Fifty five years ago today, on October 29th 1955, the battleship Novorossiysk, flagship of the Soviet Black Sea fleet, moored in Sevastopol Bay, was shattered by a powerful explosion which caused the ship to capsize and sink. Over six hundred sailors lost their lives. The cause of the explosion remains a mystery to this day. The sinking itself remained classified until the late 1980s. Theories of what sank the ship include an explosion by a German limpet mine left over from WWII, a torpedo attack from an unknown submarine as well as sabotage by the Italians, the English or the KGB. So far no explanation has yielded a fully plausible explanation for the sinking. The ship was raised in 1957 and scrapped.
Honor Frost had many talents – as artist, ballet designer, scholar, writer and publicist, to name a few – but her consuming passion was the world beneath the oceans. Honor, who has died aged 92, initiated underwater archaeology as a serious field for study, and pioneered its pursuit as a scientific discipline.
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HMS Hobart, artist's conception
In the good (or bad) old days, ships were built from the keel up, with the frames rising from the keel, and the plating or planking secured over the frames. These days ships are built in modules, large blocks of steel with piping, wiring and coatings already in place. The blocks are then welded together and a new ship emerges. It is all highly complicated but extremely efficient, at least until there is a mistake. In the construction of the HMAS Hobart, the shipyards building the modules discovered that their blocks don’t fit together.
$8bn navy flagship founders after construction bungle
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The factory fishing ship Athena caught fire early today in the Atlantic, 230 miles south-west of the Isles of Scilly. Eighty one non-essential personnel were evacuated to liferafts and subsequently rescued as the remaining 30 aboard fought the fire, which is now reported to be under control but not extinguished. The Athena was built in 1992, but was rebuilt in China this year due to damage from a previous fire.
Ship fire crew rescued from life-rafts in Atlantic
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Robert Bourne
Robert Bourne, who died on Oct. 13, at the age of 88, was the radioman on the Navy blimp, Airship K-74, on anti-submarine patrol off the southeast coast of Florida on the night of July 18, 1943. The lookout spotted a German submarine heading for two merchant ships. The blimp was intended to be observes and to generally avoid combat, but was equipped with 50 caliber machine guns and depth charges. As the submarine was about to attack the two merchant ships, the blimps’ commander Lt. Nelson Grills decided to engage the submarine, U-134. In the battle, the submarine was damaged but succeeded in the blimp down. Radioman Bourne sent out several mayday warnings before all 10 crew members swam out of the flooded gondola. One sailor died after being attacked by a shark. The rest of the crew was rescued. It was the only battle between a blimp and submarine in the Navy’s history. U-134 was sunk on August 24, 1943 near Vigo, Spain by six depth charges from a British Vickers Wellington aircraft.
Palm Harbor’s Robert Bourne survived historic battle between blimp, German sub
All that remains to mark the site of the final sea battle of the First Punic War between Rome and Carthage, around 241 BC, are the great bronze rams left behind after the rest of the sunken ships have rotten away in the warm waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The sea battle and the First Punic War, in general, were victories for Rome, marking its ascent, and Carthage’s decline as regional powers. Three rams have now been found near the island of Levanzo, west of Sicily.
Ancient shipwreck points to site of major Roman battle
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MV Beluga Fortune
Over the weekend, Somali pirates seized two ships in two days. On Saturday, pirates seized the MV York, a liquefied petroleum gas tanker, off the coast of Kenya. On Sunday, pirates seized the MV Beluga Fortune about 1,200 miles east of Mombasa, Kenya. The crew of the MV Beluga Fortune locked themselves in a panic room, switched off the main engine, cut off the fuel supply, blocked the bridge and reported the Indian Ocean attack to military forces. When the rescue team arrived today, the pirates had already abandoned the ship.
RCCL Cruise ship at Labadie, Haiti
The news from Haiti recently has been uniformly bad. In addition to earthquake damage, outbreaks of cholera are now sweeping the country. One bright spot is a new school, L’Ecole Nouvelle Royal Caribbean. Built by Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, it is one of the first new schools to open after last January’s earthquake.
Royal Caribbean announces opening of its new school in Haiti
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In August we posted about a joint Chinese-Kenyan expedition to locate the remains of a ship from the fleet of the legandary Chinese navigator, Zheng He. The ship was said to have sunk off Kenya near Lamu. Recently the team discovered Chinese pottery and an imperial coin in the Kenyan coastal village of Mambrui.
Could a rusty coin re-write Chinese-African history?
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Last week, the MV Olovaha arrived in Nuku’alofa. The MV Olovaha is a new interisland ferry built for Tonga to replace the Princess Ashika which sank last July with a loss of 74 passengers and crew. The ferry was built in Japan with Japanese funds.
