Black History Month Repost — David Debias, 8 Year Old Sailor on Old Ironsides

Posted on by February 27, 2023

Capture of H.M. Ships Cyane & Levant, by the U.S. Frigate Constitution

David Debias was a free black youth from the north side of Beacon Hill in Boston. In 1814, at only 8 years old, he signed aboard the USS Constitution, nicknamed “Old Ironsides.” He was rated as a ship’s boy and was assigned as a servant to Master’s Mate Nathaniel G. Leighton. 

On the night of February 20, 1815, Debias served on USS Constitution during the battle in which Old Ironsides captured HMS Cyane and HMS Levant.

He sailed on board Levant, with Master’s Mate Leighton, as part of the prize crew.  Levant was subsequently captured by a British squadron on the way back to the United States and Debias and the rest of the prize crew were imprisoned in Barbados. With the end of the war in May, he returned home and was finally reunited with his family. His father collected $31.98 — the equivalent of roughly $550 today — for his young son’s seven months of service.

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Searching for #TheKetchupBoatGuy — Heinz Wants to Buy Him a New Boat

Posted on by February 25, 2023

Elvis Francois, 47, was repairing his boat on the Dutch side of the island of Saint Martin in December when his boat was carried offshore and he subsequently spent 24 days at sea. He survived off a bottle of ketchup, garlic powder, and Maggi stock cubes, which he mixed with water. Francois was rescued after a plane spotted his sailboat with “help” engraved into the hull, according to Colombian authorities.

Now, ketchup producer Heinz is trying to reach Francois with an offer to help him buy a new boat… but they can’t seem to find him. So, Heinz reached out with a virtual “message in a bottle on Instagram:

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Remembering the MV Struma Disaster, Almost 800 Jewish Refugees Lost, 81 Years Ago Today

Posted on by February 24, 2023

Eighty-one years ago today on February 24, 1941, the overloaded and unseaworthy MV Struma was sunk with the loss of almost 800 Jewish refugees. Of the estimated 790 people who died, more than 100 were children. There was only one survivor.

The Romanian port of Constanta, on the Black Sea, was a major embarkation point for Jewish refugees attempting to leave Nazi-occupied Europe for Palestine. Thousands of Jews, desperate to escape the Germans, took the route by ship from Constanta via Turkey to Palestine, despite British immigration restrictions.

In December 1941, in Constanta, 781 Jewish refugees boarded the MV Struma. They planned to travel to Istanbul in Turkey, apply for visas to Palestine, and then sail to Palestine.

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Black History Month: Paul Cuffee — African-American Captain, Ship Owner & Shipbuilder

Posted on by February 23, 2023

During Black History Month, it is worthwhile to remember early African-American shipmasters. Who was the first? That is hard to say. Paul Cuffee is a good candidate.  An updated repost.

Paul Cuffee was born on Cuttyhunk Island, MA on January 17, 1759, the seventh of ten children of Kofi or Cuffee Slocum and Ruth Moses. His father, a freed black man, was a member of the Ashanti people of Ghana. His mother was a Native American of the Wampanoag Nation of Martha’s Vineyard. Cuffee Slocum was a skilled carpenter, farmer, and fisherman, who taught himself to read and write. In 1766, Cuffee Slocum was able to purchase a 116-acre farm in Westport, Massachusetts.

Paul Cuffee went to sea at 16 on whalers and merchant ships, where he learned navigation. During the American Revolution, his ship was captured by the British and Cuffee was imprisoned for three months in 1776 in New York. He returned home to Massachusetts and in 1779 built an open boat that he used to run the British blockade, bringing trade goods to Nantucket and ports on the Massachusetts coast.

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Thwaites “Doomsday Glacier” Melting Rapidly — Is It Time To Panic Yet?

Posted on by February 22, 2023

The calving front of Thwaites Ice Shelf in 2012. Photo by JamesYungel | NASA IceBridge.

