Photo: Reuters
The Guardian reports that, “Russian scientists have confirmed they have drilled through more than 2.3 miles of ice to reach Lake Vostok, a 16,000 sq km (6,200 sq mile) body of water that has been isolated from the rest of the world for almost 15m years.
Vostok is the largest of hundreds of lakes that sit under the thick layer of ice on the Antarctic continent and Russian scientists have been drilling through the ice towards the lake for several decades.
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According to the Russian magazine Vlast, “Russia [was] … on the verge of the largest man-made disaster since Chernobyl” when a fire broke out on December 29th, 2011 on the K-84 Ekaterinburg, a Russian nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine, in a dry-dock in Murmansk. Sparks from welding were reported to have set fire to wooden scaffolding which spread to the rubber acoustic coating on the submarine’s hull. After several hours of fire fighting the sub was partially sunk to control the fire. At the time the damage to the submarine was played down. As reported by the BBC, “The Russian defense ministry said the nuclear reactors on the vessel were already shut down when the fire broke out. All weapons had also been removed from the submarine before it entered the dock, the ministry said.” According to Vlast, however, “K-84 was in the dock with missiles and torpedoes on board.”
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Happy Valentines Day to all. In honor of the day, here is a video by Tying It All Together showing how to tie a Celtic Heart Knot.
How to Tie the Celtic Heart Knot by TIAT (A Knotty Valentine)
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Many years ago, I was in Kaohsiung, Taiwan on a container ship having major steel work done in the CSBS drydock. In those days, there was a scrap yard within sight of the drydock and for the week or so that we were there, I was fascinated watching the LNG ship Benjamin Franklin growing smaller and smaller, as it was cut apart by workers, who at that distance resembled insects. It was like watching the carcass of a great beast being devoured, as everyday, there was less of the ship, pulled higher up on the ways. I was reminded of this by Dave Shirlaw, on the MarHist list, when he pointed out a video of the scrapping of Navy Oiler USS Savannah by Esco Marine, in an article in Gizmodo – The Destruction of a US Navy Ship As Big As a City Block. See also Mining a Mega Ship. Just as ships need shipyards to be born, they also need scrapyards when they can go to die.
Scrapping the Navy Oiler USS Savannah
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The Falklands or the Malvinas Islands
The Falklands War, or the Guerra de las Malvinas, depending on which side you choose, began on April 2, 1982. As the thirtieth anniversary of the war approaches, a war of worlds between the ex-combatants, the UK and Argentina, has escalated. Eggs and fresh vegetables are also running short on the island as as an Argentine trade embargo takes its toll.
Argentina’s foreign minister, Hector Timerman, has accused the UK of sending a nuclear-armed submarine to the South Atlantic and has made an official complaint to the UN over the Falklands dispute. As reported by the BBC, “Mr Timerman told a news conference at the UN in New York that the UK was “militarising the region”, repeating accusations made by Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner earlier this week.
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Costa Lines has asked ten companies to bid on salvaging the Costa Concordia. The bids are due early next month and Costa has plans to award a contract by the end of March. Smit Salvage, Svitzer Salvage, Mammoet Salvage, Titan Salvage, Resolve Marine Group, T&T Bisso Savage, Donjon Marine, Tito Neri, Fukada Salvage & Marine and Nippon Salvage have been invited to tender. Salvage is expected to take around ten months. Is the process of choosing a salvor moving too slowly or to quickly? One expert in the salvage industry is complaining that the process is unrealistically fast.
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Earlier this week, we posted that a circuit court had upheld previous rulings against Odyssey Marine Exploration, requiring the company to return to Spain $500m (£308m) worth of gold and silver coins it had recovered from the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes. Odyssey announced plans to appeal. Now, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has rejected Odyssey’s request to block the lower court order requiring the company to return the coins to Spain.
Pity the river boatman. Just a few months ago, a European drought lowered the water levels on many rivers and canals, significantly limiting barge and ship traffic. The lower river levels also unexpectedly exposed un-exploded ordinance from World War II. In early December, half of the population of the German city of Koblenz was evacuated so that several bombs that had emerged from the Rhine riverbank could be defused.
