One of the most beautiful tall ships on the water, the Chilean Navy’s Esmeralda, will be docked in Balboa, Panama through tomorrow. Esmeralda, a steel-hulled four-masted barquentine, is nicknamed the “White Lady.” She is the sister ship to the four-masted topsail schooner Juan Sebastián Elcano, a training ship for the Spanish Navy.
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Indiga and Varzuga
With the onset of limited trans-arctic navigation environmentalists have voiced concern about the potential for pollution due to increased ship traffic. The recent collision between two arctic tankers, the Indiga and Varzuga, on the Russian Northern Sea route, demonstrates the basis for these concerns. Fortunately it appears that no oil was spilled.
Last month we posted about the Ketch Bessie-Ellen carrying French wine to the Festival of Valleys in Ballyvaughan, in Ireland’s County Claire. The Bessie-Ellen will soon set sail on a new 21-day voyage, carrying 20,000 bottles of Château Smith Lafite and Château de Cayx Bordeaux, from Bordeaux, France to Montreal, Canada.
20,000 bottles of wine transported to North America by sailing ship
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On this the thirtieth anniversary of the movie Jaws, the SyFy Channel has teamed up with the legendary B-Movie Director, Roger Corman, to produce Sharktopus, a thriller about a Navy-engineered half-shark-half-octopus killing machine which, surprise, surprise gets out of control and starts chomping on beach goers, with a particular interest in beautiful women in bikinis. This just might be so bad, it’s good. Or may not.
HMAS Warramunga (FFH-152) engages Ex-USS New Orleans (LPH-11) with her 5" gun during a surface engagement, part of Exercise RIMPAC 2010.
RIMPAC 2010, the Rim of the Pacific Exercise, is one of the world’s largest maritime exercises, with participation by 14 nations, including including Australia, Canada, Japan, Singapore, France, Colombia, Chile, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Peru, South Korea and Thailand. RIMPAC began on June 23rd and will continue through the end of July. Ships from the various navies started arriving late last month.
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Divers have found 30 bottles of champagne thought to pre-date the French Revolution on the Baltic seabed. Reportedly, it was still highly drinkable.
All I can say is that the seabed must be one hell of a wine cellar. Dark, cold, but at a constant temperature, and totally devoid of oxygen – it does meet the requirements for storing alcohol. The fact that the champagne was something other than vinegar is proof enough.
‘World’s oldest champagne’ found on Baltic seabed
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There are plans to bring the trimere Olympias to New York harbor in 2012 coincide with the Tall Ships “OpSail” and July 4th celebrations.
The Trireme Olympias Coming Soon to New York
The H.N. Olympias is a full-scale, working replica of the legendary 170-oared Athenian trireme of the 5th century B.C. The ship is the fastest human-powered vessel on the planet. New Yorkers will have a unique and exciting opportunity to watch as Olympias is rowed and sailed in our harbor. For people looking for a fitness challenge, we will be recruiting and training teams of 170 men and women to participate in sea-trials and other nautical events.
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Many historians have long suspected that the performance of the Greek triremes as reported by Esculus and others, were overstated. Some have referred to them as “mythological.” The Olympias trireme, built in 1987, designed by the naval architect John Coates, who died last week, has proven to be as fast and maneuverable as the triremes described in the ancient texts.
The performance of the Olympias has been impressive. In trails in 1987 the trireme achieved a cruising speed up to 6 knots when rowed continuously for 30 miles, with an average of 5 knots. It reached 9 knots in sprints, and sailed at 10.8 knots under sail with a following wind.
In the late 1987, John Coates, John Morrison and N. B. Rankov wrote The Athenian Trireme: The History and Reconstruction of an Ancient Greek Warship describing their research, the design construction and testing of the Olympias. The second addition of the book, published in 2000, reports on what was learned in fifteen years of testing and training with the ancient craft.
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John Coates, front, demonstrating the three-level system of the trireme with oarsmen from Cambridge University
John Coates, who died on July 10 aged 88, had retired as chief naval architect at the Ministry of Defence when he took a central role in the building of a Greek trireme, the first, fastest and best known oared warship of the ancient world.
Triremes were 100ft three-tiered vessels powered by two square sails and a huge crew of oarsmen. They were used at the Battle of Salamis in 480BC when the Greeks defeated the Persians (who were led by the emperor Xerxes), and there are references to them in classical literature and depictions on pottery relics and coins.
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After a second round of testing, the converted O/B/O skimmer A Whale has been judged a failure in skimming oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Giant oil skimmer ‘A Whale’ deemed a bust for Gulf of Mexico spill
The massive “A Whale” oil skimmer has effectively been beached after it proved inefficient in sucking up oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill.
The oil is too dispersed to take advantage of the converted Taiwanese supertanker’s enormous capacity, said Bob Grantham, a spokesman for shipowner TMT.
