The 160,000 dwt tanker Aegean Angel was en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Houston, Texas when it encountered heavy weather northeast of Bermuda on Thursday. A large wave is reported to have struck the ship, killing the captain and the chief engineer, who had gone forward to inspect for damage. Several others, including the first officer, were reported to have been injured.
Wave hits tanker in mid-Atlantic, two killed
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A weird dissonance between two cruise stories struck me recently. On one hand, Carnival Cruise Lines is “the official confetti sponsor of the Times Square New Year’s Eve 2011 celebration.” As reported by the the Maritime Executive “the sponsorship includes multiple opportunities to associate the “Fun Ship” brand with the annual excitement.” A You-tube video of Carnival’s Senior Cruise Director is also featured. On the other hand several media sources have been quoting from an excellent and timely post from last March on Jim Walker’s Cruise Law News blog, Ten Years of Cruise Ship Fires – Has the Cruise Industry Learned Anything?
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A lousy time of the year to run aground off Finland. Then again, there aren’t too many good times of the year to run aground. Thanks to Dick Bal for passing the news along.
Dutch freighter “Stadiongracht” aground off Rauma
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The South Street Seaport Museum in New York City is reported to be attempting to sell off the historic schooner, Lettie G. Howard. The Lettie G. Howard is a wooden Fredonia schooner built in 1893 in Essex, Massachusetts, USA. In past years the museum has often not succeeded in booking revenue generating educational programing on the schooner. Sources are now quoted as saying that the schooner costs too much to maintain given that it has not been sailing frequently.
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Forty seven years ago, passengers on the cruise ship Lakonia were promised “a marvelous Christmas cruise to sunny Madeira and the Canary Islands.” The brochure read – “Have your holiday with all risk eliminated. Enjoy a holiday you will remember for the rest of your life.” When the fire broke out on December 22, 1963, the promise of a risk-free holiday proved tragically ironic, though the promise of a unforgettable holiday, no doubt, became regrettably too true. One hundred twenty eight 128 people died in the Lakonia fire and its aftermath, of which 95 were passengers and 33 were crew members. Given the recent news that the CO2 firefighting system on the Carnival Splendor failed during the fire aboard the ship in November, the story of the Lakonia remains timely. Notably, AMVER, which we posted about recently, coordinated the rescue by directing five merchant ships to the burning ship. The first ship arrived within four hours of the first distress call. As reported by Time magazine on January 3, 1963:
Over one million seafarers keep ships sailing year round. This is a good time to remember the sailors at sea over the holidays. The Sailor’s Society, and other groups like it, do a wonderful job supporting sailors far from home.
Of all the various holiday greeting from shipping ventures this season this has to be my favorite. A Moss Rosenberg design LNG ship transformed to a Christmas ball carrier. From the Maasmond Maritime.
A glimpse at the new Mary Rose museum, hosted by Alan Titchmarch. The museum is intended to open in 2012, the 500th anniversary of the delivery of the Mary Rose.
Alan Titchmarsh explores the Mary Rose Museum and encourages fundraising for the new museum
Sing with me now – “On the first day of Christmas my true love gave to me, a Phaeocystis globosa.” OK, it may not be a melodic as “a partridge in a pear tree,” but it may be more interesting. Dr. Richard Kirby, a Royal Society Research Fellow at Plymouth University has come up with the “12 Plankton of Christmas.” To see more of Dr. Kirby’s work check out his book, Ocean Drifters: A Secret World Beneath the Waves.
Thanks to Julian Stockwin for tweeting about the 12 Plankton of Christmas.
Last June, we posted about Jessica Watson’s book and album release. Jessica Watson is the now 17 year old Australian sailor who can rightly claim the title of the “youngest to sail solo and unassisted around the world.” Now Abby Sunderland, who attempted to claim that title as well, but whose boat was dismasted in the Indian Ocean, has teamed up with Lynn Vincent to write a book of her own. Vincent, was the ghost writer for Sarah Palin’s book, “Going Rogue.” Sunderland’s book will be titled, Unsinkable: A Young Woman’s Courageous Battle on the High Seas. It will be available this spring, but can be pre-ordered from Amazon.
The real victims of piracy are invariably the seafarers who are held for ransom often under grim conditions for long periods of time. From a statement relased by the Round Table of international shipping associations – and the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF):
500 Seafarers held hostage by pirates at Christmas
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An intriguing article about how scientists are using CT scans to build a 3D picture of the ferocious predator which terrorized the oceans 150m years ago. Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing it along.
