Commander Drysdale
Last January we posted about the the HMS Superb, a British nuclear submarine, which in 2008 crashed into a massive stone pinnacle under the Red Sea. (See Submarines Navigating Badly.) Now the commander and two other officers have been severely reprimanded by a Royal Navy court martial. Apparently all concerned just misread the chart.
Commander of submarine in crash misread chart, court martial told
Continue reading
Last December we posted about Katie Spotz’s attempt to row across the Atlantic alone. Yesterday she arrived in Georgetown, Guyana, in South America, after 70 days 5 hours 22 minutes in the Atlantic. Spotz, 22, is now the youngest person to cross an ocean in a rowboat, and the first American to row solo from mainland to mainland.
One salty dog, indeed. Thanks to David Hayes for passing the article along.
Dog skeleton from Mary Rose displayed in Portsmouth
A dog which sailed aboard the Mary Rose ship 465 years ago is to take up residence in the Mary Rose Museum at the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
Continue reading
Some call today Pi day, as the first three digits of the date (3.14) are the first three digits of the constant pi used to calculate the circumference and area of a circle. Which makes it a good day to raise a toast to Hakudo Maru.
By Japanese naming convention, merchant and private ship names end in the word “Maru,” meaning circle. There are several explanations for this convention, including that ships were thought of as floating castles and maru represents the defensive “circles” that protected the castle. Another explanation is that the suffix honors, Hakudo Maru, the celestial being in Japanese mythology who is said to have come to Earth 5000 years ago and taught humans how to build ships. A toast to Hokudo Maru.
My favorite explanation is that maru represents the hope that the ship leaves port, travels the world, and returns safely to home port, representing the complete circle of a successful voyage.
The 58 year old, SS United States, built at Newport News, may be at risk of being scrapped but it now appears that the MV Doulos, the world’s oldest ocean-going passenger vessel, may not be making a trip to the breakers yard any time soon. Her days as a passenger vessel are over but she was recently sold to a Singapore-based buyer permanently berth the ship and use it as a floating multiuse facility that could include a restaurant and a retail component. The MV Doulos was built as the SS Medina in 1914 by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company for the Mallory Steamship Company. In recent years she has been owned by the German charity Gute Bücher für Alle (English: Good Books for All), and was used as a floating bookshop.
At 95 years old, Newport News-built MV Doulos again avoids scrapyard
The U.S. Naval Academy Museum will be hosting a large exhibition of paintings by Patrick O’Brien through April 30th. No, not that Patrick O’Brian, Patrick O’Brien the Baltimore based maritime artist. The Annapolis Marine Art Gallery will be hosting a reception in celebration of the museum exhibition — Saturday, April 10th, from 2 – 6 PM.
To learn more and to glimpse some of O’Brien’s wonderful work, click here.
The monsoons have ended which means that it is pirate season again off the coast of Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden. The bad news is that it is now estimated that piracy off Somalia is costing the international shipping industry at least $100 million a year. The only slightly less bad news is that while pirate attacks rose 62% last year, the hijacking success fell to 22%, resulting in the number of successful seizures being about the same as in 2008.
Piracy costs shipping firms over $100m annually, says report
A few updates on previous posts: The USNS Comfort, the Navy hospital ship deployed to Haiti after the earthquake is on her way home: Navy hospital ship to begin journey home from Haiti
The Jewel of Muscat, the replica of the a 9th-century Tang Treasure ship, which we posted about in January, is now over 1500 km into her voyage to Singapore where she is expected to arrive around July. She should be making her first port of call, the Indian city of Cochin, very soon. Replica of ninth-century ship sails across the Indian Ocean.
Last September, we posted about Australian adventurer Don McIntyre and teenage circumnavigator Mike Perham to re-enact Capt William Bligh’s epic mutiny on the Bounty open boat voyage. The expedition will get underway next month, the 221st anniversary of the mutiny. Tas sailor retraces Bligh voyage
Gribbles? A wood eating marine pest may lead to a breakthrough in biofuels? What’s next? Teredo worms as a cure for cancer? An intriguing article from the Times. Thanks to Alaric Bond for the reference.
‘Gribble’ marine pest may be key to biofuel breakthrough, say scientists
A marine pest could be the key to a biofuel breakthrough, say scientists. Gribble, which resemble pink woodlice, plagued seafarers for centuries by boring through the planks of ships and destroying wooden piers. But now environmental scientists are taking a keen interest in the crustaceans.
A team of British researchers has learnt that gribble have a gift for digesting wood not seen in any other animal. Enzymes produced by the tiny creatures are able to break down woody cellulose and turn it into energy-rich sugars meaning that gribble could convert wood and straw into liquid biofuel. A gribble-like processing plant could make sugars from woody raw material that can be fermented into alcohol-based fuels for vehicle engines.
There is an interesting ongoing conflict over the salvaging of the German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee which was scuttled in the River Plate in 1939. A Uruguayan businessman has been salving parts of the Graf Spee for the last ten years but has been blocked from displaying or selling part of the ship by political pressure from the government of Germany. The German government has called for the salvaged portions of the ship to be displayed in a museum rather than auctioned to the public. The German government is concerned in particular that a giant bronze eagle with spread wings with a swastika under its talons which had been on the stern of the ship could land in the hands of Nazi-memorabilia fanatics.
