Another article about stowaways, though of a completely different sort – zebra mussels on the Brig Niagara. Earlier this month, the Niagara, a historically accurate reconstruction of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry’s victorious 1813 flagship, visited Isle Royale, an island National Park in northwestern Lake Superior under terms of a special use permit that required that the ship be free of aquatic invasive species, especially the zebra mussel. Despite the efforts of volunteer divers to clean the hull prior to her arrival, National Park Divers found zebra mussel infestation. After an initial attempt at cleaning the ship was judged too risky, raising the possibility of seeding the harbor with the invasive mussel, the ship left the park and sailed for Duluth.
Historic Ship Brings Unwelcome Stowaways to Isle Royale National Park
Continue reading


Despite all odds, earlier this month, 492 Tamil refugees arrived in Vancouver in an old and barely seaworthy ship, then named the Sun Sea. The 


Captain John Moore, submarine captain, developer of covert landings techniques of the Special Boat Service and editor of Janes Fighting Ships, died last month at age 88.
The municipality of Amsterdam has a population of just under 800,000 people. Amsterdam’s population almost doubled this weekend as SAIL 2010 attracted roughly 1.5 million visitors. Some final thoughts on the festival, which ended this morning, by Marijke Peters of Radio Netherlands Worldwide:
In 1819, the 