines, the Victualing Board seems to have done a remarkably good job.
Some excitement in my neighborhood this morning. Three crew from the tug Katherine G were pulled from the water near Liberty Island in new York harbor, after the tug capsized at around 9:45 this morning. The men were rescued by the New York Police Department’s harbor unit and taken to local medical facilities. No serious injuries were reported. Thanks to 