Fire on the Morro Castle – Part 2: “Hero” and Murderer

Posted on by March 19, 2014

morro_castle_ashore_via_wikipediaIn the aftermath of the fire in 1934 on the passenger liner Morro Castle, in which 135 passengers and crew died, there was considerable blame to be shared. The ship’s safety equipment was poorly maintained, the crew poorly trained and the ship’s officers made several questionable decisions which may have contributed to the rapid spread of the fire.  How the fire started has never been determined.   One man, George White Rogers, a radio officer, would be held up as hero.  He stayed at his station transmitting “SOS” despite intense heat and smoke in the radio room.

Many now suspect that the “hero” of the Morro Castle may have set the fire on the ship and may have also murdered the ship’s captain.

Ship’s radio operator still likely suspect
Continue reading →

Fire on the Morro Castle – Part 1: Memorial on 75th Anniversary

Posted on by May 2, 2010

Seventy five years ago today, the passenger liner Morro Castle was steaming off the Jersey shore, bound for New York from Havana, when she caught fire.   Of the 549 passengers and crew aboard, 135 died either in the fire or  by drowning.   An estimated 125,000 witnessed the fire from shore.  The gutted ship drifted ashore on the beach in Asbury Park. Now on the 75th anniversary of the fire the Asbury Park Historical Society will unveil a monument dedicated to the Morro Castle, its victims and the many heroes who risked their lives to rescue survivors.

Monument unveiling for Morro Castle disaster off Asbury Park

Here news real footage of the Morro Castle fire:

1945 U.S. ARMY Battle Tug For Sale

Posted on by May 2, 2010

Thanks to Dave Shirlaw on MARHST-L for pointing out a fascinating vessel for sale on E-Bay.  The vessel is a steel tug, ST 893, built by JK Welding of Brooklyn, NY in 1945.   The tug is said to have served in Normandy, the South Pacific, Korea, and Vietnam, and has been converted to a live-aboard yacht.   As of this writing , there are no bids.

1945 U.S. ARMY Battle Tug

Korea’s first clipper finally sets sail

Posted on by May 21, 2010

An interesting article from JoongAng Ilbo about a large sailing yacht once owned by an unnamed American Mafia boss. The yacht was in Korea for modifications, when the Mafiosa was arrested and sent to prison.  The boat was purchased by a Korean who named her Koreana and intends to use her to teach students about the sea.

The Koreana is said to be the first “clipper” in Korea. Fortunately the articles defines what it means by “clipper”:

What differentiates a clipper from a yacht is the length of the vessel and the number of masts it has. Ships with a length of over 60 feet (about 18.3 meters) and more than two masts are considered clippers. Because clippers are expensive to maintain and a large crew is needed to raise and drop the anchor, they are generally considered to be a ship for the wealthy.

Read the rest of the article

Would you prefer the Slimehead or the Orange Roughy?

Posted on by May 21, 2010

Which would you prefer to order from the menu  – slimehead or orange roughy?  Antarctic toothfish or Chilean sea bass?  Slimehead and orange roughy are the same fish, just as the Chilean sea bass is the Antarctic toothfish with a new name.  Orange roughy just sounds so much better on the menu or in the supermarket than slimehead.  The same goes with Chilean sea bass, which doesn’t happen to be related to sea bass at all, but the name is appealing.

Overfishing has led to the near collapse of many popular species.  Cod fish on the Grand Banks are at 12% of healthy levels while red snapper in the Gulf of Mexico is at 6%.   Less popular and attractive fish are now being marketed often with new names and are now themselves in danger of being over-fished.  Who would imagined that a slimehead fish would be so popular with a simple name change?  An intriguing article from the Washington Post:

Tastier Names Trouble for Seafood Stocks

Nautical Reenactors on the Willow Wren

Posted on by May 21, 2010

Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing on this intriguing video of a group of German reenactors on the Willow Wren. The note with the video reads, (imperfectly translated by Google,) “Maritimes reenactment in 1807 of the Danish South Sea aboard the “Willow Wren.” A strange group of unknown Danish mission in the South Seas on the road.”  So far I have been unable to find any information on the reenactors of the Willow Wren. If anyone knows more about them I would love to learn more.

Baltic sea 1807 / Ostsee 1807

Of Tall Ships and Stupid Lawyers

Posted on by May 21, 2010

The U.S. Coast Guard Barque Eagle is among the high-masted, altitudinous sailing vessels, that have visited Portsmouth in the past.

The age of wooden ships and iron men is long gone.  We appear to be square in the era of tall ships and stupid lawyers.  From the SeaCoastonline:

The American Sail Training Association sent a letter to the Piscataqua Maritime Commission on July 23 demanding the organization cease and desist from using references that infringe on ASTA’s federally registered trademarks. Those trademarks include “tall ships,” “tall ships are coming,” “tall ships 2000″ and “tall ships challenge.” For the past 25 years, the city has hosted a Tall Ships Festival without knowing it was violating ASTA’s trademarks. The term “tall ship” has been registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office since 1976.

Donald Coker, chairman of the PMC, said his organization has been a member of ASTA for several years, but now would be required to enter into a license agreement to continue to use the term “tall ship.” The cost of the license he said represents 15 to 20 percent of the entire budget, making it likely the 2010 event will have a different name.

