Sailing on the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater

Posted on by April 20, 2020

Hudson River Sloop Clearwater from Rick Spilman on Vimeo.

The Clearwater is a Hudson River sloop modeled after the distinctive trading sloops that sailed up and down the Hudson in the 18th and 19th centuries.  The Clearwater was conceived by the folk singer, Pete Seeger, as a way to bring people down to the then very polluted Hudson River. For close to forty years the Clearwater has been a movable classroom, laboratory and stage as she has sailed up and down the vast tidal estuary that is the Hudson River south of Albany.  Continue reading →

Talking Like a Somali and Update on the MV Faina

Posted on by October 26, 2008

An update on the MV Faina – still being held hostage by Somali pirates.

Somali pirates hold whip hand in standoff

And a comment by my 12 year old son, Ted. He suggested that he would like to learn some Somali so that next year when “Talk Like a Pirate Day” rolls around, he will really be able to talk like a pirate.

The Business of Raising Sails on a Maine Windjammer

Posted on by October 24, 2008

There are two Maine “Windjammers” currently for sale.  This may not be terribly useful information for those of us feeling more than usually penurious in the current economic downturn. Nevertheless there are moments when the idea of chucking it all and making a living on a sailboat or saling ship does have a certain appeal.

The two boats for sale are the Rachel B. Jackson and the venerable Victory Chimes. Continue reading →

Of Blogs and Logs

Posted on by October 23, 2008

As this is a nautical blog, I do feel compelled to at least tip our hat to Andrew Sullivan’s recent article “Why I Blog“, in this month’s Atlantic Monthly .   (I do recommend Sullivan’s political blog for the Atlantic – The Daily Dish.)

I feel the need to recognize Sullivan because he labors manfully to use a nautical metaphor, the ship’s log, to explain the process of “blogging”.   As he notes “the word blog is a conflation of two words: Web and log.”  He goes on to say:

Continue reading →

The Holy Ground – Songs, Sailors, and Women of Easy Virtue

Posted on by October 20, 2008

I am every fond of the Irish sea song “Holy Ground”.  The song is about a sailor bound for sea, leaving his lady love and hoping to return. “And still I live in hope to see the Holy Ground once more..” It is also known as the “Cobh shanty”, and indeed the “Holy Ground” is a neighborhood in the Irish port of Cobh.

This brought to mind the notorious area neighborhood in colonial New York, known for its high class brothels, also known as the “Holy Ground”.   It made me wonder whether there was more to the “Holy Ground” than one might first imagine. Continue reading →

Divers close in on lost fortune of Ann Cargill, a scandalous star

Posted on by October 16, 2008

An intriguing news story. (Thanks to LizMc on the Horatians forum.) According to the BBC, Ann Carghill was “was the Britney Spears of her day.”  I think they slight poor Ms Cargill.

A Scandalous Star 

“When the packet ship, The Nancy, was wrecked off the Isles of Scilly in 1784 one of the victims included Ann Cargill, one of the most famous and highest paid Opera singers of the time and whose numerous affairs and elopements had scandalised London.”

Divers close in on lost fortune of Ann Cargill, a scandalous star
Continue reading →

Putting the Oy Back into ‘Ahoy’ – Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean

Posted on by October 14, 2008

A friend pointed this book out to me. It looks intriguing and is coming out in mid-November.  Jean Lafite was Jewish? Who knew?  (Thanks Henya!)  From a review in the Jewish Press:

Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean: How a Generation of Swashbuckling Jews Carved Out an Empire in the New World in Their Quest for Treasure, Religious Freedom–and Revenge

“They did not sing “Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Manischewitz,” nor do they ever seem to appear in any of the Disney films about pirates in the Caribbean. The website piratesinfo.com carries not a single reference to them.  

Continue reading →

Sailor Talk – “Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter” and “Sucking the Monkey”

Posted on by October 13, 2008

One of my particular frustrations with the “Talk-Like a Pirate Day” folks is that even if one ignores the very nasty nature of pirates, historical and modern alike, a second and perhaps even great problem remains. The Talk-Like-a-Piraters do such a lousy job of talking like pirates. A few “Aarghs”, “avast-ye maties”s and “shiver-me-timbers” isn’t very impressive.  If that is the best they can do, why bother?