Now, the problem is intense cold, the coldest February across Europe in almost three decades, which has frozen solid hundreds of miles of Europe’s busiest waterways. Germany has shut the Rhine-Herne canal linking the river Rhine to Hamburg, Europe’s second largest container port. The closure canal has also cut off Berlin from the German inland waterway network. A prolonged closure of the Rhine, Europe’s busiest inland waterway, would quickly impact deep-sea port traffic and intermodal shipments. The river handles well over a million containers a year as well as iron ore, coal and grain.
Freeze Forces Germany to Close Key Shipping Artery
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The Lettie G. Howard is in trouble. The wooden Fredonia schooner was built in Essex, Massachusetts in 1893. She was acquired by the South Street Seaport Museum in 1968 and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1989. She was recently drydocked at the Mystic Seaport in CT to repair rot in her keelson. The rot turned out to be far more extensive than originally thought. The cost of the repairs, of course, is also significantly higher than budgeted. The good news is that the new museum management is committed to saving the much loved and historic schooner and has begun raising funds to support the repairs. (As we posted in December 2011, the previous management was attempting to get rid of the schooner.)
On Friday, the Museum posted on its Facebook page:
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Former Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords
The Navy newest Littoral Combat Ship will be named the USS Gabrielle Giffords in honor of the former Arizona Congresswoman who survived an assassination attempt one year ago. The USS Gabrielle Giffords will be the 17th ship to be named for a woman and the 13th to be named after a living person, according to the Defense Department. The ship’s “sponsor” will be Roxanna Green, the mother of Christina-Taylor Green, the 9-year-old girl who was killed in the Tucson shooting that wounded Giffords in January 2011. The Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus, described Giffords and Roxanna Green as “sources of great inspiration” who “represent the Navy and Marine Corps qualities of overcoming, adapting and coming out victoriously despite great challenges.”
Navy ship to be named for Gabrielle Giffords
Gabrielle Giffords is married to Captain Mark Kelly, a retired NASA astronaut and a graduate of the Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY. Mark Kelly’s twin brother, Scott, is also a NASA astronaut and is a graduate of the State University of New York Maritime College at Fort Schuyler. The Kelly brothers are the first twins to fly for NASA, and no doubt, the first astronaut brothers to have both graduated from merchant marine academies.
USAV GREAT BRIDGE
It is easy to forget how many ships and boats are indeed operated by the United States Army. Earlier this week the 80 feet long vessel, Enin Meto, with 101 people aboard, was bound from Lib to Ebeye, two island in the Marshall Islands chain in the Pacific, when their engine broke down. Using a battery operated radio, the Enin Meto‘s crew contacted USAKA (United States Army Kwajalein Atoll) Operations, which dispatched the LCU Great Bridge to find the stricken vessel. In high seas on a very dark night, the Great Bridge finally located the Enin Meto and towed the boat and her passengers to the island of Ebye. Ebye is the most populous of the more than a dozen islands that make up the Kwajalein Atoll.
The Great Bridge is a Runnymede class large landing craft 174 ft (53 m) long, with a beam of 42 ft (13 m), a draft of 8.5 ft (2.6 m) and a displacement of 1,102 long tons.
What is the oldest living thing on the planet? My first guess would have been the giant sequoia, which can grow to be several hundred feet tall and live to be several thousand years old. It turns out that the giant sequoia are relative youngsters in the grand scheme of things. Recently, a Tasmanian shrub, Lomatia tasmanica, was found to be 43,600 years old. Now a group of scientists have sequenced the DNA of posidonia oceanica, known as Neptune grass, a variety of sea grass that covers the ocean floor from Spain to Cyprus, and have found plants that apparently are 200,000 years old.
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At around 2AM local time Wednesday, the container ship Horizon Reliance rescued three Canadians, two men and a 9 year old boy, from the 33 foot disabled sailboat, Liahona, about 411 nautical miles east of Honolulu, Hawaii. The winds were gusting over 40 knots and swells were running up to 20 feet.
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I saw it on the Internet so it must be true! The Lagarfljóts Worm has gone viral. A video of what appears to be a large serpent-like creature swimming in the the glacial river, Jökulsá í Fljótsdal, in east Iceland, has been viewed over a million times on Youtube. It has also been featured on television and has been written about in newspapers from around the world. For some, the video is proof of the existence of the legendary Lagarfljótsormurinn, a great serpent-like beast that is said to live in Lagarfljót lake, which is 25 miles long and 367 feet deep. There have been “serpent” sightings in the lake as recently as 1998, as well as dating back to a reference in the Icelandic Annals of 1345.
