Having recently visited the USCG Cutter Barque Eagle, I can wholeheartedly agree with the title of Tido Holtkamp’s book, A Perfect Lady: A Pictorial History of the Coast Guard Barque Eagle, which has recently gone into its second printing. The ship is indeed a perfect lady. Holtkamp has far more experience with the ship than most. He sailed on her as a cadet when she was the Segelschulschiff Horst Wessel, a German school ship training German naval cadets, just as the Eagle is used to train US Coast Guard cadets today.
Tido Holtkamp tells tales of days when the Eagle, “America’s Tallship” was a Nazi naval ship named Horst Wessel.
Continue reading
On August 15th, 1653, the
In May, we posted about 


Last week, a bright orange jelly or “goo” floated up on the beaches of Kivalina, a remote Alaskan village of just over 400 residents. Now scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have determined that the goo is not man-made but rather millions of microscopic invertebrate eggs, filled with fatty droplets. Experts are guessing that they are from some sort of crustacean, but so far have been unable to identify which species of invertebrate laid all the eggs or whether the mass of eggs will prove harmful to the village water supply or impact local fishing.
The barque
The Viking longboat replica,
In May, we posted about what appears to be the deck of an aircraft carrier built onto the top of a government building in China (
The Royal Navy has appointed Lt Cdr Sarah West the command of
After adverse winds carried her off course, marathon swimmer Diana Nyad, 61, ended her attempt to become the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage. She had been swimming for 29 hours when she ended the swim.