So in the spirit of fellowship I offer two phrases for those with an interest in sailor talk, whether for the sake of TLAP or not. Continue reading →

Review – Joan Druett’s Shark Island, a Wiki Coffin Mystery

Posted on by October 7, 2008

I recently read Joan Druett‘s Shark Island, the second in her Wiki Coffin series of mysteries. A brief review:

What makes a mystery work for me is the detective – the knowledgeable outsider, living between two worlds, who can see things that others might miss. Whether it is Holmes, the consummate middle-class Englishman who is also a cocaine addicted eccentric, or Christie’s Hercule Poirot, the meticulous expert yet always the odd little foreigner; or Tony Hillerman’s Jim Chee and Joe Leaphorn, who as officers of the law represent the white establishment while also having to answer to their own Navajo communities – these detectives keep crossing back and forth between the world around them and their own private realms.

 Joan Druett’s Wiki Coffin is just such a character. His father is a New England ship’s captain and his mother a Maori. In Druett’s Shark Island, he serves as a translator for Wilke’s US Exploratory Expedition of the Continue reading →

Old Salt in The Huffington Post

Posted on by October 2, 2008

I was recently published in The Huffington Post. An excerpt:

“The Golden Age of Piracy” or Long John Silver in a Tank

 

This morning I was struck by the odd juxtaposition of an announcement for a festival and a news item. Not long after reading about the upcoming Saint Augustine Pirate Gathering, (November 14th -16th), I also read in this morning’s New York Times that a band of Somali pirates who have seized a ship carrying $30 million worth of grenade launchers, tons of ammunition, and yes, even 33 refurbished T-72 battle tanks. The ship was taken over 200 mile offshore. Naval ships from both the US and Russia subsequently intercepted the pirates and a week-long standoff has ensued.

Read the rest of the article

Happy 250th Anniversary of the birth of Nelson

Posted on by September 29, 2008

Happy 250th Anniversary of the birth of Horatio Nelson.

Nelson bust unveiled on birthday

“A bust of naval hero Lord Nelson is being unveiled in Portsmouth to mark the 250th anniversary of his birth.
The life-size bronze model was commissioned by an anonymous donor who wanted it to be displayed in Nelson’s spiritual home.

Continue reading →

Pirate Stand-off in the Indian Ocean

Posted on by December 9, 2010
FAINA with Somali pirate boats alongside

FAINA with Somali pirate boats alongside

The real life pirate saga, which began Thursday night when Somali pirates seized the Faina, a Ukrainian ship loaded with a cargo of ammunition, grenade launchers and 33 refurbished Russian T-72 battle tanks, has turned into a stand-off between the pirates holding the crew hostage and US and Russian navy vessels and aircraft.  One crew member has died reported of hypertension. The pirates are now demanding a ransom of $20 million dollars.

Somali pirates want $20M ship ransom; crewman dies

From Lord Cochrane to the Wellington Hurricanes – the Evolution the Nautical Hero Part 1. The Founder of our Feast – Thomas Cochrane

Posted on by September 28, 2008

Joseph Campbell wrote in his The Hero with a Thousand Faces that all stories follow the ancient patterns of myth and legend. Whether the heroes of nautical fiction quite fit Campbell’s monomyths is open to question but there is no doubt that nautical fiction has had its own well established archetypes.

The greatest single archetype in nautical fiction is a character based on the career of Admiral Lord Cochrane. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower and O’Brian‘s Jack Aubrey are based closely on Cochrane. Kent‘s Admiral Bolitho and Pope‘s Lord Ramage bear more than a passing resemblance.

