Update: USS Texas Drydocking & Repairs Scheduled

Posted on by November 6, 2021

For years, we have been following the valiant efforts to keep the battleship USS Texas afloat at its berth in the Buffalo Bayou at the San Jacinto Battleground Historic Site in La Porte, Texas. Now, the Battleship Texas Foundation has announced that the historic ship, commissioned in 1914 and the last surviving dreadnought as well as the only battleship in existence today that fought in both World War I and World War II, will move to a drydock in 2022 for critical repairs.

From the announcement:

The Battleship Texas Foundation (BTF) has selected Gulf Copper & Manufacturing Corporation’s Galveston shipyard as the location for the repair of the Battleship Texas. With the support of the Battleship Texas Foundation and Valkor Energy Services (BTF’s project management and engineering firm for the ship repair), Gulf Copper recently acquired a floating drydock capable of lifting the Battleship Texas out of the water for necessary and extensive hull repairs.

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Golden Ray Salvage Finally Completed, Massive, But Not Necessarily The Largest Wreck Removal

Posted on by October 28, 2021

Golden Ray & SS Normandie

The last section of the car carrier Golden Ray has been removed from St. Simons Sound near Brunswick, Georgia, and is on its way to a scrapyard. The 656-foot car carrier was carrying 4,100 vehicles when it capsized in September 2019. The cost of the ship, cargo, and wreck removal totaled roughly one billion US dollars.

Commander Efren Lopez, US Coast Guard Federal On-Scene Coordinator, said that the salvage of the Golden Ray was “the largest wreck removal in US history,” in a briefing on Tuesday.  While the salvage was certainly massive, it is not clear that the removal was the “largest in US history.”

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Ecuadorian Sail Training Ship Guayas Interdicts Narco Sub

Posted on by October 27, 2021

In one of the stranger maritime stories of late, the Ecuadorian Navy announced that last week, their sail training ship, the three-masted barque Guayas stopped and captured a drug-laden high-speed craft; a low profile vessel (LPV) powered by three outboard motors. While not submersible, the craft is colloquially referred to as a “narco-sub.” Four crew aboard the LPV – three Ecuadorians and a Colombian – were arrested. The cargo, likely cocaine of between 1.5 and 6 tons based on the imagery released, is carried in the forward hull, surrounded by fuel tanks.

The incident took place in international waters between the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Colombia and Ecuador’s Insular Exclusive Economic Zone (IEEZ), which surrounds the Galapagos islands, on Oct. 22.

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No “Ice Liberty” on Icebreaker USCGC Healy in the Northwest Passage

Posted on by October 26, 2021

One of the traditions of US icebreakers operating in the Arctic is “ice liberty.” When an icebreaker encounters a thick ice floe, the crew is allowed liberty to get off the vessel to walk about or play games from touch football to hockey. 

This year as the icebreaker USCGC Healy transited the Northwest Passage for the first time since 2005, ice liberty was canceled. In the melting Arctic, no ice floe was thick enough to be suitable.

“A lot of the floes had melt ponds with holes in them like Swiss cheese,” said Capt. Kenneth Boda, commander of the Seattle-based icebreaker told the Seattle Times. “We couldn’t get the right floe.”

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Carbon Dating Pinpoints Year of Norse L’Anse aux Meadows Newfoundland Settlement

Posted on by October 23, 2021

In 1960, the archaeological remains of Norse buildings were discovered at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Until recently the settlement date was estimated within about a sixty-year span around 1000 CE. On Wednesday, scientists published a study in the journal Nature pinpointing the arrival date to 1021 CE, or 470 years before Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492.

Archaeologists identified three trees at the site that were cut with metal tools, which the Norse had, while indigenous peoples did not. The archaeologists were able to accurately date when the trees were cut based on markings on the tree rings from a rare solar storm — called a Miyake event — that took place in 992 or 993 A.D. With the date of that inner ring fixed, “all you need to do is count to when you get to the cutting edge,” said Michael Dee, a study co-author from the University of Groningen. 

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USS Constitution, Oldest Commissioned Vessel Afloat, Sets Topsails in Boston Harbor Cruise

Posted on by October 24, 2021

The USS Constitution left its berth in the Charleston Navy Yard last Friday for a short cruise in Boston Harbor. CBS Boston reports that the ship fired a 21-gun salute while carrying 120 newly-trained Navy sailors. The sailors were recently selected to advance to the rank of chief petty officer.

As part of the Navy’s Heritage Week Training, the sailors lived aboard the ship, which is the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat.