Ferry arrives to replace Princess Ashika
In seperate, though related news, last week, another ferry boat in Indonesia sank in bad weather. Twelve people are still reported to be missing.
New Masts for HMS Belfast
The HMS Belfast, a Royal Navy light cruiser, now a museum ship on the Thames, is the last surviving escort ship from the Arctic convoy run to Russia during World War II. Last week, in a ceremony attended by HRH Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh, and the Head of the Russian presidential administration, Sergey Naryshkin, new masts, fabricated in the “Severnaya Verf” shipyard in St. Petersburg, Russia, were unveiled.
Russian and British Veterans of the Arctic Convoys Celebrated the Unveiling of Russian Masts on HMS Belfast in London
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It had all the elements of bad farce. The HMS Astute is Britain’s newest, stealthiest and no doubt most expensive submarine. As described by the BBC, “Aside from attack capabilities, it is able to sit in waters off the coast undetected, delivering the UK’s special forces where needed or even listening to mobile phone conversations.” After running hard aground on a shingle bank near the Skye Bridge on the Isle of Skye, becoming the subject of YouTube videos and the front page of the New York Times web site as well as hundreds of other news outlets, stealthy was not the first word that came to mind. “Undetected,” she was definitely not.
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We previously posted about a model of the Mayflower crafted from timber believed to used on the original ship that carried the Pilgrims to America. Alaric Bond passed along an article about a model of the HMS Victory by sculptor and woodcarver Ian G Brennan carved from original centuries old oak beams removed from HMS Victory’s lower gun deck during the restoration program in 1991. Beautiful work.
Embarrassing and rather bad timing. Billed as the “world’s most advanced nuclear submarine,” the recently christened HMS Astute ran aground this morning off the Isle of Skye.
Nuclear submarine runs aground
HMS Astute: world’s most advanced nuclear submarine runs aground
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Photo: AP
The announced British budget cuts will slash spending across the board but will hit the Royal Navy hardest of all of the military services.
Anchors away: Britain’s once-proud navy falls prey to budget cuts
In all the carnage, the worst damage, at least to the island’s national pride, is the torpedoing of the Navy. For a kingdom defined by its sea battles, heroes, and ships, Britain is witnessing a humiliating shrinkage of its once-world-conquering maritime force. In the next five years, it will lose four ships (bringing the total to 19), 5,000 personnel (down to 30,000), and perhaps, most ignominiously, will soon have two aircraft carriers with no aircraft to outfit them.
In a final appeal to the National Security Council, navy chiefs offered to make cuts that would reduce the senior service to its smallest since the time of Henry VIII.
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After killing more than 20 people in the Philippines and lashing Taiwan, where dozens are reported missing, “super-typhoon” Megi is poised to make landfall in South China today or Saturday. Typhoon Megi is the the strongest storm to hit the region in more than a decade.
Southern China awaits slow-moving super-typhoon
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Joseph Conrad
The final essay in Joseph Conrad’s wonderful, if somewhat odd book, The Mirror of the Sea, is entitled “The Heroic Age.” It starts out rather disappointingly as a paean to Nelson. There is nothing wrong with praising Nelson, except that everyone does it, so another bit of hagiography doesn’t necessarily add anything new.
Then, well into the essay, Conrad does something rather remarkable. He wonders what would have happened if the wind had shifted on that morning of the 21st of October.
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Horatio Nelson ‘was French football captain’, say children
Research carried out to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Trafalgar shows many schoolchildren believe that Horatio Nelson was captain of the French national football team in the 1990s.
Almost one-in-four also said that ships evacuated British troops from Dover – not Dunkirk – during World War Two, Walter Raleigh invented the bicycle, Captain James Cook was the captain of the Starship Enterprise and Christopher Columbus discovered gravity.
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A letter which only recently resurfaced gives an ordinary seaman’s view of the famous battle which was fought 205 years ago today.
‘They won’t send their fleets out again in a hurry’: Remarkable letter from hero who survived the Battle of Trafalgar
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The Costa Classica‘s current cruise has not gone well. First, on a stop at Korea’s southern resort island of Jeju, 44 Chinese tourists abandoned the tour group en masse. South Korean police have located eleven of the group, but 33 remain unaccounted for. Jeju has been a frequent stopover for illegal immigrants from China seeking employment in Korea.
44 Chinese Tourists Abandon Tour Group in Jeju
Then early yesterday, the ship collided with a cargo vessel at the mouth of the Yangtze River. The collision left a gash over 60 feet long in the side of the ship. Three passengers where taken to the hospital. Other minor injuries were also reported.
Three people hospitalised after cruise ship collides with cargo vessel in Asia