Continue reading →

Jackass Frigate by Alaric Bond

Posted on by September 27, 2008

Jackass Frigate is Napoleonic naval fiction set during the Revolutionary wars.  The Jackass Frigate differs from the normal Hornblower/Aubrey sagas in that there is no “hero who becomes an admiral”, rather characters from all divisions of the ship are featured, some to prosper, while others fail; many will continue in future books. Culminating in the pivotal Battle of Cape St Vincent, The Jackass Frigate is based on historical fact, and includes notable figures of the period including Jervis, Calder, Hardy and Nelson.

“Ripping stuff, enjoyed it immensely” Ron Bate,The Historical Maritime Society

Peter Wicked: A New Matty Graves Novel by Broos Campbell

Posted on by September 25, 2008

Ok, I am about a month behind. The new Matty Graves novel has been out since early September. Then again as this blog has only been up for a few days perhaps I can be forgiven.

A review from Publisher’s Weekly:

Nautical adventure fans will welcome Campbell’s third novel to feature intrepid Matty Graves (after The War of Knives). In 1800, the 17-year-old Graves, “a bastard and a Negro” despite both parents being white, is recalled to Washington Continue reading →

C. Northcote Parkinson gets it right

Posted on by September 24, 2008

Of the some sixty books written by C. Northcote Parkinson, his Richard Delancey series of nautical adventures is still a favorite among many aficionados of Georgian nautical fiction.   Of course, Parkinson is best known for his “Parkinson’s Law” – that “work expands to fill the time available.”  In his book of the same name from 1957, he predicted that one day the Royal Navy would have more ships than admirals.  It has apparently finally happened.  Continue reading →

My Quest for Catharpins

Posted on by September 23, 2008

“Ignorance of the crosscatharpins is not necessarily fatal. Explanation almost certainly would be.”
Patrick O’Brian.

The cliché goes that there are two types of people – those who believe that there are two types of people and those who don’t.  There are no doubt many more than two types of types of readers of nautical fiction.  Nevertheless my guess is that as it applies to jargon, there may indeed be only two types.

Continue reading →

Raise a Glass to Doctor Dogbody

Posted on by September 22, 2008

“ON A DREARY AUTUMN EVENING when the clouds hung low in the heavens and the masts and yards of the tall men-of-war in the harbour were obscured by a chill drizzle of rain, there was no more inviting spot in Portsmouth than the taproom of Will Tunn’s Cheerful Tortoise.”

And so begins James N. Hall’s Doctor Dogbody’s Leg, in which Doctor Dogbody, a retired Royal Navy surgeon, sits by the fire at the Cheerful Tortoise with a glass of old Port Royal rum and over a series of nights recounts how he lost his larboard leg. Every night he tells a completely different story about how he came to lose his leg, each more outrageous and hilarious than the last. Continue reading →

Tall Ship Elissa – 1877 survives Hurricane Ike with little damage

Posted on by September 22, 2008

ELISSA is a three-masted, iron-hulled sailing barque built in 1877 in Aberdeen, Scotland by Alexander Hall & Company.  Under various names, rigs and owners she had a 90 year carreer carrying cargo. She was purchased by the Galveston Historical Foundation 1975. She was extensively refurbished through 1982.  Since then, she has been dockside in Galveston when she is not sailing.  

Though Hurrican Ike did serious damage to the dockside museum buildings and shops, except for blown out sails ELISSA apperas to have weathered the storm without damage. Continue reading →

Barometers, Erasers and Edward Nairne – the pleasure and pain of researching historical fiction

Posted on by June 29, 2013
Nairner Barometer used by Captain Cook

Nairne’s Barometer used by Captain Cook

In working on my book Evening Gray, Morning Red, I found myself using metaphors referencing barometers.  “The glass was falling”, suggesting a storm, or a “rising glass” suggesting clear and dry weather, seemed perfectly apt language for a nautical novel.  The problem was, the novel is set between 1768 and 1772.   Were marine barometers common in the period?  Did they even exist?  I had some research to do.

The invention of the barometer is usually attributed to Torricelli in the mid-1600s, though the “weather glass” or “thunder glass”, a water barometer, is said to have been developed by  Gheijsbrecht de Donckere in the 16th century.   In England in 1695 Daniel Quare patented a marine barometer, which never seems to have caught on.

Continue reading →