Last Sunday we posted about the CBC program,Land and Sea, which was broadcasting a half hour documentary on traditional schooners in Nova Scotia. It is now available to watch on-line. The documentary tells the story of four different schooner owners and reveals how each of them is keeping the spirit of these majestic sailing vessels alive. If you are schooner fan, definitely worth a look. Click here to watch Schooners.
Several years ago I took a sail on the AJ Meerwald in New York harbor. While on the sail I saw the schooner Pioneer, owned and operated by the South Street Seaport Museum, also sailing in the harbor. Despite having lived in and around New York harbor for decades, I knew nothing about the Pioneer. I asked the mate on the Meerwald what she knew of the schooner. She said something to the effect that they had a fantastic group of volunteers but that the museum management did a lousy job of promoting the schooner.
Unfortunately that never changed. The South Street Seaport Museum continued to have a loyal and hardworking group of volunteers, while the museum management continued to do a lousy job. This continued until last February when the museum collapsed financially, staff was laid off and the volunteers were turned away.
An interesting thing happened. A group of volunteers formed Save Our Seaport and turned their energies toward saving the museum – holding public meetings circulating petitions and doing all they could to save an institution so badly served by past managers. The good news is that the museum has been taken over by the Museum of New York and last weekend, the volunteers were allowed back in. Forty five people assembled on Pier 16 and got to work moving spars and cleaning up debris.. There could be no clearer sign that the South Street Seaport Museum is on its way back.
We seem to need to put a face to our enemies. On the cover of Time Magazine of December 22, 1941, the face of the enemy was Admiral Yamamoto, labeled as “Japan’s Aggressor.” The image of the admiral is a scowling caricature in yellow, looking off to one side, personifying an image of Oriental duplicity and betrayal. In the decades following the war, historians have been far more charitable to Isoroku Yamamoto, casting him as a reluctant warrior who understood and predicted Japan’s defeat even while personally planning the attack on Pear Harbor. Ian Toll’s A Reluctant Enemy in today’s New York Times makes this case. I wonder whether this assessment of Yamamoto is not, at times, almost as a much a caricature as the Time magazine cover of 1941.
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It was inevitable. The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association will observe the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor on this day in 1941. It will be the Association’s last observance. The group has too few remaining members to carry on and will disband on Dec. 31. The organization was founded in 1958 with 28,000 members, all of whom were were at or in the vicinity of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii during the Japanese attack of December 7, 1941. The association now has fewer than 10% of it original numbers and the continuing death toll due to age continues to reduce the number of survivors. Twenty years ago at the 50th anniversary, 7,000 survivors attended the memorial ceremonies. This year roughly 125 are expected to be able to attend.
Pearl Harbor Still a Day for the Ages, but a Memory Almost Gone
Seventeen teams from around the world have set off rowing from Spain’s San Sebastian de la Gomera in the Canary Islands in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge in what is billed as the “World’s Roughest Rowing Race.” The teams will follow the ‘Columbus Route’ westbound across the mid-Atlantic to Port St Charles in Barbados, rowing an estimated 3,000 miles over roughly 50 days. There are two solo rowers and fifteen two, four or six person crews.
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RACE LAUNCH from Talisker Whisky on Vimeo.
PUMA's Mar Mostro traveling by ship to Cape Town after dismasting. Photo: Amory Ross/PUMA Ocean Racing/Volvo Ocean Race
I was struck by the juxtaposition. Laura Dekker, the Dutch 16 year old who is sailing around the world alone, arrived in Cape Town at roughly the same times as the mega-racers of the Volvo Ocean Race. Well, she arrived at the same time as the three boats that held together long enough to make it Cape Town. The other half of the Volvo Ocean Race fleet traveled by ship to South Africa after rigging or hull failure temporarily put them out of the race.
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Perhaps Miami Beach is feeling a certain solidarity with Koblentz, Germany. Today an M57 US Navy training mine washed up on Miami Beach. Fortunately the mine was inert and did not contain explosive. Yesterday, bomb disposal experts successfully defused two World War II vintage bombs which had become exposed on the Rhine riverbanks at Koblentz, when water levels dropped due to an ongoing drought.
