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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Frederick Marryat’s The Mission – Cue the Helicopters

Posted on by September 16, 2010

Marryat with helicopters?

David Hayes made a discovery that is too good not to share.  He came across a book cover of a reissue of Frederick Marryat‘s The Mission by Tutis Digital Publishing.   The cover shows a helicopter hovering low over the ocean about to pick up a commando in dive gear.  Exciting stuff.   Anyone not familiar with Marryat  who purchases the book, however, might be surprised to learn that it was written in 1845 and has no helicopters of any sort.    Captain Frederick Marryat was a Royal Navy captain and a prolific writer of nautical fiction.  He also wrote travel and children’s books.
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Manta Ray Camera Thief

Posted on by September 15, 2010

On an exhilarating manta ray night dive off Kailua-Kona, Hawaii in August, a manta ray steals a cameraman’s rig.  Thanks to Bill Nyden for pointing this out.

Manta Ray Absconds With $5,000 Camera

The once-in-a-lifetime encounter between an underwater cameraman and a larceny-minded manta ray is now part of posterity.

Travis Matteson was filming a school of mantas when what was described as the biggest fish in the bunch swam by, grabbed his $5,000 Canon 5D Mark II underwater rig and swam away. With the camera still rolling the entire time, the manta then got an opportunity to do its own filming of the underwater neighborhood before dropping the it right below the boat. Camera and diver were subsequently reunited.

Book ’em Danno: Klepto Manta Mugs Cameraman


Did Bling Doom Nelson?

Posted on by September 14, 2010

“Lord Nelson’s love of bling may be the reason he was shot dead at the Battle of Trafalgar, a medal expert claimed yesterday.”

Whether or not Nelson’s fondness for wearing his medals made him an easier target at Trafalgar, one of those medals, the Breast Star of the Order of the Bath, is soon to be up for auction in London.   Recently we posted about a Nelson victory poster which failed to sell at auction.   The medal is expected to do much better.  The Breast Star of the Order of the Bath is expected to fetch up to £500,000.  Experts have hailed the medals as “the most important piece of Nelson memorabilia to go under the hammer more than 100 years.”

LORD NELSON’S MEDALS MADE HIM A TARGET AT TRAFALGAR
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America’s Cup in Cats!

Posted on by October 20, 2013

As reported in Sail Magazine, the next America’s Cup will be sailed in 2013 in 72′ catamarans with wing sails.

America’s Cup in Cats!

According to officials, the new AC72 class will regularly attain speeds of 30 knots, “excite fans” as they “zip around the racecourse” and leave their 11-member crews “exhilarated and drained after a day of adrenaline-fueled racing.” I’ll bet!

An Historic Hull on Hallowed Ground: a Brigantine, a Brig, A Snow, a Schooner – ah Fuggedaboutit!

Posted on by September 14, 2010

The Brig not the Brigantine Niagara

There was an amusing bit of bantering and ballyhooing about ship jargon in the New York Times yesterday.   In an article about the remains of ship found in the excavation near the new World Trade Center (see our previous posts here)  The Gudgeon Did It: A Small Detail Settles a Maritime Mystery, David Dunlop explains that until archaeologists identified the gudgeon, they weren’t sure which end of the ship was which.  Dunlop then, somewhat gleefully, notes that  “thirty-six years in this business, and never before have I had the chance to use the words gudgeon and pintle in an article.”   So far, so good. Then the argument broke out.
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