The continued rapid melting of Antarctica’s Thwaites glacier is worrying, at the very least. The glacier was dubbed “The Doomsday Glacier” by an article in Rolling Stone magazine in 2017. At 80 miles across, Thwaites is the widest glacier in the world—roughly the size of Florida. Every year, it loses 50 billion tons of ice, contributing around 4 percent of annual global sea level rise. If the entire glacier were to melt, it would raise the ocean by 25 inches.

Last September, we saw a blizzard of scary headlines announcing that the doomsday glacier was “holding on by its fingernails,”  inspired by a statement by the British Antarctic Survey’s Robert Larter, who said, “Thwaites is really holding on today by its fingernails, and we should expect to see big changes over small time scales in the future — even from one year to the next — once the glacier retreats beyond a shallow ridge in its bed.”

This month, new research by the British Antarctic Survey and the US Antarctic program concluded that Antarctic glaciers may be more sensitive to changes in sea temperature than was thought. The new research suggests that even low amounts of melting can potentially push a glacier further along the path toward eventual disappearance.

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The Hanging of Captain Nathaniel Gordon of the Slave Ship Erie — February 21, 1862

Posted on by February 22, 2023

On February 21, 1862, Nathaniel Gordon, captain of the slave ship, Erie, was executed by hanging in New York City. Under the Piracy Law of 1820, slave trading was considered to be an act of piracy punishable by death. He was the only slave-trader ever to be tried, convicted, and executed in American history. Captain Gordon, originally from Portland, Maine was 36.  In a detestable trade, Captain Gordan was among the worst. When he was apprehended by the USS Mohican 50 miles off the Congo in 1860, the Erie, a ship of 500 tons, had 897 Africans crammed aboard. Of these, 563 were children. Captain Gordan preferred children because they were smaller and were less able to attempt to take over the ship.

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Happy Presidents’ Day – Lincoln’s Improved Camel Patent

Posted on by February 20, 2023

Nantucket Camel Ride

In the United States, today is “Presidents’ Day,”  a national holiday on the third Monday of February, falling between Lincoln’s (February 12th) and Washington’s (February 22) birthdays.  Here is an updated repost of the tale of a patent granted to Abraham Lincoln for a device to lift boats and ships over sandbars.

In the early 1800s, the entrance to the harbor of the great whaling port of Nantucket had shoaled in. Fully loaded whaling ships could not cross the bar and return to the docks beyond Brandt Point. For years the ships anchored offshore and were lightered, the barrels of whale oil loaded into smaller boats that could make it across the bar.

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Remembering the Knockdown and Capsize of the SV Concordia 13 Years Ago Today

Posted on by February 17, 2023

On February 17, 2010, thirteen years ago today, the SV Concordia, a school ship operated by West Island College International, was knocked down and sank off the coast of Brazil.  Fortunately, all 64 passengers and crew aboard were rescued. The Transportation Safety Board of Canada in its Marine Investigation Report concluded that poor training played a role in the knockdown and capsize of SV Concordia. 

How did the ship sink?  Contrary to earlier accounts,  the Transportation Safety Board found no evidence of a microburst, a sudden and violent downdraft of wind that can reach speed as high as 150 knots. There may have been downdrafts present in the squalls, but nevertheless, the winds in which the ship capsized were no stronger than winds the ship had previously encountered.

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Hugh Mulzac, First Black Liberty Ship Captain, Says No To Jim Crow

Posted on by February 16, 2023

Hugh Mulzak served as the first Black Liberty ship captain during World War II. When offered the command, he refused to sail with a segregated crew. An updated repost in honor of Black History Month.

Born in 1886 on Union Island in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, he went to sea at 21 and served on British, Norwegian, and American sail and steam-powered ships. After studying at the Swansea Nautical College in South Wales, he earned a mate’s license in 1910. He served as a deck officer on four ships during World War I.