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Water’s Soul — A Serene, New Face on New York Harbor

Posted on by October 23, 2021

On Thursday, Water’s Soul, an 80-foot tall sculpture by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa was dedicated on the Hudson River in Jersey City. Located directly across the river from Lower Manhattan, Water’s Soul depicts the serene face of a young woman holding a finger to her lips in silent contemplation.

“Water is a marvelous metaphor for humanity,” Plensa said. “One drop of water is quite alone, like a single person, but many drops together can create a tidal wave, and form immense rivers and oceans. When individuals come together to exchange ideas and create community, we can build something incredibly powerful.”

The pier is now open for year-round public access, located in Newport, a mixed-use development in Jersey City. Continue reading →

‘Good Luck’ Coin Found Under HMS Victory’s Mast

Posted on by October 22, 2021

The coin was found by Diana Davis, head of conservation at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Photo: PA Media

Happy Trafalgar Day, one day late. A story for Trafalgar Day, plus one.

When one of the masts of Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory was removed for restoration work, a conservator found a Victorian-era coin that had been placed beneath the mast for good luck, 127 years ago. The coin, a farthing, dates to 1894, the year a set of masts were installed on the ship after the previous ones became rotten.

The BBC quotes HMS Victory’s principal heritage adviser Rosemary Thornber called the coin “invaluable”.

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USS Bonhomme Richard’s Destruction by Fire ‘Completely Preventable,’ Navy Finds

Posted on by October 21, 2021

Following an investigation of the fire that destroyed the US Navy amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard, Admiral Bill Lescher, the Navy’s No. 2 officer said, “The loss of this ship was completely preventable.”

USNI News reported that a cascade of failures – from a junior enlisted sailor not recognizing a fire at the end of their duty watch to fundamental problems with how the U.S. Navy trains sailors to fight fires in shipyards – are responsible for the five-day blaze that cost the service an amphibious warship, according to an investigation into the July 2020 USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) fire.

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Amazon, Ikea, and Other Cargo Owners Pledge to Use Zero Carbon Ocean Shipping by 2040

Posted on by October 20, 2021

Nine major shippers including Amazon, Ikea and Unilever have signed an “ambition statement” to pledge to only move cargo on ships using zero-carbon fuel by 2040.  This pledge is part of a new initiative by the non-profit Aspen Insititute called Cargo Owners for Zero-Emission Vessels or coZEV. 

From the coZEV website: coZEV was created because no single cargo owner can drive this transition alone. coZEV utilizes the power of companies’ combined voices, capacity for innovation, and economies of scale to drive change.

Through collaboration among cargo owner companies and maritime supply chain partners, coZEV believes companies can decarbonize their own maritime freight by 2040 and help catalyze full sector decarbonization by 2050 at the latest.

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Brazilian Sail Training Ship Cisne Branco Strikes Bridge Off Guayaquil, Ecuador

Posted on by October 19, 2021

While under tow in the Guayas River, near Guayaquil, Ecuador, the 250′ long Brazilian sail training ship Cisne Branco was carried sideways in the current into a pedestrian bridge that connects Guayaquil to Santay Island. The sailing ship damaged its rigging, resulting in the dismasting of the fore t’gallast mast in the allision.

An Ecuadoran naval tug sent to assist the Cisne Branco was subsequently caught sideways in the river current and capsized. Fortunately, the tug crew was reported to be rescued without injury. Likewise, no injuries were reported on the sail training ship or the other tug involved in the accident.

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Update: US Coast Guard Identifies Container Ship MSC Danit in California Pipeline Dragging

Posted on by October 18, 2021

In early October, a crack in a pipeline off the coast of Huntington Beach, California spilled some 3,000 barrels (126,000 gallons) of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean. On Saturday, the US Coast Guard announced that it had determined that the container ship MSC Danit had dragged its anchor in heavy weather on January 25, 2021, “in close proximity to a subsea pipeline, which was subsequently discovered to be the source of the Orange County oil spill on October 2, 2021.”

Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) marine casualty investigators boarded the container ship MSC Danit in the Port of Long Beach on Saturday.

The environmental monitoring group Skytruth was able to pull up AIS tracks of the container ship as its anchor dragged across the pipeline during the storm. Continue reading →

The Nasty, Beautiful, Yet Rarely Deadly Portuguese Man o’ War

Posted on by October 17, 2021

Alaric Bond was kind enough to pass along an article from the Eastbourne Herald titled, Killer ‘jellyfish’ which can grow to 160ft long are washing up on Britain’s beaches. While more common in tropical waters, Portuguese man o’ wars have been drifting ashore near tourist areas in Cornwall, Sennen Beach, and Porteras Cove. 

The man o’ war have no independent means of movement and often move with the winds or sea currents. They are known to wash up on British shores between September and December.

