We are rapidly approaching the bi-centennial of the War of 1812, a largely forgotten conflict which was, in many respects, a continuation of the American War of Independence from Great Britain. The war was characterized by American incompetence and bumbling on land and surprising success on the seas. The early days of the war were marked by American victories at sea in which three American heavy frigates defeated and burned or captured three British frigates in single-ship battles. In the battle between HMS Shannon and USS Chesapeake in June of 1813, however, the Americans would not be so fortunate. The Shannon captured the Chesapeake.
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Lantern sharks, a type of small dogfish sharks, are well known for their bioluminescence, indeed that is how they were given their name. Researchers have recently discovered that the rare splendid lantern shark can adjust its coloration and lighting so as to become effectively invisible to predators. Harry Potter apparently is no the only one with an invisibility cloak.
Lantern Sharks Can Become Invisible, Glow-In-The-Dark
“The photophores replace the down-welling light from the sun, which is absorbed by the shark’s body,” lead author Julien Claes explained to Discovery News. “The silhouette of the shark therefore disappears when seen from below.”
Photo : Maritime New Zealand
Bad weather is adding to an already bad situation as salvage and clean up crews struggle to staunch the flow of oil from the container ship, MV Rena, which has been grounded on Astrolabe Reef in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty near Tauranga for the last week. Reports say that one of the main bunker tanks has been breached, dramatically increasing the volume of oil spilled. An estimated 130 – 350 tonnes of oil have leaked as of Tuesday morning, making this the the largest maritime oil spill in New Zealand’s history . 30 containers are also reported to have fallen off the ship.
The Italian owned bulk carrier, MV Montecristo, was hijacked by pirates off Somalia on Monday. The ship’s crew retreated to a protective citadel “safe room” ahead of the pirates. Today RFA Fort Victoria and USS De Wert, acting as part of NATO’s counter piracy operation stormed the ship and rescued the crew, which was unharmed. A British Ministry of Defense spokesman said, “10-15 Royal Marines were involved. The pirates are now in NATO custody. No special forces were involved.” Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the story along.
Last Friday we posted about the USS Arthur W Radford as an artificial reef. Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing on this video of the wreck of HMS Hermes, which is a popular dive site off near Batticaloa, Sri Lanka. HMS Hermes, commissioned in 1924, was the first ship designed and built as an aircraft carrier. Previous aircraft carriers had been conversions of other ships. She was sunk in 1942 by Japanese aircraft during World War II with a loss of over 300 men.
Eratosthenes
Happy Columbus Day to those in the United States and Happy Thanksgiving to those in Canada.
On Columbus Day, it seems appropriate to consider the role of error in discovery. While many of us were taught in school that Columbus proved that the world was round, that is a rather shoddy myth. The ancient Greeks understood that the world was round by the 6 century BCE. Indeed the Libyan mathematician, Eratosthenes, calculated the circumference of the globe to be 250,000 stadia. Let’s put aside the fact that no one agrees on the length of a stadia, literally the length of a stadium. If one uses the Egyptian stadia, Eratosthenes’ estimate of 25,000 miles came within just 100 miles over the actual circumference at the equator (24,901 miles). Eratosthenes, in fact, made several mathematical errors but they cancelled out.
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Watch This Space Photo:Blah Bloh BLog
A quick quiz. Is Kick ’em Jenny a rockbilly singer, a Dutch Celtic Symfo-Folk band or an active submarine volcano on the floor of the Caribbean Sea? The answer appears to be yes to all three.
Kick ’em Jenny is a Dutch rockabilly singer who performs with the Real Deal. Kick ’em Jenny is also a Dutch Celtic Symfo-Folk band. (One can only hope that the rockabilly and Celtic Symfo-Folk bands don’t get double-booked.) KIck ‘Em Jenny is also an active submarine volcano in the Eastern Caribbean. The Caribbean Yacht Charter Blog recently posted about the volcano – “The Caribbean May Soon Have a New Island.” The word “soon” may be a bit optimistic, unless one is thinking in geological terms.
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USS Radford on her way to becoming an artificial reef
Just last August, the USS Arthur W. Radford, a Fletcher-class destroyer which served in the Gulf War, was sunk as an artificial reef in the Atlantic Ocean off Cape May, NJ. The 563-foot destroyer was the longest vessel ever sunk as an artificial reef on the Atlantic coast.
Recently local divers were shocked to find that Hurricane Irene apparently broke the sunken ship in two and carried the larger section over 200 feet from its original location. Some are speculating that the hurricane damage may make the ship more interesting to sport divers. Thanks to Dave Shirlaw of the Marine History List for pointing out the story. And thanks to Reno Pankau Verstaendig for pointing out that I initially had the wrong destroyer!
Gazela
This Saturday the Fourth Annual Wooden Boat Festival will be held at the Independence Seaport Museum on the Delaware River in Philadelphia. The festival will kick off with a Parade of Sail featuring the tall ships Gazela and AJ Meerwald as well as the Philadelphia Fire Department’s fire boat.