He said BP’s use of chemical dispersants prevented A Whale, billed as the world’s largest skimmer, from collecting a “significant amount” of oil during a week of testing that ended Friday.
Tom Russell over at the Tall Ship & Traditional Sail Professionals Linked-In group pointed out the Tall Ships Tracking Map posted on-line by Sailwx.info. Sailwx.info is a wonderful site for keeping track of of all sort of ships, including tall ships. They also have a separate tracking page dedicated to the ASTA Great Lakes United Tall Ships Challenge® 2010 which includes nice thumbnail photos and ships’ information.
The site has pages for cruise ships, oceanographic research vessels, yachts as well as weather, wind and tide information for ports around the world. There is also a twitter feed from reporting ships and the ability to search for ships by name. A really fun site, but be warned – it is an easy site to spend a lot of time on.
Last September we posted about an article in the Telegraph, Cutty Sark restoration turning into a fiasco. Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing on an update recently published in the Private Eye. The restoration of the Cutty Sark, after a major fire in 2007, was supposed to be completed by 2009. Currently, it appears that the renovation will be completed no earlier than 2012. The project is also over-budget and there is a real concern that the “restoration” will do permanent and serious damage to the historic ship.
At the end of last April we posted about an expedition led by Australian Don McIntyre to recreate the epic 3,700 nautical mile voyage of Captain Bligh and his crew across the Pacific in an open boat in 1789 following the famous mutiny. McIntyre and his crew of three set out to recreate the conditions Bligh faced. The sailed in a 25 foot open boat, surviving on a “starvation diet” of two ship’s biscuits and a bit of tinned beef a day. They relied on 18th century navigation but, like Bligh, sailed without charts. After a seven week voyage where they were almost capsized in gale force winds, narrowly avoided running up on a reef, and spent hours daily bailing out the small boat, they arrived safely in East Timor yesterday.
Jessica Watson’s book True Spirit will be published in August in Australia and in October in the United States. It was also recently announced that she will be releasing an album as well. Fast work given that she only returned in the middle of May.
Teen sailor Jessica Watson to release an album
The young sailor claims that music helped her get through the months she was alone onboard Ella’s Pink Lady. It was also a source of comfort during the more challenging times.
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Workers excavating at the new World Trade Center site in lower Manhattan have uncovered the remains of an 18th century wooden merchant ship. The ship was found 20 feet below street level, is roughly 30 feet in length and was probably buried intentionally as land fill. It was found in an area outside that which had been previously excavated for the original World Trade Center complex and appears to have remained undisturbed since it was buried in the mid to late 1700s.
18th-Century Ship Found at Trade Center Site
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For anyone researching a particular ship, ShipIndex.org could prove invaluable. It offers a searchable database with 143,935 entries in the free database and 1,349,574 entries available with premium access. Having done a bit of searching, it looks both easy and powerful.
Rainbow Warrior III
Twenty five years ago this week, French government agents attached limpit mines to the hull of the Greenpeace ship Rainbow Warrior, in Auckland harbor in New Zealand to stop the ship from protesting French nuclear testing in Moruroa. The exploding mines sank the Rainbow Warrior, killing Fernando Pereira, a photographer. Two French agents were arrested by the New Zealand Police and were charged with arson and murder for which they would serve only two years.
Last week Greenpeace commemorated the anniversary of the bombing by starting construction of a new, low-carbon, Rainbow Warrior III.
Greenpeace begins construction of new Rainbow Warrior, marking 25th anniversary of bombing
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George Steinbrenner, died today of a massive heart attack at the age of 80. He was best known as the owner of the New York Yankees but belonged to a family of shipowners. Kinsman Marine Transit was once one of the largest bulk carrier operators in the Great Lakes. In 1962 he became president of Kinsman. Five years later Kinsman merged with American Ship Building Company and the Steinbrenner family took a controlling interest. In 1973, George Steinbrenner bought the New York Yankees.
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In late May, we posted about the publication of a beautiful new book by Alison Shaw and Tom Dunlop, Schooner – Building a Wooden Boat on Martha’s Vineyard. We recently had the opportunity to read the book. Our review:
Schooner – Building a Wooden Boat on Martha’s Vineyard details, in prose and photographs, the story of the design and construction of the schooner, Rebecca of Vineyard Haven, the largest wooden vessel to have been built on Martha’s Vineyard since the days of Abraham Lincoln. Continue reading
Paul, an octopus, was a recent sensation when he accurately predicated the outcome of eight World Cup games in a row; as many games as he has legs. Now the World Cup is over and Paul, a resident of the Sea Life aquarium in Oberhausen, has retired from the oracle business and is returning to his previous job of entertaining aquarium guests. Paul would predict the outcome of games when two clear plastic boxes were put in his tank, each with the flag of the competing team and a mollusk inside. Paul would make his prediction by choosing which of the mollusks to eat first.
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