Titanic Myths, observations by Tim Maltin

Posted on by September 25, 2010

In light of the recent claims in Louise Patten’s new book,  Good as Gold , which we posted about earlier this week, we are very pleased to welcome Tim Maltin,  author of  101 Things You Thought You Knew About the Titanic…But Didn’t, as guest blogger, to provide his perspective regarding the legendary and apparently, often mythical, ship.

Titanic Myths

The sinking of the Titanic is one of the best documented disasters in history. In 1912, this catastrophe was the subject of detailed public enquiries on both sides of the Atlantic. During these full hearings, more than 50,000 questions were asked of more than 100 eye-witnesses. All of their answers were recorded, in full, and published generally, as well as kept in libraries up and down the country. And yet what most of us knows about the sinking of the Titanic today is a far cry from what actually happened that night, when 1,500 people froze to death in the North Atlantic.
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Last Minute Bids on the Fairport Harbor West Breakwater Light

Posted on by September 24, 2010

Fairport Harbor West Breakwater Light

In September 2009, the United States General Services Administration put the Fairport Harbor West Breakwater Light, on Lake Erie, up for public auction via an online auction. The minimum bid is $10,000 with incremental bids of $5,000 required.  The bidding was supposed to end yesterday but is still ongoing and may roll-over until Monday at 3PM.  The highest bid is now $42,000.   The Fairport Harbor-west breakwater — also known as the Grand River-west breakwater lighthouse — is adjacent to Headlands Beach State Park/Headlands Dunes State Nature Preserve.

Bidding goes on for Fairport lighthouse

A Shipwreck inside an Art Gallery

Posted on by September 24, 2010

Artist Josh Beckman’s “Sea Nymph” in LA’s Machine Project gallery is nothing less that a shipwreck in an art gallery.  To accompany the installation, the gallery has hosted a series of nautical-themed events, performances, lectures, and workshops, as well as an opera by and for dogs. Sea-dogs, we hope. The exhibition continues through October 8th.

Josh Beckman’s Sea Nymph: A shipwrecked boat inside Machine

Sail Training Brig Prince William Sold to Pakistani Navy

Posted on by September 24, 2010

The brig Prince William owned by the Tall Ships Youth Trust has been sold to the Pakistan Navy and has been renamed the PNS Rah Naward. The Prince William was delivered in 2001, a sistership to the TS Stavros  S. Niarchos.   The Prince William was laid up in 2007 and has been actively for sale.  The sale was announced by a the Tall Ships Youth Trust in letter dated September 22 but posted on their website this morning.  In addition to the Stavros  S. Niarchos, the Trust also operates four identical 22 m Challenger yachts and a 19 metre catamaran.

Largest offshore wind farm opens off Thanet in Kent

Posted on by September 23, 2010

Off Kent, in the UK, the world’s biggest offshore wind farm has been officially opened.   With 100 turbines, the Thanet project  is expected to generate enough electricity to power 200,000 homes.  Currently the UK gets 3% of all its energy from renewable sources. It is aiming to reach 15% by 2020.

Of the top 25 offshore wind farms in the world today, 24 are in the European Union.  One is in China.  The US has no operational offshore wind farms.  Cape Wind, the proposed wind farm closest to fruition in the US,  is still the subject of controversy and partisan politcs.   Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing the article along.

Largest offshore wind farm opens off Thanet in Kent

World’s largest wind farm begins production

On World Maritime Day: Year of the Seafarer – Demands for Action to End Piracy

Posted on by September 23, 2010

Every year the International Maritime Organization (IMO) observes World Maritime Day during the last week of September. The IMO headquarters is celebrating today, Thursday, September 24th, though in Buenos Aires, Argentina and Vancouver, Canada, they will be celebrating the event on October 7-8th and November 17-18th respectively. In Singapore the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), the Singapore Maritime Officers’ Union and the Singapore Organisation of Seamen will be distributing hampers containing food movies, and caps to 12,000 sailors on more than 600 ships.

In London, a group representing shipping “stakeholders” – shipowners,  managers,  underwriters, traders and trade unions –  is presenting a petition signed by almost a million demanding action to end piracy.   In this the “Year of the Seafarer,” 354 seafarers and 16 ships are being held hostage by pirates in Somalia.