Wooden Boat Festival sails into Philadelphia
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Some new competitive sports are better than others. I am not sure how I feel about dock dogs competitions. Still it has to be an improvement over diving horses which were wildly popular in the US in the 1880s. Remarkably there is at least one diving horse still performing. But first, from Time magazine: DockDogs: The Sport Where Canines Catch Big Air
Helicopter Spraying Dispersant on Oil Spilled from MV Rena Photo: Alan Gibson
Depending on what one reads, the oil spill associated with the grounding of the MV Rena on Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga, New Zealand is either a “small leak” or a “looming environmental disaster.” Conceivably, depending on the integrity of the ship’s hull, both may be right.
The Herald Sun reports that “salvage company representatives had reported the leak and said it had been stopped with only a small amount going into the water,” while the NZ Herald reports that the “ship is haemorrhaging oil into the sea off Tauranga.” Radio New Zealand is reporting somewhere between the two other reports, noting that “Maritime New Zealand believes the fuel tanks are still intact and heavy fuel oil leaking from the vessel appears to be from pipes. It is not clear how much has leaked into the sea.”
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Putin and his jars
Nothing really surprising about this story but I do find it amusing. In August, it was reported that Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister of Russia and novice scuba diver, just happened to “discover” two jars dating back to the sixth century BCE when scuba diving off the Taman Peninsula along the Russian coast. The media were, of course, in attendance.
Putin finds ancient jars while scuba diving
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The Liberian flagged container ship, MV Rena, ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga, New Zealand yesterday, flooding two cargo holds. The ship is loaded with approximately 2,100 containers and has around 1,700 tonnes of heavy fuel. There has been no spillage of the heavy fuel. Hydraulic oil was reported to have leaked and to have created a visible sheen on the water but was dissipating. The crew of 23 have remained aboard the ship. The ship has developed a 10 degree list but is stable on the reef.
Next month, the Russian nuclear submarine, Nerpa, will be delivered to the Indian Navy, which has leased the submarine for a reported $900 million from the Russians for ten years with an option to buy. The delivery of the new nuclear sub to India, which will be renamed INS Chakra, has been long, strange and ultimately tragic.
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The evacuation of British troops and civilians from France in 1940 did not end with Dunkirk. Several weeks later, on June 17, 1940, the British Cunard liner Lancastria was loaded to capacity with troops and civilians off the French port of St. Nazaire, when she was struck by three direct hits from a German Junkers 88 bomber. As many as 6,500 men, women and children were lost when the ship sank. It was the worst maritime disaster in British history. The sinking claimed more lives than the combined losses of Titanic and Lusitania. News of the disaster was covered up. Churchill said that, “The newspapers have got quite enough disaster for today, at least.”
Now 71 years after the sinking, the “silent sacrifice” of those aboard the Lancastria was finally acknowledged this weekend as a memorial to the victims was unveiled on the banks of the Clyde at the site of the the shipyard where the ship was built.
Victims of HMT Lancastria sinking honoured with memorial
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There is a certain magic to drydocks. They give you the ability to take in the whole ship in almost a single look and provide the one chance to get the bottom clean and whatever needs fixing below the waterline fixed. Here is a short video of the Brig Niagra on dock at the Great Lakes Towing Shipyard in Cleveland, Ohio. Thanks to Irwin Bryan and Alaric Bond for passing along the news.
What is it about ships being towed to the scrap yard? The MT Phoenix under tow, on her way to the scrap yard last July broke her towing cable and drifted ashore on Salt Rocks in Sheffield Beach, South Africa. She was only freed last month and was subsequently scuttled. Last June, the perhaps poorly named MV Wisdom was under tow to a scrap yard when she broke her cable and drifted ashore on Bandra beach, in suburban Mumbai. And two weeks ago , the Canadian Miner, on her way to a scrap yard in Turkey, broke her tow line and ran aground near Scatarie Island, off the coast of Cape Breton, Canada. Mammoet Salvaging, a Dutch salvage company, has prepared a salvage plan and has presented it to Canadian authorities.
The surf in San Diego county has been putting on quite a light show on recent evenings. The shore has been hit by a bout of “red tide,” a bloom of the dinoflagellate Lingulodinium polyedrum. The bad news is that this dinoflagellate can be toxic to fish and shellfish. The good news is that it is wildly bio-luminescent turning the Pacific waves a soft neon blue as they break on the beach. See our post about red tide in New York harbor around this time last year.
Red Tide – Bioluminescent San Diego, 2011
Thanks to Irwin Bryan for passing the story along.
For the sake of full disclosure, I am not a huge fans of thrillers, particularly thrillers involving ships. The plots often strike me as implausible and the descriptions of the ships and ship operations often border on the laughable. (Too often, they leap across the border.)
This is not the case however with R.E. McDermott’s Deadly Straits. The book is a maritime thriller whose plot is disturbingly plausible. And unlike virtually every other thriller I have come across which features ships, Deadly Straits consistently gets it right. It is a thriller that even a thriller skeptic and ship geek can love.
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Last March we posted that the U. S. Coast Guard Cutter Acushnet, the oldest commissioned Coast Guard cutter, was being sold in an online auction. The ship was reportedly sold to an unidentified buyer. The ship has now been put up for auction on EBay by “masterbushpilot0.” The “Buy It Now” price has been set at $10,000,000. The current highest bid is $27,100 and the reserve price has not been met. The auction ends in four days.
HISTORIC USCGC Acushnet Coast Guard Cutter / Diver Vessel UP FOR AUCTION