Loren Coleman, director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, and author of Field Guide to Lake Monsters and Sea Serpents is considerably more skeptical about the “serpent” on the video. Writing on his website, Cryptomundo, “Frankly, this video shows something that looks like a constructed snake-like object, with rigid sections, being propelled through the water… It seems someone attempting this fakery, perhaps by using a robot with tarps, fish nets, or trash bags (a favorite for watery hoaxers)…”
The Iceland Worm Monster (Lagarfljóts Worm) Caught on Camera
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Sinking of the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes
The Battle of Cape Santa Maria was one of the most controversial naval engagements of the Napoleonic Wars. The attack on a Spanish treasure fleet on October 5, 1804 by a British squadron, without a declaration of war, was considered to be an act of piracy by the Spanish and justified as a “necessity of war” by the British. In addition to the international controversy, there were extended legal arguments over whether prize money was due to the British officers and and crews from the £900,000 (equivalent to £62,923,000 today) in gold and silver captured in the battle.
The Battle of Cape Santa Maria, or perhaps more properly, a battle over the battle, re-erupted in 2007 when Odyssey Marine Exploration secretly salvaged $500m (£308m) worth of gold and silver coins from the wreck of the Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, a Spanish frigate which blew up and sank during the engagement.
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If a single fact can explain why an armada of high tech naval ships from around the world has failed to control, much less to eradicate, gangs of Somali pirates operating from hijacked fishing trawlers and open boats, this is it. Strategy Page reports that for every one Somali pirate who is prosecuted, more than five are set free. So far, roughly 800 have been captured and prosecuted for piracy off Somalia. More than 4,000 have been captured and released. It is likely thay many of these have been captured and released more than once.
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The first documented European to land on Australia was the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon aboard the Duyfken in March 1606. Duyfken was also one of the first Dutch ships to got directly to the East Indies to load spices. The Dutch would long dominate the trade with the Spice Islands and ruled the Dutch East indies, now Indonesia, for centuries.
In October 2012, the Dutch tall ships the bark Europa and topsail schooner Oosterschelde will again sail the ancient trade routes. The Oosterschelde will sail from Rotterdam and rendezvous in Capetown with the Europa which will be returning from an Antarctic cruise. Other sailing vessels may be joining the rendezvous including the two mast herring drifter Tecla. From Capetown they will sail together to Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, Fremantle and on to Jakarta. From there they will set a course for Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart. The ships are looking for voyage crew members to join the ships. Follow the link below for more information. Thanks to Dexter Donham at Sailing Ship Adventures for pointing the expedition out.
Pity the poor taxpayer. The headline was short and simple – U.S. Navy Buys Hawaii Superferries. For only $35 million dollars, the US Navy is buying two aluminum, high-speed, ro/ro ferries built for Hawaii Superferry for inter-island service in Hawaii. The ferries were delivered in 2007 and 2009. The company also filed for bankruptcy in 2009. What a great deal! The US Navy gets two almost new ferries that cost $190 million to build for only $35 million! Yes, but not quite. What is really happening is that one branch of the government is paying another branch of the government a notional sum to buy ships that the government already owns.
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It is easy to focus of the plight of the 34 dead or missing from the Costa Concordia. Regrettably, these casualties have not been the only recent deaths on the water. The past week has been particularly brutal with ship and boat sinkings in the Black Sea, off the Dominican Republic, Papua New Guinea and Dongting Lake in China. A quick run-down of one grim week’s loss of life:
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Top image from 2009 provided by SSR, Bottom image Port Nicholson - www.shippingtimes.co.uk
We recently posted about a press release by Sub Sea Research (SSR) claiming to have located the wreck of a British cargo ship sunk in June 1942 by the German submarine U87. Sub Sea Research claims that the ship was carrying 70 tons of platinum when she sank off the coast of Cape Cod. SSR says that the ship’s name is the Port Nicholson.
In 2009, Sub Sea Research (SSR) also claimed to have located the wreck of a British cargo ship sunk in June 1942 by the German submarine U87. SSR claimed that the ship was carrying 70 tons of platinum when she sank 40 miles off the coast of Guyana. The two sets of claims sound remarkably similar, except for the geography of the wrecks.
SSR did not identify the ship from 2009 but used the code-name “Blue Baron.” SSR also claimed that the also carried ten tons of gold bullion, one and a half tons of industrial diamonds and 16 million carats of gem quality diamonds, in addition to the platinum.
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