We have previously posted about how the European drought has lowered the Rhine River so that World War II munitions long buried in the riverbank have become exposed. Over the weekend, forty five thousand people, roughly half of the population of the city of Koblentz, Germany, at the junction of the Rhine and Moselle Rivers, were evacuated in order to defuse bombs exposed by falling river levels. Initially, it was reported that one British 4,000 pound bomb would be defused. Now, it appears that that bomb, as well as a smaller American high explosive bomb were both defused. A third non-explosive device was also destroyed, according to the Koblenz fire department.
WWII bombs defused allowing 45,000 evacuated residents to return
On Friday, the “Christmas Tree Ship” arrived again on the Chicago docks, bringing Christmas trees to needy families. The arrival of the ship has become a Chicago holiday tradition, honoring of the memory of Capt Herman Schuenemann and his three masted schooner, the Rouse Simmons, known to many as the “Christmas Tree ship,” which delivered Christmas trees to the Chicago Docks for over 30 years around the turn of the 20th century. Starting in 2000, the maritime community of Chicago has revived the tradition. This year, the US Coast Guard Cutter Alder arrived at the dock, her decks loaded with trees, which are being distributed to local families over the weekend.
Schooner Rouse Simmons
Today the Christmas Ship is Chicago’s largest all volunteer charitable support program for inner city youth and their families at Christmas time. At the turn of the twentieth century, the “Christmas Tree Ship” was a family business. In the mid 1880s, August and his brother Herman Schuenemann moved to Chicago. They were merchants and sailors who made two-thirds of their annual income transporting and selling Christmas trees. August died in in November 1898 when the two-masted schooner S. Thal sank in a storm near Glencoe, Illinois. His younger brother Herman continued the family business.
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In the United States, we have seen an explosion of so-called “reality TV,” which is usually more akin to unscripted soap opera than reality, fortunately. In Canada, however, the CBC has some wonderful programming which is reality television in the very best sense. On fine example is “Land and Sea,” a program which for thirty years has been focussed on stories from people who live off the land and the sea on the Canadian Atlantic. Today, at noon, it will feature, “Schooners,” a look at the schooners of Nova Scotia. For those of us who not live in Canada, the program will be available on-line here. Here also are comments from the director of the documentary.
Thanks to Tom Russell fro pointing out the Director’s Cut on the Traditional Sail Professionals Linked-in List.
HMS Speedy - Dr. James Guthrie, commander and crew, albeit briefly
On Facebook this morning, Maritime Great Britain linked to a post on THE DEAR SURPRISE blog, discussing a post by Marion Elizabeth Diamond on the Historians are Past Caring blog, which raised the question, “Was this the real Stephen Maturin?” Ms. Diamond answers her own question with the suggestion that Patrick O’Brian may have based his character of ships’ surgeon/spy, Stephen Maturin, on the doctor and scientist, Augustus Bozzi Granville, who did indeed serve in the medical service of the Royal Navy.
Bozzi Geneville may indeed have served as an inspiration to O’Brian. I have always thought that O’Brian borrowed from the life of Joseph Banks for both his characters, Maturin and Joseph Blaine. Bozzi Geneville looks like a reasonable candidate, as well. Nevertheless, we should not forget Dr. James Guthrie, who provided the very literal inspiration for O’Brian’s Dr. Maturin.
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Valeska Paris recently appeared on the Australian television program “Lateline” where she charged that she was held for twelve years against her will on the cruise ship MV Freewinds, a ship operated by the Church of Scientology. The ship, the ex- MS Bohème for Wallenius Lines, is used as a training and recreational center by the church. The church denies all charges. Scientology is a religion created by L. Ron Hubbard, a science fiction writer, in the early 1950s.
ABC Lateline – Scientology Imprisonment on the Freewinds (2011-11-28)
Twenty five years ago today, the ore-bulk-oil carrier MV Kowloon Bridge sank off the coast of West Cork with a cargo of 165,000 tons of iron ore and 2,000 tons of bunker oil, becoming the world’s largest shipwreck by tonnage.