In 1918, he became a naturalized US citizen and in 1920 sat for his Master’s license, earning a perfect score on the test. Despite his experience and qualifications, he was generally only able to find work aboard American ships as a messman or cook. Mulzak has been described as “the most over-qualified ship’s cook in maritime history.”

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Harland & Wolff, Shipyard That Built the Titanic, to Build First Ships in 20 Years

Posted on by February 15, 2023

Harland & Wolff, the Belfast-based shipyard, has recently signed a  £ 1.6 billion contract to build three support ships for the Royal Navy in partnership with Spanish state-owned Navantia. The shipyard built more than 1,600 ships, including the RMS Titanic. The last ship built by the yad was delivered in 2003.

UK Daily News reports that three years ago, John Wood, chief executive of London-based energy company InfraStrata, bought the company out of receivership for £ 6 million. The manager found eight-foot-tall weeds in the yard and recalls colleagues’ disbelief that the Harland & Wolff company, founded in 1861, could be raised from the dead. 

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Repost: Celebrating Frederick Douglass on Valentine’s Day — “I Will Take to the Water”

Posted on by February 8, 2023

Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of both the day and Black History Month, here is an updated repost about Frederick Douglass. But what does Valentine’s Day have to do with Frederick Douglass?  As a slave, Douglass never knew the date of his birth, so he chose to celebrate it every year on February 14th.

Frederick Douglass was born around 1818. From an early age, he developed a close attachment to ships and the sea. His path to freedom led directly through the docks and shipyards of Baltimore, Maryland.

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Remembering Jesse L. Brown, First African-American Naval Pilot

Posted on by February 10, 2023

In honor of Black History Month, an updated repost about the first African-American pilot in the US Navy, Jesse L. Brown.

The story goes that when young Jesse Leroy Brown worked in the cotton fields of Mississippi beside his sharecropper father, whenever he would see a plane in the sky above, he would declare that one day, he would be a pilot. No one took him seriously.

Nevertheless, the young man, born in born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1926, made a name for himself as an athlete in high school and won honors as a math student. In 1944, Jesse Brown was enrolled as the only black student in the engineering program at Ohio State Univesity.

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Remembering Robert Smalls – Former Slave, Pilot of the Planter, First Black Captain in the US Navy & US Congressman

Posted on by February 12, 2023

Here is a story well worth retelling; an updated repost in honor of Black History Month; the remarkable story of Robert Smalls.

On May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old slave, who served as the pilot of the Confederate armed transport, CSS Planter, led eight fellow slaves in an audacious flight to freedom. They seized the CSS Planter, steamed it out past the batteries and forts of Charleston harbor, and turned it over to the Union naval blockade.  Smalls would go on to become the first black captain of a U.S. Navy vessel, a South Carolina State Legislator, a Major General in the South Carolina Militia, a five-term U.S. Congressman, and a U.S. Collector of Customs.  

Harper’s Weekly of June 14, 1862, recounts the escape:
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Black History Month: Absalom Boston, Whaling Ship Captain & Merchant

Posted on by February 10, 2023

Captain Absalom Boston

Over nearly three centuries of whaling, some 175,000 men went to sea in 2,700 ships. Of the 2,500 masters who captained these ships, at least 52 were men of color. In honor of Black History Month, here is an updated repost about Absalom Boston, captain of the whaleship Industry, which sailed in 1822 with an all-black crew. 

Absalom Boston was born in Nantucket in 1785 to Seneca Boston, an African-American ex-slave, and Thankful Micah, a Wampanoag Indian woman. Absalom Boston’s uncle was a slave named Prince Boston, who sailed on a whaling voyage in 1770. At the end of the voyage in 1773, Prince Boston’s white master, William Swain, a prominent Nantucket merchant, demanded that he turn over his earnings. Boston refused. He took Swain to court and with the support of prominent whaleship owner William Rotch, won his earnings and his freedom, becoming the first slave to be set free by a jury verdict.  The impact of the lawsuit effectively ended slavery on Nantucket.

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