David Hayes passed along a video of the USS Pegasus, a hydrofoil patrol boat that was billed as the “vanguard of the new navy,” thirty five years ago. While the Pegasus was not the first of many hydrofoils as was intended in 1975, the development of high speed coastal craft did not stop. The US Navy is currently building two classes of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS). Maritime Executive reported today that the Congress has approved contracts for Marinette Marine and Austal to each build ten littoral combat ships for the US Navy. Will the new LCS class ships serve as the “vanguard of the new navy?” Only time will tell. Video of the USS Independence (LCS2) after the jump.
The Maritime Blog and the Professional Mariner are pointing to two Marine Safety Alerts issued by the Coast Guard today which may suggest that the fixed CO2 system on the Carnival Splendor failed.
The Safety Alerts do not identify the ship by name but note:
A machinery space fire onboard a relatively new vessel was effectively responded to and extinguished by the vessel’s quick response team firefighters using portable extinguishing equipment. However, before it was declared completely extinguished and approximately five hours after the fire started, the master of the vessel made the decision to release CO2 from the vessel’s fixed firefighting system. It failed to operate as designed. Subsequently, crew members were unable to activate it manually and CO2 was never directed into the machinery space.
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The U.S. Coast Guard is posting the top 11 rescue/mission videos of 2010. Starting today they will be posting one video per day. There are three ways to vote for your favorite video. Either “like” the video on the Coast Guard Youtube channel, “like” your favorite on the Coast Guard Facebook fan page or leave a positive comment on the Coast Guard Compass blog for that video. In the mean time, here is a compilation of the eleven best videos. Click here to view the Day 1 Video – Coast Guard rescues father and son caught in surf. The professionalism, courage and skill of these Coast Guardsmen is absolutely breathtaking.
The photos and video clip are almost a week old but nevertheless seem like an excellent way to welcome in the winter. This ice sculpture is the Cleveland Harbor West Pierhead Lighthouse on Lake Erie. Happy Winter Solstice to everyone North of the equator. And we hope that our our friends in the Antipodes enjoy their summer.
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Fifteen-year-old Dutch sailor, Laura Dekker, arrived in St. Maarten after a 2,200 nautical-mile voyage from the Cape Verde Islands off West Africa. She sailed from Gibraltar on August 21 and spent two months in the Canary Islands waiting for the hurricane season to pass. She left the Cape Verde Islands on December 2nd. She is attempting to become the youngest person to sail around the world alone.
Teenage sailor on solo voyage reaches St. Maarten
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Sailors in the western hemisphere will see the first lunar eclipse to fall on the solstice in the last 456 years. According to NASA, the last time the two celestial events happened at the same time was in AD 1554.
The eclipse begins on Tuesday morning, Dec. 21st, at 1:33 am EST (Monday, Dec. 20th, at 10:33 pm PST). At that time, Earth’s shadow will appear as a dark-red bite at the edge of the lunar disk. It takes about an hour for the “bite” to expand and swallow the entire Moon. Totality commences at 02:41 am EST (11:41 pm PST) and lasts for 72 minutes.
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Though often confused with flying fish, the Japanese flying squid, Todarodes pacificus, uses jet propulsion to leap out of the sea and fly up to 65ft to escape predators. Graham Ekins, 60, a retired deputy head teacher from Boreham, Essex, recently documented their aerial performances in the waters south of Japan. Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the article along.
Perhaps foreshadowing our own information age, World War II’s “Battle of the Atlantic” between German submarine wolf-packs and Allied convoys was largely won and nearly lost by the code breakers of Bletchley Park. In 1940, Alan Turing had begun to break the German Navy’s “Dolphin” cipher which was based on an Engima code machine with three encoding rotors. Within a little over a year the German wolf-packs were temporarily withdrawn due to mounting submarine losses. In 1942, however the Germans introduced a new four rotor Engima machine using what was termed the “Shark” cipher. Richard Pendered and a small team of codebreakers would finally break the “Shark” cipher ending a ten month period of major Allied convoy losses in what those in Bletchely Park referred to as the “Shark blackout.”
Richard Pendered, who has died aged 89, was one of the small team of Bletchley Park codebreakers who broke the “Shark” Enigma cipher used by German U-boats during the Second World War; his work also led directly to the sinking of the battlecruiser Scharnhorst.
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