Two letters from the Titanic are in the news. One is a letter from Dr. John Edward Simpson, who died when the ship sank, He wrote to his mother on April 11, 1912, on notepaper headed RMS Titanic, and had it mailed from Cohb, Ireland, the last port of call prior to the ship sailing across the North Atlantic. The letter, which was owned by a collector in Long Island, NY will be returning Belfast to be part of a new Titanic exhibition.
A second, somewhat controversial, letter was written by Titanic survivor, Emily Richards, a second class passenger, who claims to have seen Captain Smith a drinking few hours before the collision. The letter written on board the Carpathia, which rescued survivors from the sinking, blames the captain for the sinking:
‘The Captain was down in the saloon drinking and gave charge to some-one else to stare(sic) the ship. ‘It was the Captan(sic) fault. ‘My poor brother George … drowned as far as we know now.’
Captain Smith who went down with the ship, was exonerated by by the British enquiry into the disaster and not all believe Ms. Richard’s account.
Was the captain of the Titanic drunk on the night the ship struck an iceberg? Letter written by survivor claims skipper was in saloon bar before liner sank
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So you want to build an unsinkable passenger liner? Well, there is an app for that! OK, not really, but
For several years we have been
After posting about far too many needless tragedies on poorly maintained third world ferry boats which sink and kill their passengers, here is something completely different, though still involving a ferry.
This story is so unlikely that it must be true. When the
In the last days of the age of sail, British sailing ships, limejuicers, as they were known, had reputation as “hungry ships,” of offering poor quality provisions and not much of those. Whether that reputation was or was not wholly justified at the end of the 19th century, a new study now reveals that sailors in the Georgian Navy were well and amply fed for their day. Given that the British Navy had to feed upwards of 140,000 seamen and marines, the Victualing Board seems to have done a remarkably good job.




Some excitement in my neighborhood this morning. Three crew from the tug Katherine G were pulled from the water near Liberty Island in new York harbor, after the tug capsized at around 9:45 this morning. The men were rescued by the New York Police Department’s harbor unit and taken to local medical facilities. No serious injuries were reported. Thanks to