Photographer: George Kozhuharov
Fantastic photos of the fleet alongside in Varna, Bulgaria after the first race in the Historical Seas Tall Ships Regatta. Click on the photo above to see more.
Extremely disturbing news. The scandal-plagued museum appears to want to get rid of the historic ship Olympia any way that it can.
Stena competes with air travel by providing comfort and convenience on the first of two new “super ferries,” the Stena Hollandica And no worries of volcanic ash.
This Wednesday the surviving “Little Ships” of the Dunkirk evacuation will rendezvous in Ramsgate to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the famous World War II evacuation, codenamed Operation Dynamo.
Little Ships gather in Ramsgate for 70th anniversary of Dunkirk evacuations
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HMS Bounty open to public in Maine
The HMS Bounty tall ship is open to the public during its stop in Maine. The three-masted, 120-foot ship is open for tours Saturday and Sunday from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Maine Maritime Museum in Bath. The vessel arrived at the museum on Thursday and was also open to the public on Friday.
The ship is a full-scale reproduction of the British merchant ship that gained notoriety for a maritime mutiny more than 200 years ago. The mutiny was the basis of the 1962 movie “Mutiny on the Bounty” starring Marlon Brando. The ship used in the movie was bought in 2001 by the HMS Bounty Organization, which is dedicated to keeping the ship sailing.
From Bath, it will sail to Portsmouth, N.H., for a tall ship festival next weekend.
Bill White, the longtime president of the Intrepid Sea Air and Space Museum, resigned abruptly on Wednesday morning. No clear reason was given for his resignation which comes just one week before New York Fleet Week, in which the museum is a key player. The Intrepid Air and Space Museum is also in the middle of bidding for the right to display a space shuttle at the museum. White, at the helm of the legendary museum since 1992, is under investigation in a pay-to-play pension scandal under former Controller Alan Hevesi.
The Kalmar Nyckel will be featured in an upcoming documentary, “The Ship That Changed the World.”
Delaware’s sailing star – Kalmar Nyckel the ‘wow factor’ in new documentary
F ilm director Malcolm Dixelius knew he had found his “star” when he traveled from near Stockholm to Delaware two years ago to scout the Kalmar Nyckel, a replica of the Dutch-built sailing ship that preceded him here by about 370 years.
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Edge's Windmill
Yesterday we posted about a proposed wind farm on New York harbor between Jersey City and Bayonne. These will not be the first windmills on the harbor, of course. In 1815 Isaac Edge finished a windmill on the banks of the Hudson River in Jersey City. From Jersey City and its Historic Sites by Harriet Phillips Eaton, published in 1899:
EDGE’S WINDMILL
Now that a South Korean investigation has concluded that a North Korean torpedo sank the South Korean Corvette Cheonan killing 46 sailors, the real question becomes, how to respond?
Torpedo accusation raises Korean security stakes
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Port Authority Plans to Build Wind Farm
The Port Authority is planning on creating a wind farm on one of its shipping piers in New Jersey. The five windmills would help power the port’s cargo operations.
A private company would build and maintain five 288-foot-high wind turbines. They’d be located on the New Jersey side of Upper New York Bay, about halfway between the Statue of Liberty and Staten Island. The windmills, about the height of a 30-story building, would be visible from Lower Manhattan and the Brooklyn waterfront. Officials say the location shouldn’t be controversial because the area’s already industrial. Taken together, the turbines should generate electricity equivalent to the amount needed by 2,000 homes.
Thanks to Bowsprite for passing this along.
The schooner Lynx, a replica of a War of 1812 privateer, is sailing on the US East coast these days on her way to the Great Lakes to celebrate the upcoming War of 1812 Bicentennial. J. Dennis Robinson will give an informal talk about the Privateer Lynx at the Discover Portsmouth Center and Piscataqua Maritime Commission at 7 p.m. tomorrow night. (A limited number of spaces are available for guest crew. Click here to learn more.)