Uruguay demands concrete help from Germany to salvage sunken ship
Nazi ship wreckage from Uruguay should be in museum: Germany
Dewey on the Olympia at Manila Bay
I am not sure if it is irony or merely a confirmation that Faulkner was right – the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past. Not long after the Independence Seaport Museum in Philadelphia announced that it didn’t have the money to care for the cruiser Olympia, (or even the money to dredge the channel to tow her away,) the US Navy has commissioned a new USS Dewey. This is the third Navy ship named in honor of Admiral of the Navy George Dewey, hero of the Battle of Manila Bay during the Spanish-American War. Admiral Dewey’s flagship during the battle was, of course, the USS Olympia.
We had previously posted about a BBC videocast of a documentary segment about attempts to save the composite clipper City of Adelaide. The videocast was available to UK residents only. Thanks to David Hayes for pointing out that the segment has now appeared on Youtube. Worth watching.
In early February we observed the anniversary of the rescue of Alexander Selkirk from the tiny island Mas a Tierra, in the Juan Fernandez archipelago off the coast of Chile. Selkirk would be the model for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Mas a Tierra would become known as Robinson Crusoe Island. Tragically, the island has been devastated by a tsunami following the recent earthquake. The village of Juan Bautista was largely destroyed and nine people were killed by a wall of water reported to up to 5 meters high.
Tsunami warning came too late for Robinson Crusoe Island
Continue reading
Centuries-old Baltic shipwrecks found
A dozen centuries-old shipwrecks — some of them unusually well-preserved — have been discovered in the Baltic Sea by a gas company building an underwater pipeline between Russia and Germany, Swedish experts said Tuesday.
The oldest wreck probably dates back to medieval times and could be up to 800 years old, while the others are likely from the 17th to 19th centuries, said Peter Norman, of Sweden’s National Heritage Board.
The 12 wrecks are in Sweden’s economic zone but not in the planned route of the pipeline, the Swedish heritage board said. Nord Stream, which plans to start construction in April, has promised to make sure its activities don’t damage the wrecks, it said.
The heritage board said three of the wrecks have intact hulls and are lying upside-down at a depth of 130 metres
France captures 35 ‘pirates’ in three days off the Somali coast
The French Navy has captured 35 suspected pirates in three days of operations off the coast of Somalia — the biggest haul in the two years since EU naval ships started patrolling the Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean.
In operations over the weekend the Nivose, a French frigate, seized four mother ships and six skiffs. In one raid on Sunday, French and EU forces used helicopters and fired warning shots to stop and capture a mother ship and two accompanying vessels.
The prisoners are expected to be flown to Kenya, which is already prosecuting about 100 pirates on behalf of Western nations with forces in the area.
The French Navy and special forces have captured nearly 100 pirates and killed half a dozen since a luxury French yacht was captured in April 2008. About ten pirates are awaiting trial in French jails.
Olovaha
Early last August the Tongan ferry, Princess Ashika, sank with a presumed loss over seventy lives. See our previous posts – Princess Akisha. A new ferry, the Olovaha, for the route is being built in Japan, with Japanese funding and is expected to go into service in November. Until them New Zealand has donated a 45.5m flat-bottomed barge for use as a temporary inter-island ferry. The barge ferry service is to start from the first week of April and operate until the arrival of the new ferry from Japan.
Over the weekend, the Great Maui Whale Count spotted 1,208 humpback whales. More of a snapshot than a census, the watchers counted 676 pods or groups of whales, with an average of 214 pods or groups sighted per hour.
1,208 whale sightings in Great Maui Whale Count
Continue reading
The Cove, a documentary about the slaughtering of dolphins in Japan won the 2010 Academy Award last night for best feature documentary.
Under Sail is a remarkable account of sixteen year old Felix Riesenberg’s first voyage on a square rigger from South Street Seaport in New York, to Honolulu and back. He sailed on the A.J. Fuller, a Bath built, copper clad, wooden hulled, three skysail yard medium clipper in the waning days of the age of sail.
Riesenberg’s prose is clear and concise yet vivid. He captures the both the beauty and the hardship of windjammer sailing, as well as the often complicated personalities of his shipmates. He sat down to write Under Sail in his mid-thirties, having served both as officer and able seaman. What makes Under Sail so engaging is that Reisenberg’s views are nuanced. He understands and sympathizes with those on both sides of the mast. He knows, first hand, the nearly impossible demands made on the captain and mates as well as the hardships suffered by the able seamen.
Continue reading
Trafalgar cannons fired to mark 200th anniversary
Cannons which last saw action at the Battle of Trafalgar are fired on Tyneside to mark the 200th anniversary of Admiral Lord Collingwood’s death. They were last used in battle on board Collingwood’s vessel Royal Sovereign as it led British ships in 1805.
Collingwood was born in 1748 and went to sea at the age of 13. At Trafalgar in 1805 he was Nelson’s second-in-command and as Nelson lay mortally wounded it was Collingwood who directed the fleet to victory. He died at sea on 7 March 1810.