‘Very large, tall-masted sailing ships’ to arrive in August
Continue reading →

The Long, Strange Journey of the Prins Willem

Posted on by May 18, 2010

The Prins Willem, the replica Dutch East Indiaman destroyed by fire a few days ago, was an unusual ship.  She was built in 1985 in in Friesland in 1985 as an exhibit at the Nagasaki Holland Village open-air museum in Japan. The Japanese theme park was closed and the Prince Willem returned to the Netherlands in 2003 and had been moored at Den Helder.  (Interestingly enough, at least to me, the Nagasaki Holland Village park was replaced by a newer and larger Dutch based theme park Huis Ten Bosch also in Nagasaki.)
Continue reading →

7th Annual Boothbay Boat Builders Festival

Posted on by May 2, 2010

We hope everyone has a  great time at today’s 7th Annual Boothbay Boat Builders Festival.   All should keep a a weather eye out as there are rumors of an attack by the Pirates of the Dark Rose, followed by a get-together for the kids with the pirates in the Story & Sing-a-Long tent!  We wish all pirates were as entertaining and well behaved.

Expedition Sets Sail to the Great Plastic Vortex

Posted on by June 2, 2014

Click to animate

Last February we posted about a “junkraft” built by Dr. Marcus Eriksen and his team of 15,000 plastic bottles, 30 sailboat masts, an airplane fuselage which they sailed 2,600 miles from Los Angeles to Hawaii to make a point about the amount of plastic polluting our oceans and contaminating our food supply.   On their voyage they sailed along the edge of the Great Pacific Vortex also known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch or simply the Plastic Vortex.

A new expedition has recently set sail to research the Plastic Vortex and the impact that it has on the oceans and on our food supply.
Continue reading →

Towing the Intrepid – a McAllister Tug Film by Jon Kane

Posted on by May 2, 2010

A beautifully shot and edited short video. Jon Kane’s comments:

I did this film for my friend Buck McAllister who’s family owns McAllister Towing tug boat company. I shot the film with one camera, in real time, during the towing of the Intrepid Warship back to it’s dock on the West Side of Manhattan after it’s refurbishment. I shot with a Panasonic HVX 200 camera with a polarizer filter and I cut and colored in Final Cut Pro using all the basic tools that come with Final Cut. Nothing fancy.

McAllister Tug Film



Captains Contentious: The Dysfunctional Sons of the Brine – A Review

Posted on by July 13, 2010

Louis Arthur Norton’s book Captains Contentious – The Dysfunctional Sons of the Brine is an entertaining reminder that history is finally about individuals, dedicated to the causes in which they believe, as well as serving their own needs and obsessions.

Norton looks at five ship’s captains who fought for the infant American Navy in the Revolutionary War. When not fighting the British, these captains also fought with each other, with their crews, their peers and with politicians ashore. Their personal quirks and flaws, in turn, hindered their careers and helped shape their victories. Norton examines the exploits of John Manley, Silas Talbot, Dudley Saltonstall, Joshua Barney and John Paul Jones. Each is a fascinating study in the character of these courageous if often flawed naval commanders.
Continue reading →

The Frigate Surprise: The Complete Story of the Ship Made Famous in the Novels of Patrick O’Brian, by Brian Lavery

Posted on by May 18, 2010

In his Aubrey/Maturin series, Patrick O’Brian wrote of HMS Surprise, a small British frigate, originally captured from the French. Over several books, the Surprise became almost as beloved a character, in her own way, as Jack Aubrey and Doctor Maturin themselves.

Independent of her qualities in fiction, HMS Surprise was indeed a real ship upon which O’Brian based the ship in his novels. Now, Brian Lavery, the noted naval historian and author of more than twenty books on the Royal Navy, and Geoff Hunt, the president Royal Society of Marine Artists and the painter of many of the covers in the Aubrey Maturin series, have written The Frigate Surprise: The Complete Story of the Ship Made Famous in the Novels of Patrick O’Brian.
Continue reading →

Help Save the Falls of Clyde

Posted on by April 16, 2010

Falls of Clyde is the only surviving iron-hulled four-masted full rigged ship and the only surviving sail-driven oil tanker in the world.  She was launched in 1878 in Port Glasgow, Scotland, for the Fall Line .  The ship was towed to Hawaii 1968 and opened as a museum in 1971.   In 2008, the Bishop Museum, which had control of the ship, was preparing to tow her out to sea and scuttle her.

In an attempt to save her, the Friends of Falls of Clyde, a tax-exempt group was formed and purchased the ship in September 2008.  They are currently working to raise funds to tow the ship to drydock at Kalaeloa by December 29th.

To learn more:  Friends of Falls of Clyde works to preserve a historic ship

Friends of Falls of Clyde website

To donate to help save Falls of Clyde:  Make a Donation

Melville’s White Jacket and the question of justice

Posted on by April 16, 2010

In a comment on a prior post, Fiddler’s Green, Redwing mentioned White Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War, by Herman Melville. I had never read the novel. I am now doing so and enjoying it very much. (It can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg.)

White Jacket and Redburn were apparently each written in two months when Melville was strapped for cash. He was said to have never liked either book, thinking of them as “cakes and ale potboilers”.  Melville would say of them that they were “two jobs which I have done for money—being forced to it as other men are to sawing wood”.  Ironically, they were both among his most popular books and sold better during his lifetime than any of his later books, including Moby Dick.

Continue reading →

Thad Koza – Tall Ships International

Posted on by December 7, 2008

This afternoon, at the 21st Annual Indie and Small Press Book Fair, I had the pleasure of meeting Thad Koza, a wonderful photographer of tall ships.   I bought a copy of his Tall Ships 2009 Calendar and plan on buying his book, Tall Ships: the fleet for the 21st century, for myself for Christmas.  

In addition to his glorious photography his website, Tall Ships International, has an alphabetical listing of tall ships, photographs in his daily log, as well as links to various tall ship sailing sites.  Definitely worth checking out.