Action to end piracy demanded on World Maritime Day
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A Harvest Moon on the Autumnal Equinox

Posted on by September 22, 2010

Tonight, the beginning of Fall will be marked by the rising of a “Super Harvest Moon”  accompanied by an unusually bright planet Jupiter.

‘Super Harvest Moon’ will usher in autumn tonight

For the first time since 1991, autumn begins tonight with a full moon, an occurrence called a “Super Harvest Moon.”

As the sun sets in the west, the moon will rise in the east, mixing their light to create what NASA calls a “360-degree, summer-autumn twilight glow that is only seen on rare occasions.”
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The Man Who Fell to Shore – What Reid Stowe Found Waiting for Him When He Returned From 1,151 Days on the Open Sea

Posted on by September 22, 2010

Soanya Ahmad, Reid Stowe, and their son, Darshen, aboard the Anne. (Photo: Gillian Laub)

We have posted about Reid Stowe’s remarkable non-stop voyage of over 1100 days at sea.   Now that Reid has been home for several months, Adam Sternbergh writing in the New Yorker magazine has written a portrait of Reid’s voyage and the world he returned to after over three years at sea.  Worth a read.

The Man Who Fell to Shore

Reid Stowe spent 1,152 days on the open sea, the longest continuous journey ever undertaken by one person. He came back to a brand-new family, but not exactly a hero’s welcome.
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Did a Steering Error Sink the Titanic?

Posted on by September 22, 2010

In Good as Gold, a new book by Louise Patten, the granddaughter of the most senior surviving officer on the Titanic, reveals a long hidden family secret. She claims that an error in steering on the bridge of the Titanic led to the collision with the iceberg.  According to Ms. Patten, the ship had plenty of time to miss the iceberg, but the helmsman turned wheel the wrong way in a moment of confusion.   She also says a subsequent order to steam slow ahead rather than stopping the ship, given by the owner Bruce Ismay, chairman of the White Star Line, owners of the Titanic, may have dramatically accelerated the flooding and markedly reduced the time the Titanic remained afloat.  
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Fire Damaged Ferry, 86-year-old M/V Kirkland, Won’t be Rebuilt

Posted on by September 21, 2010

Argosy Cruises has announced that the 86 year old ferry, MV Kirkland, which was severely damaged by fire at the end of last month, will not be rebuilt.  The 1924 wooden-hulled car ferry served passengers all over the Pacific Northwest. The vessel spent much of her her career on the Columbia River and on Puget Sound and finally served as a tour boat on Lake Washington. She was used by the US Navy to lay mines in World War II. The Kirkland is listed on the Washington Historic Register and the National Register of Historic Places.

Old Argosy ferry damaged by fire won’t be rebuilt
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Sink the HMAS Adelaide !

Posted on by April 13, 2011

HMAS Adelaide

It looks like the guided missile frigate HMAS Adelaide will indeed be scuttled off Avoca Beach, north of Sydney in New South Wales, to create an artificial diving site.  Last March we posted about a court case brought by environmentalists which prevented the planned scuttling of the Australian wrship.  Now an independent tribunal has ruled that the scuttling can go ahead as long as the ship is thoroughly decontaminated.

Australian Warship to Create Artifical Reef Despite Contamination Fears
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Jupiter making closest approach in nearly 50 years

Posted on by September 19, 2010

For sailors who still watch the skies, Jupiter will be passing the earth on Monday at its closest approach since 1963. The planet will not appear as big or as bright again until 2022.

Jupiter making closest approach in nearly 50 years

You can see it low in the east around dusk. Around midnight, it will be directly overhead. That’s because Earth will be passing between Jupiter and the sun, into the wee hours of Tuesday.
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Is the Aircraft Carrier USS John F. Kennedy too big for Portland?

Posted on by September 19, 2010

We have previously posted about efforts to permanently moor the decommissioned aircraft carrier USS John F. Kennedy in Portland, Maine.   The Navy is is considering proposals from Portland and Rhode Island.  Many in Portland are not happy at the prospect of mooring the aircraft carrier in the harbor however.  ““It’s not a good fit,” said David Marshall, a City Council member. “It would block a good portion of our view corridors, and it ends up being a potential liability for the city.”  A recent editorial in the  Maine Sunday Telegraph, sums up the problem succinctly, “Everything about the project is too big except the level of public support behind it.”
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Dodge Morgan – First American to Sail Non-Stop Around the World Alone

Posted on by September 18, 2010

Dodge Morgan, Who Sailed Around World, Dies at 78

Dodge Morgan, the first American to sail solo nonstop around the world, a feat in which he cut the previous record time nearly in half, died Tuesday in Boston. He was 78 and lived on Snow Island in Harpswell, Me., a 30-acre sanctuary that he owned and where he moored six sailboats.