The Kowloon Bridge was bound from Quebec, Canada to the River Clyde,in Scotland when she started to develop structural cracking on the main deck during a storm. She diverted to Bantry Bay, Ireland. She subsequently suffered steering gear failre and on Monday, November 24th, 1986, ran around off ‘The Stags,’ near Baltimore, West Cork in the Republic of Ireland. Attempts at salvage failed and on December 3, the ship broke in half and sank. The almost 2,000 tonnes of fuel oil which leaked from the wreck did significant damage to local beaches, fisheries and wildlife. The Kowloon Bridge was a sistership to the MV Derbyshire which sank with all hands during Typhoon Orchid in 1980. See our post, Douglas Faulkner and the MV Derbyshire.
25th anniversary of Europe’s biggest wreck – ‘Kowloon Bridge’
The wreck of the Kowloon Bridge is now a popular site for experienced divers, in20 to 118 feet of water off the Stag Rocks.
After an lovely warm November, winter is beginning to settle in here on the banks of the Hudson River, so it feels like a good time to feature a video of warm water, blue sky and white sails. Here is a video shot by Jimmy C on-board the 134-foot steel brigantine Robert C. Seamans on a thirty eight day voyage from San Diego to Honolulu with S.E.A. Semester class S237. The video was shot with a Go Pro Helmet cam.
Sea Education Association (SEA) is a private, nonprofit educational organization which offers a hands-on experience to college and high school students in sailing at sea. They operate the Robert C. Seamans, generally in the Pacific, and the Corwith Cramer in the Atlantic.
Last January, three divers, Charles Buffum, Mike Fournier and Craig Harger, announced that they had located the wreck of Oliver Hazard Perry’s ship USS Revenge which sank 200 years ago off the coast of Rhode Island near Watch Hill. It turns out that Charles Buffum, in addition to being a diver and an amateur archaeologist, is also the owner of Cottrell Brewing Company, which is celebrating the discovery with a new ale – Perry’s Revenge Ale, a dark Scottish-style ale with an 8.5 percent alcohol content. it is currently only sold on tap at pubs nearby the Pawcatuck brewery, but is expected to be sold in 22-ounce bottles in liquor stores within a month. I can only hope that it is distributed here on the banks of the Hudson River.
Brewery marks discovery of shipwreck with new beer
See also: Wreck of Perry’s USS Revenge reported found on 200th anniversary
Koblenz, where the Mosel meets the Rhine
Recently we posted about how the near record drought in Europe has lowered the levels in the Rhine River, not only limiting vessel traffic, but also exposing World War II munitions. We wrote that “ bomb disposal experts … are evaluating how to dispose of a larger bomb found lying in 16 inches of water near Koblenz.” They have made their determination and it involves evacuating 45,000 people, or roughly half of the population of Koblenz, this Sunday, prior to defusing the estimated 3,000 pounds of high explosives in the bomb.
Nearly half German city to evacuate Sunday for defusing of WWII era bomb
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Two men, aged 53 and 26, from the Pacific Ocean island nation of Kiribati, who had been missing for 33 days, came ashore over 300 miles away on the on Namorik Atoll, in the Marshall Islands. The men were reported to be weak, but otherwise not in bad shape, considering their ordeal. Apparently their arrival was not entirely unusual.
“As odd as it may seem, the Marshall Islands hosts Kiribas drifters quite frequently,” said the editor of the Marshall Islands Journal, Giff Johnson, “It’s not that it happens all the time. Let’s just say people from Kiribas are very hardy individuals. They get lost on a little boat and manage to persevere. It is an amazing thing.”
Castaways found on Pacific atoll after 33 days at sea
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In 1984, the Mystic Seaport Museum acquired the Rosenfeld Collection, one of the largest archives of maritime photographs in the United States. A video about the remarkable collection which grew out of the Morris Rosenfeld & Sons photography studio.
Photo: Robin Bell
The gangway to HMS Belfast, collapsed into the Thames River in London shortly after noon today. Two work men are reported to have been taken to the hospital with what are described as abrasions. More than 100 people on board the ship, including 30 school children, were evacuated in small boats. HMS Belfast is an ex-Royal Navy light cruiser which saw action in both the Second World War and the Korean War and is permanently docked on the Thames as part of the Imperial War Museum. Not surprisingly, a spokesman said that the ship will be closed until further notice.
Terror on the Thames as gangway leading to HMS Belfast collapses
Earlier this month we posted about a virtual problem with the ship, when graphic artists for the London 2012 Olympics Committee airbrushed HMS Belfast out of a promotional poster showing the Thames River.