Jiaolong, 蛟龙, in Chinese folklore, is a shape-shifting water dragon. For several months this summer the Chinese government has been quietly testing a new submersible, named Jiaolong, designed to dive to 7,000 meters. If successful, it will be the deepest diving submersible in the world, diving deeper than the Japanese Shinkai 6500, which can dive to 6,500 meters and the American submersible Alvin which can dive to 4,500 meters.
Early last month we posted about an ice island four times the size of Manhattan, a 100-square-mile block of ice 600 feet thick , that broke off from the Petermann glacier in Greenland. In a case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object, the ice island has collided with Joe Island, a small rocky outcrop in the Nares Strait, west of Greenland. Joe Island appears to have won as the ice island has now broken in two.
An historic poster that originally sold for just a tuppence to celebrate Lord Nelson’s victory over the French and Spanish fleets at the Battle of Trafalgar went on the auction block this week. It was expected to fetch £40,000 but bids failed to meet the reserve price.
More details on the capture of the M/V Magellan Star. The crew and the ship management company kept their heads and their sense of humor when the ship was boarded by Somali pirates on Wednesday. When the pirates boarded the ship, the officers and crew disabled the engine and retreated to a hidden safe room. As reported by the BBC:
The hijack began on Wednesday when pirates boarded the 8,000-tonne container ship, which flies the flag of Antigua.
But after searching the vessel for three hours, they were unable to locate the crew, according to the ship’s German owners, Quadrant.
The pirates then phoned the shipping company in Hamburg to ask where the crew were hidden.
“They were told the crew was on holiday,” said spokesman Juergen Salamon.
“They then asked how to switch the engines back on, but were told they were broken.”
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Thanks to Ulrich Rudofsky for forwarding these slideshows of the Waterford Tug Roundup. Click here to view the slideshow from Friday aternoon.
The Toshiba Tall Ships Festival at Dana Point this weekend offers a wide range of attractions and activities. It all starts with a parade of ships and schooners at sunset this evening. The Brig Pilgrim, the replica of the ship made famous by Richard Henry Dana, has returned fron her yearly cruise and Dana’s classic “Two Years Before the Mast” will be read aloud on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In addition to the usual food, music, sailing and nautical lore, there will be something new this year – the public is invited to watch the Ocean Institute staff dissect a giant Humbolt squid. “Never done one during the Tall Ships Festival,” said Dan Stetson, president and chief executive of the institute. The dissection is included as a way to educate the public about a rapidly growing species considered invasive for certain areas, he said.
Photo: Lynn Digennaro
The Pride of Baltimore II needs your help. The Pepsi Refresh Project is giving away $1.3 million dollars toward “ideas that refresh the Gulf.” The Pride of Baltimore organization is competing for a $50, 000 grant to teach boating safety from the decks of the replica Baltimore clipper. There are 1140 competitors and only the top ten will win the $50,000 grants. The Pride II is currently ranking at 288. To help move her closer to winning, go to Teach Boating safety from the decks of Pride II, America’s Tall ship and vote for the project. You can vote once a day until the end of September. To receive a daily email reminder, send an email to Missy@pride2.org and in the subject line enter Pepsi.
Gipsy Moth IV, the yacht that Sir Francis Chichester singlehanded around the world is for sale for £250,000. Chichester was the first person to sail single-handed around the world by the three capes, the route taken by the clipper ships. He completed the voyage in Gipsy Moth IV in nine months and one day. While brokers have suggested that there is considerable interest in the historic yacht, Chichester himself was not in love with it, saying, ‘She is cantankerous and difficult and needs a crew of three – a man to navigate, an elephant to move the tiller and a 3ft 6in chimpanzee with arms 8ft long to get about below and work the gear.’
An update to a previous post. An Inuit family says a box that was hidden for over 80 years in the Arctic contains documents linked to the doomed Franklin expedition and has just turned the box over to the the Canadian Conservation Institute. In the mean while, the search for Franklin’s ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, has resumed as the Canadian government has sent a Parks Canada icebreaker into a three-week expedition into the waters near Gjoa Haven where the ships are believed to have sunk.
Search begins for British explorer’s lost ships
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Tug W.O. Decker
The Waterford Tugboat Roundup 2010 starts tomorrow with a Parade of Tugs past the Albany, NY waterfront before all return to Waterford at the junction of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers for a full weekend of competitions and entertainment. The Roundup Favorite Tug of 2010 competition is very tight with 2637 voted for the lovely W.O. Decker, 2343 for the Fireboat (and Honorary Tug) John J. Harvey, with 2286 votes for the Atlantic Hunter II.
Twenty-four U.S. Marines from the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit’s Maritime Raid Force stormed the German-owned containership M/V Magellan Star today, capturing the pirates that had seized control of the ship in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of Somalia. No shots were fired and there were no injuries. The crew had locked themselves in a safe room aboard the ship to await the arrival of assistance.