The cause was cancer, his fiancée, Mary Beth Teas, said.

Aboard the 60-foot sloop American Promise, Mr. Morgan slipped into the port of St. George, Bermuda, at 1:31 p.m. on April 11, 1986, completing the 27,000-mile circumnavigation in 150 days 1 hour 6 minutes. He had sailed out of Bermuda on Nov. 12, 1985. The voyage — often through roiling seas and occasionally past icebergs — shattered the previous record of 292 days set by a British sailor, Chay Blyth, in 1971.

Read the rest of the obituary

Fire on the Horizon – The Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster, by John Konrad and Tom Shroder

Posted on by September 18, 2010

gCaptain is one of my favorite blogs. It has a done a great job of covering the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Now gCaptain’s John Konrad has written a book, Fire on the Horizon – The Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster, assisted by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Tom Shroder. It is due out in March of 2011 but can be pre-ordered now.  Should be a fascinating read.

Fire on the Horizon – The Untold Story of the Gulf Oil Disaster

On April 20, 2010, the half-billion-dollar floating oil rig Deepwater Horizon became a household name when it blew up, killing 11 people, shattering a multinational company’s reputation, and leaving an unprecedented swath of devastation in its wake. Told by veteran oil rig captain John Konrad and award-winning Washington Post journalist Tom Shroder, Fire on the Horizon is the remarkable story of this tragedy—the worst environmental disaster in the history of the Unites States—a riveting chronicle of engineering hubris at odds with the Earth itself, of corporate greed and unforgettable selflessness.
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For shipwreck survivor, a new honor and an old story

Posted on by September 17, 2010

Lanier W. Phillips, comedian Bill Cosby and former Washington Redskins star and the Dallas Cowboys’ first starting quarterback, Eddie LeBaron, were honored Wednesday with the U.S. Navy Memorial’s Lone Sailor award.  I, of course,  know Bill Cosby and as a young boy I watched LeBaron, the shortest pro- quarterback I have ever seen at only 5’7″, scramble so as not to be crushed by the the larger players, but I had never heard of Lanier W. Phillips.  His story is perhaps the most interesting of the three.

For shipwreck survivor, a new honor and an old story
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Salvo!

Posted on by September 17, 2010

I am not a big gamer but Salvo! does look like fun. It is also on sale for the rest of the month. There is even a free demo.

Salvo! on Sale in September

Salvo! is a turn based wargame covering naval warfare from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. Players can command a wide variety of ship types and do battle amongst all the major seafaring powers of the eras along with treacherous pirate scum. Campaign and scenario based, Salvo! also supports a thorough suite of editing tools that allow gamers to modify/create ships and scenarios. Additionally, players can do battle against live opponents even cross platform (PC versus Mac gamers).
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Real-time Research on Passenger Drills on RCCL’s Jewel of the Seas

Posted on by September 16, 2010

Jewel of the Seas

As cruise ships grow ever larger safety professionals have questioned whether passengers will be able to get to the life boats in time in case of an  emergency. (See Captain D. Peter Boucher’s BIGGER IS BETTER – NOT on his Nautical Log blog for as discussion of the problems of moving people to the boats on the new large ships.)

With that in mind, there is a very interesting research project ongoing. Researchers from the University of Greenwich’s Fire Safety Engineering Group used one hundred video cameras to document passenger movement in a live  assembly drill at sea on the  the Royal Caribbean cruise ship Jewel of the Seas.
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Prison ship records from 19th Century published

Posted on by September 16, 2010

Ancestry.co.uk. has published, on-line records, held by National Archives of 19th Century prison ships providing  a glimpse into the lives of the estimated 200,000 inmates.

Prison ship records from 19th Century published

The records outline the disease-ridden conditions on the “prison hulks”, created to ease overcrowding elsewhere.
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