Fortunately, while the article itself, about Portuguese man o’ war, is quite good, the headline writer is arguably guilty of some level of hyperbole. Continue reading →

FSO Safer — Environmental Disaster Waiting to Happen in the Red Sea off Yemen

Posted on by October 17, 2021

For several years, the FSO Safer, a floating oil storage and offloading vessel, moored in the Red Sea north of the Yemeni city of Al Hudaydah, may be an environmental disaster waiting to happen. The ship has been held as a virtual hostage in the ongoing Yemeni civil war. A converted 400,000 DWT ultra large crude carrier (ULCC), built in 1976, the ship now contains about 1.14 million barrels of oil valued at up to US$80 million. The ship has been progressively deteriorating due to a lack of maintenance and supplies, and many are concerned that the Safer is in imminent risk of sinking, fire, or explosion.

Update: The F.S.O. Safer—pronounced “Saffer”—is named for a patch of desert near the city of Marib, in central Yemen, where the country’s first reserves of crude oil were discovered.

Should the Safer sink or explode, a massive spill would be disastrous, potentially four times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill of 1999.

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Wreck of Legendary Cutter USS Bear Identified Off Cape Sable

Posted on by October 15, 2021

The wreck of the legendary cutter USS Bear was recently identified off Cape Sable. The wreck was located in 2019 but it was only in August of this year that a team of experts looking at the evidence came to the conclusion that they are “reasonably certain” that the wreck is indeed the Bear, officials of the US Coast Guard and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said at a waterfront news conference in Boston.

The Bear sank in 1963 about 260 miles east of Boston as it was being towed to Philadelphia, where it was going to be converted into a floating restaurant.

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The Cost of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the Most Advanced & Most Expensive Aircraft Carrier

Posted on by October 14, 2021

Here is a short and concise video by Business Insider looking at the cost, the myriad of problems and the potential of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the largest, most advanced, and most expensive aircraft carrier ever built.

The True Cost Of The Most Advanced Aircraft Carrier

Last Conventionally Powered Carriers, Kitty Hawk & John F. Kennedy, Sold For a Penny Each

Posted on by October 13, 2021

USS Kitty Hawk

The decommissioned supercarriers USS Kitty Hawk and the USS John F. Kennedy have finally been sold for scrap for a modest one cent each to a Texas breaking yard. The last carriers to be powered by fuel oil, the ships have been mothballed for over a decade, as various groups have attempted unsuccessfully to secure them to turn them into museums. 

The Kitty Hawk is expected to be towed shortly from Puget Sound to International Shipbreaking Limited in Brownsville, Texas, on the Gulf of Mexico. The timeline for when the ex-John F. Kennedy, which the Navy retired in 2007, will make its final journey is much less certain.

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Scientists Identify New Type of Transient Orca Off Pacific West Coast

Posted on by October 12, 2021

Another reminder of how little we know and understand about orca whales. Scientists have identified a new type of orca, also known as killer whales, off the US and Canadian Pacific West Coast. Termed ‘outer coast transient whales,‘ the newly discovered orca type preys on large sea mammals, prefers deepwater for hunting, and has a unique high-pitched vocal dialect. Experts believe they are a subset of transient orcas known as Bigg’s killer whales.

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Sub Secrets in a Peanut Butter Sandwich — FBI Arrests Navy Engineer for Espionage

Posted on by October 11, 2021

Virginia Class Submarine

Half of a peanut butter sandwich in a plastic bag was left at an agreed location in West Virginia by a Navy nuclear engineer. Inside the sandwich, wrapped in plastic, was a 16 GB memory card containing detailed secret information about the US Navy’s Virginia-class submarine reactors.  In subsequent drops, more memory cards containing submarine secrets were left in a bandaid box and a chewing gum container at sites in Pennsylvania and Virginia.

The engineer, Jonathan Toebbe, and his wife, Diana Toebbe, thought that they were giving the information to a foreign country in exchange for cryptocurrency payments. Instead, the FBI had intercepted their correspondence and impersonated foreign agents. 

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Swedish East Indiaman Götheborg : A New Journey Begins – Asia Expedition

Posted on by October 10, 2021

As we posted in September, the replica Swedish East Indiaman Götheborg is preparing to sail for Asia in April of 2022. The expedition is intended to promote and open new trade opportunities for Swedish and Asian companies. The nearly 60-meter (197-feet) long East Indiaman is billed the world’s largest operational wooden sailing vessel and is modeled after the Götheborg that sank off Gothenburg, Sweden in 1745. Here is a short video about the upcoming voyage.

A New Journey Begins – Asia Expedition