U.S. forces board pirate-captured vessel, seize control
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This sounds like a fantastic festival for anyone near Townsend, Washington. The 34th Annual Wooden Boat Festival, which starts tomorrow and runs through the weekend, features almost 300 wooden vessels on display ranging from small wherries to the 133′ classic schooner Adventuress.
Ahoy for Wooden Boat Festival: Tents to go up today at maritime center
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Damage to the bow of the Pacific Star after a storm in 2007 resulting in a cancelled cruise
The video of unsecured furniture flying about on the P&O cruise ship, Pacific Sun, is all over the internet. A Carnival spokesperson (Carnival owns P&O) is quoted as saying, “The incident was fully investigated and lessons learnt have been heeded, including the securing of tables and other furnishings aboard.” As Captain D. Peter Boucher commented on our previous post, “the lessons were learned hundreds of years ago by seafarers,” as indeed they were. There is, however, more to this story than initially meets the eye.
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Cruise ship operators would prefer that their passengers exist in a hermetically sealed bubble, where they can enjoy the sea without ever having to be exposed to it; where their passengers can look up occasionally from drinking, dining and spending money in the onboard shops or at the casino to be reminded that the sea is still out there.
The sea doesn’t always cooperate. Last March, we posted about a large wave that smashed into a cruise ship in the Mediterranean killing two passengers. Less tragically, the cruise ship Pacific Sun got caught in bad weather off the coast of New Zealand in 2008. No deaths were reported but 42 of the 2403 passengers and crew onboard were injured. Recently closed circuit videos of the scene onboard made their way to the net and have been widely distributed. If you haven’t stumbled across it yet, it is both fascinating and terrifying.
ALARMING footage has emerged showing passengers and furniture being thrown
A twelve year old male orca whale, named Sumar by SeaWorld, died suddenly at their San Diego facility on Tuesday. Sadly its death was not untypical. Male orcas in the wild have an average life expectancy of 30 years. Many live into their 50s and 60s. Female orcas have an average life expectancy of 50 years though some have been known to live into their 90s. Despite a steady food supply and medical care, most orcas in captivity die very young. Two thirds of all captive orca whales die withing 10 years, so Sumar lived longer than average. Only about 15% of orcas survive 20 years in captivity.
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Lieutenant-Commander Tony Bentley-Buckle, who died at the end of May at the age of 88, had a valiant and varied career in the Royal Navy during World War II. After the war, he established two shipping lines and an airline in Africa and competed in the Olympics for Kenya. Despite this impressive career, he may be best remembered for his time spent in a German POW camp as one of the creators of “Albert RN,” a life sized dummy, used to facilitate prisoner escapes.
Lieutenant-Commander Tony Bentley-Buckle
Bentley-Buckle was the camp’s watch repairer and lock picker, and he made the mechanism which enabled Albert’s eyes to blink and move, giving added realism to the dummy. In 1953 a highly fictionalised version of the episode was made into a film, Albert RN, but Bentley-Buckle’s true wartime adventures, behind enemy lines in Italy and Yugoslavia, were even stranger than fiction. Read the rest of the obituary.
A clip from the movie, Albert RN (distributed in the United States as Break to Freedom)
Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the obituary along.
Photo: Will Van Dorp
It was a beautiful and busy weekend in New York harbor. On Sunday, I missed the 18th Annual Running of the Great North River Tugboat Race & Competition but Will over at the Tugster blog has some great photos. For the real tug fans, the big, annual Waterford Tugboat Roundup starts this Thursday, September 9th and carries on through Sunday, the 12th. Waterford is about 160 miles north of New York City at the junction of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers.
And by the way, anyone struck with “tug life envy” should definitely read Bowsprite’s recent post, “how to simulate the tugboat feeling.”
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Two projects are underway in Maine and Oregon to produce energy from ocean waves. Ocean Renewable Power Company, in Maine, is using horizontal turbines to capture the energy of ebbing and flooding tides. Initial tests have met or exceeded their targets and the company hopes to install a commercial version of the the test turbines now in place and be hooked in to the Bangor Hydro Electric Company grid as soon as 2011.
Maine offshore energy project exceeds expectations
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The Ocean Technology Foundation has been searching for John Paul Jones’ famous flagship, the Bonhomme Richard for the last five years. They now believe that they are closing in on the wreck. On this year’s expedition both the US and French Navies are joining in to help. The US Navy’s oceanographic survey ship USNS HENSON (T-AGS 63) with oceanographers from the Naval Oceanographic Office and state-of-the-art underwater survey technology will join the hunt as will a French Navy mine hunting ship.
In July, we posted about a Baltic shipwreck on which divers found 30 bottles of champagne thought to pre-date the French Revolution. (see Baltic Bubbly – ‘World’s oldest champagne’) On subsequent dives, smaller bottles have been recovered which apparently contain beer. Let’s hope they keep exploring. Who knows what they may find next.