BMW Oracle easily beat Alinghi in their second race, winning the America’s Cup. The US boat won, literally, by a mile.
BMW Oracle claim America’s Cup triumph
BMW Oracle won the America’s Cup as victory in Sunday’s second race off Valencia against Swiss holders Alinghi gave them an unassailable 2-0 lead in the best-of-three series.
The victory means the Golden Gate Yacht Club of San Francisco will now defend the America’s Cup in the 34th staging of an event which dates back to 1851.
As truly awe inspiring as the huge and high tech America’s Cup boats are, we shouldn’t forget that iceboats are the real speed demons on the water (even if it is frozen.) Will at the Tugster blog has some great photos of iceboats on the Hudson while Bowsprite has a wonderful video of sailing the classic iceboat Galatea (even as it comes apart at speed). While the classic Hudson River iceboats are beautiful, the real speed demon is the diminutive DN, the one person speedster that has been clocked at over 60 miles per hours!
Continue reading
Over thirty years ago when I was in college studying naval architecture, a classmate of mine got a summer job working as a naval architect for Sun Shipyard helping to design some part of the new deep sea mining ship, the Hughes Glomar Explorer, being built for Howard Hughes’ Global Marine. Years later my friend was chagrined to learn that the ship he was working on was not intended for deep water mining but was a top secret CIA project to raise the K-129, a sunken Golf Class Soviet submarine. The cover story was that the ship was intended to raise magnesium nodules from the deep ocean floor.
For the first time the CIA has declassified documents which officially describes Project Azorian and the raising of of the K-129.
Project Azorian – The CIA’s Declassified History of the Glomar Explorer
Continue reading
Last October, we wrote about how researchers are using eighteenth century Royal Navy ship logs to study climate change. (See Logbooks may yield climate bounty.) Now, through the wonder of the internet, many of these log books are on-line. The logs of over 100 ships are accessible, including the Beagle, the Endeavour, the Resolution, the Pandora, the Bounty, the Royalist, the Terror and the Victory among other notable ships.
The website hosting the logs is the British Atmospheric Data Centre (BADC), which is the Natural Environment Research Council’s (NERC) Designated Data Centre for the Atmospheric Sciences. Thanks to Alaric Bond for the reference.
UK COLONIAL REGISTERS AND ROYAL NAVY LOGBOOKS: making the past available for the future
The BMW Oracle team easily won the first America’s Cup race in Valencia, Spain, winning by fifteen minutes over the defender Alinghi.
Last Operational World War II Motor Boats Saved For The Nation
Two of the last remaining fully operational high-speed World War II motor boats have been saved for the nation today by Portsmouth Naval Base Property Trust, with the help of a £580,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF).
When built, they were among the fastest boats of their type in the world. The boats represented pioneering technology when they were built just down the coast at Hythe near Southampton. They were known as the Spitfires of the Seas and effectively it was like riding on a massive petrol bomb. With 3,000 gallons of fuel on board, if they were hit in the fuel tank they simply exploded. And as they were only made of plywood and had no real armament they were extremely vulnerable.
Read the rest of the article. Thanks to David Hayes for passing along the article.
The physics here is fascinating. How is it possible that the America’s Cup challenger ”USA” can sail at 22 knots in only two knots of wind? Chuck Lantz of the Enquirer, explains how it is done.
America’s Cup boatspeed – Making something out of nothing
Continue reading
Many ships carrying civilians were sunk during World War II by both sides. If current estimates are correct, the torpedoing of the M/V Wilhelm Gustloff resulted in the largest loss of life from the sinking of one vessel in maritime history. Thanks to Alaric Bond for passing along the article.
The Scottish Maritime Museum is in dire financial straits. The City of Adelaide, the oldest (just barely) surviving composite clipper ship in the world, has been rotting on a slipway at Irvine, near Glasgow, for almost a decade because the museum lacked the funds to restore her. Now the museum lacks the funds even to pay outstanding dockage fees and to have the old ship broken up. While there has been much talking and pleading to save the ship, so far no one has come up with funding to do so. As we noted in a previous post, while the City of Adelaide, Australia claims that it lacks the funds the enact a rescue, the city did recently spend $30 million to build an enclosure for two pandas on loan from China.
Up Spirit ceremony on HMS Endymion, 1905
Thanks to David Hayes for passing this along. There is something slightly frightening about sailors on a nuclear submarine receiving daily rum rations.
Royal Navy Rum – issued daily to sailors 1655 to 1970
Alcohol and the Royal Navy often seem to go together – there are the nautical phrases for the time in the evening when a drink is OK, “the sun’s over the yardarm”, and having one too many can lead to a person being described as “three sheets to the wind”. And, of course, there’s the old sea shanty, “What Shall We Do With the Drunken Sailor?”
Continue reading
This September, we posted about the popular and nearly ubiquitous “duck tours” using refurbished World War II DUKW amphibious trucks, or vehicles inspired by them, to take tourists on tours in cities and resorts around the world. (See From DUKWs to Ducks, Ducks and More Ducks.) Now an English bus company is testing an “amfibus,” a Dutch amphibious bus, as a possible replacement for a ferry service across the Clyde River, which is scheduled to be shut down this March. After fixing a technical glitch, testing has resumed and everything looks just ducky. (Sorry.)
The New York Times Science section has a fascinating slide show discussing the scientific innovations behind the two sailboats competing in the America’s Cup. The science is intriguing but the photos are simply breathtaking.
A follow-up to our previous post – Free Aircraft Carrier – ex USS John F Kennedy.
Maine group in running for decommissioned JFK
A nonprofit group in Maine says it’s still in the running to bring the decommissioned carrier John F. Kennedy to Portland Harbor as a floating museum.
The USS John F. Kennedy Museum said Wednesday that the Navy has invited it to enter into the next phase to land the 1,052-foot aircraft carrier. According to the group, the Navy said only two organizations made it to the next stage, but didn’t reveal the other group.
Continue reading
Abby Sunderland is putting into Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, interrupting her round the world attempt, because of a power problem aboard her yacht, Wild Eyes. The yacht’s solar panels and wind generators were not providing enough power and the yacht will be fitted with additional battery capacity.
A review by Steven Toby, written for the Maritime History Listserv, included here with his kind permission. Sounds like a fascinating book.
Skipjack: The Story of America’s Last Sailing Oystermen by Christopher White is an excellent book on the last commercial fishing craft operating under sail in the US. The author has a journalistic rather than a scholarly approach, although he has an academic background in the biology/ecology area. He’s a great storyteller, and some of the anecdotes are almost novel-like.
Continue reading