Robinson shares story behind Privateer Lynx
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Alaric Bond is a frequent contributor to the Old Salt blog. He is also a wonderful writer. His latest novel True Colours has recently been published. I liked it – a lot. A review:
Alaric Bond’s new novel, True Colours, the third in his Fighting Sail series, is a fascinating and exciting look at a most perilous moment in British history. The novel begins in 1797. Britain is at war with the French and her Dutch allies. A French invasion force, supported by the formidable Dutch Navy is massing across the channel when the unthinkable occurs. The British fleet at Spithead mutinies. Not long after, the fleet at the Nore follows their example. The frigate Pandora returns from convoy duty after an attempted mutiny onboard, and only narrowly escapes being drawn into the Nore mutiny, as well.
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We are a few days late, but our hearty congratulations to Jessica Watson on her safe arrival back in Sydney harbor last Saturday.
The S.S. Pasley arrives in Yaquina Bay to be sunk circa 1950.
Concrete ships were constructed in both World War I and World War II when steel was in short supply. They were not wildly successful, as they were limited in deadweight and had a tendency to crack. (No concrete ships were built after the end of the wars.) Nevertheless they were extremely durable ships.
The S.S. C. W. Pasley and the S.S. Francois Hennebique, two concrete ships built in Tampa Florida by McCloskey and Company in 1944, have served as the foundations for the docks in Yaquina Bay, in Newport, Oregon for almost sixty years. The S.S. Francois Hennebique is apparently in good shape but the S.S. Pasley is cracking, shifting and oddly, leaking oil. (One might have though that tank cleaning was in order before converting the ship into a dock.) So 66 years after her keel was poured, the S.S. Pasley will be broken up and replaced by a more conventional pier.
Will, over at the Tugster blog, is no doubt the preeminent New York harbor ship-spotter. If one is so inclined, it is easy to spent far more time than one might have planned browsing his thousands of photographs – all well organized and accompanied by fascinating commentary. On the other side of the Atlantic, Fred Vloo’s Ship-spotting channel on You-tube is extremely well done. His Shipspotting Rotterdam 15 mei features great footage of tankers, bulker carriers, tugs, pilot boat, launches and container ships of all sizes, including the 8,000 TEU Anna Maersk.
On Saturday May 24th, the Southstreet Seaport Museum in New York will celebrate the 125th birthdays of two fine ladies, the full rigged ship Wavertree and the schooner Pioneer.
Built in 1885 in Southampton, England, the Wavertree was one of the last large sailing ships built of wrought iron. Also in 1885 the cargo sloop Pioneer, built in Marcus Hook, Pennsylvania, was the first of only two American cargo sloops ever built with a wrought iron hull. Ten years later she was rerigged as a schooner. The Pioneer regulatory sails from the South Street Seaport.
Lawson (second from left) with other members of The Black-Hand Gang (from left) Eric Margetts, John Moffat, Buster May and Glan Evans
It was a classic contest between David and Goliath. On May 27, 1941, the German battleship Bismark had just sunk the pride of the Royal Navy, the HMS Hood. As she was close to escaping into safe waters, she was attacked by a swarm of obsolete Fairey Swordfish biplanes launched from the carrier HMS Ark Royal. Lt-Cdr Bobby Lawson, one of the Swordfish pilots, recently died at 91.
U.S. Naval Academy Midshipman Marquette Ried will train to be one of the first women to serve on submarines.
The US Navy announced recently that by January 2012 19 women will be assigned to four ballistic missile submarines. The women officers will be facing challenges of logistics, operations and culture.
Women submariners: Trailblazers by timing, sub sailors by choice
No, this is not a knot tying contest exactly. No bowlines, or Matthew Walker knots need be produced. This is a contest sponsored by NJWedding.com to win a chance to get married for free aboard New Jersey’s official Tall Ship, the A.J. Meerwald in Long Beach Island, NJ.
Want to get hitched this summer? Be the lucky couple to win a free wedding ceremony this July
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An odd and strangely fascinating video of an octopus killing a shark from NatGeo. It had been presumed that the sharks were the predator inthe octopus shark relationship. Obviously that is not always the case.