Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Gifford and her husband Captain Mark Kelly
Maritime Reporter points out the connection between the US Merchant Maritime Academy and this weekend’s tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and nineteen others at a supermarket in northwest Tucson, Arizona, which left six dead and Representative Giffords in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head. Representative Gifford’s husband, U.S. Navy Captain Mark E. Kelly, a NASA Astronaut, earned a B.S. degree in marine engineering and nautical science from the United States Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) at Kings Point, NY in 1986. He is reported to have proposed marriage to Gabrielle Giffords on the King’s Point campus in 2006. Our thoughts and prayers are with all the families impacted by this tragedy.
This Thursday, January 13th, the three ships of the 
A disturbing report published yesterday in the
Two hundred years ago today the USS Revenge, under the command of Oliver Hazard Perry, sank in the waters off Rhode Island. On Friday, divers, Charles Buffum, Mike Fournier and Craig Harger, announced that they believe that they have located the wreck. In the wreckage they have found four 42-inch long cannons, an anchor, canister shot, and other metal objects that make them confident that they have the right ship. They do not have a positive identification however and some have noted that the Revenge was originally armed with 6 pounders with a length of 72″. Whether the ship was subsequently rearmed with carronades is the subject of discussion as well as whether the published photographs of the guns show trunnions indicating a conventional gun or lugs indicating carronades.
This week 
A Ukrainian sailor, on a Dutch ship in international waters steaming toward Houston, Texas, got into a fight with a fellow crew member New Year’s Eve and the next morning was found dead in his cabin. An autopsy is being performed to determine the cause of death as the various authorities discuss the jurisdiction if it is determined that a crime has been committed.
There is no bad time to read Melville. For the past 15 years in early January, the 
On the night of December 7,1942 ten British commandos set off in five wood and canvas canoes from a British submarine in the Bay of Biscay off the coast of occupied France. Their intent was to paddle 75 miles up the Gironde estuary and attack and sink German ships with limpet mines in the harbor of Bordeaux. Only two of the ten commandos survived but they succeeded in sinking one ship and severely damaging four others, as well as disrupting port operations for months. The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill believed the mission shortened the Second World War by six months.
Rather than pressuring the Japanese to stop whaling, the vigilante violence of the