The US Navy is sending the rescue and salvage ship, USS Grasp, to Port-au-Prince, Haiti with divers and underwater construction personnel to assess the damage to piers and other port facilities. The USNS Comfort, a hospital ship with a capacity of a 1,000 beds, sailed from Baltimore this morning and is expected to arrive in Haiti by Thursday. The USS Bataan, an amphibious assault ship with a 800 bed hospital, sailed from Norfolk last Thursday.
My River Chronicle – Rediscovering the America on the Hudson, is a fascinating voyage in the life of a young woman, who finds herself oddly quite at home in a most unlikely new job. It is also a journey through the history of America itself as it moves from an industrial past into an uncertain future.
While working for a dot-com startup, started volunteering on a retired fire boat, the John J. Harvey. She was the first woman ever to run the engines. When her day job disappeared, she was offered a position on the fireboat where she spent so many hours as a volunteer. Over time, she became a licensed engineer on the historic fire boat, as well as the pilot on another tug.
My River Chronicle is a deft mix of DuLong’s personal memoir, mixed with the history of the mighty Hudson and the towns that line the shore, with a judicious dose of commentary thrown in for spice. The writing is graceful and engaging and she balances the various elements of her account with remarkable skill.
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Live Yankees, the Sewalls and their Ships is a fascinating and sweeping history of one family from Bath, Maine, which built and operated over one hundred merchant ships, mostly square riggers in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It offers a complex and intriguing portrait of the shipbuilders, ship owners, captains and crews who helped drive the meteoric rise of the US sailing merchant fleet in the mid-1800s and presided over its fall in the wake of the arrival of steamships.
Bill Bunting accepted the daunting task of taking 315 linear feet of documents that comprise the Sewall Family Papers and translating them into a coherent and entertaining account. In the hands of a lesser writer, the book could have ended up as a dry and plodding scholarly work. Fortunately, Live Yankees is anything but. In addition to wonderful writing, the book is full of fascinating photographs of both the people and the ships described within its pages.
There have been hundreds of novels written about dashing Royal Navy ships’ captains who bear a striking resemblance to Lord Cochrane. The resemblance and family history are most obvious in Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower, but a dozen or so other worthy fictional officers share the same heritage. It is therefore pleasing to see that Tom Grundner has tapped another naval hero from history, the intriguing and multi-faceted Sir Sidney Smith, whose colorful and often controversial naval career would span from the American Revolution through the end of the Napoleonic wars.
His latest novel, The Temple, begins with Sir Sidney locked in the French prison by that name. It follows his daring escape and return to England only to be dispatched the Gibraltar under the command of an admiral who despises him, a diplomatic mission to the the Ottoman court, Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt and Nelson’s victory at the Nile. The novel is sweeping in scope, fast paced and a fun read.
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Martin Evans on the Marine History List posted a collection of sailors’ superstitions from the current issue of “Fishing Boats”.
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The mega-yachts of the Russian billionaires grow ever larger, more elaborate, and, of course, ever more expensive. Roman Abramovich’s new yacht Eclipse will be the world’s largest yacht, at 557 feet (170 meters), eclipsing, so to speak, the 525-foot luxury yacht owned by Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum.
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Lars Hansen atop the Peking at the South Street Seaport in 1991.
I just read that Lars Hansen died the day before yesterday in a nursing home in Florida. He was 86. For three decades he had been the master rigger of the historic vessels of the South Street Seaport until he suffered a stroke a few years ago and had to retire.
When profiled in the New York Times two years ago, the author wrote that ”Mr. Hansen reigned for 30 years as king of the still-gritty side of the seaport. … In the collective imagination of the seaport’s salts, Mr. Hansen is a Paul Bunyan of the sea. They speak of his strength in terms like “gentle giant,” and of his kindness in phrases typically reserved for the canonization process.”
Last May, we posted about the Tall Ship Soren Larsen’s new season of voyages – Tall ship Soren Larsen – Pearls of the Pacific, Voyages across the South Seas 2009. Unfortunately, the ship was hit by a rogue wave on the 1st of June and suffered serious damage.
Fortunately, no one was seriously injured, beyond a few bruises, cuts and a few strained knees. The deck house and bulwarks suffered major damage, but the ship made it safely back to port. The last few months have been spent making repairs. From the Soren Larsen site:
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Thomas Chambers’s “Packet Ship Passing Castle Williams, New York Harbor”
For years, his paintings were collected by private owners and museums, yet because all were unsigned the painter remained a mystery. Only in the late 1930s was first signed painting located – “The Capture of H.B.M. ‘Macedonian’ by the U.S. Frigate ‘United States,’ October 25, 1812, signed by T. Chambers.
From the New York Times: Setting Full Sail Toward the 20th Century
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In July we posted about the exhibition of Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square. There was an interesting symmetry in the display of Nelson’s ship, Victory, in a bottle, on a plinth, in a square named for Nelson’s greatest and last victory onboard HMS Victory.
At the time I didn’t fully appreciate what an interesting performance space the Fourth Plinth has become. Recently, among many other performers and performances, there has been a man dressed as a 17th century pirate telling bad pirate puns ( in the video the pirate punster is preceded and followed by singers) as well as a topless plinth pole dancer and a topless body painter. Nothing terribly nautical about the last two, except that sailors have always been supporters of the arts, particularly when undressed women are involved.
Let women work on subs, Navy secretary says
Women should be allowed to serve aboard submarines, and the Navy is “moving out aggressively” to make it happen, according to the service’s top civilian.
“I believe women should have every opportunity to serve at sea, and that includes aboard submarines,” Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said Thursday in a statement to Navy Times.
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Thanks to Dick and Ben Kooyman for passing along this intriguing account of a new search for the legendary “Mahogany ship” which, if found, may rewrite Australian history. The Mahogany ship is said to be buried beneath the sand in the Armstrong Bay area, approximately 3 to 6 kilometres west of Warrnambool in southwest Victoria, Australia. The wreck was originally reported in the 1830s and has been suggested to be variously of Portuguese, Spanish, French or Chinese origin. Many believe the ship to a Portuguese caravel dating from the early 16th century.
The story of the Mahogany ship has captured the imagination of Australians yet, so far no one has been able to locate the wreck. A new search using the latest technology has now been proposed to finally solve the mystery.
The Wall Street Journal today has an article about the SS United States Conservancy, a group of individuals who fervently wish to save the SS United States.
I have the somewhat heretical view that the “Big U,” as she is called, is beyond saving. In some respects, she was doomed from the start. She went into service in 1952, the same year that Boeing began work on a plane that would be known as the 707, the plane that would make passenger liners obsolete. See our previous post – Twilight of the Ocean Liners – the SS United States.
The account in the Journal article doesn’t suggest much hope of saving the ship. It tells of her supporters taking trips out into the Delaware River where the ship is moored “to touch the hull,” yet also says that the group does not know what it would cost to dock the ship, quoting Dan McSweeney, Executive Director of the Conservancy, as saying, “It behooves us to do some research on that.”
After sailing into a bulk carrier earlier this month on her first day at sea after apparently dozing off, sixteen year old Jessica Watson has set sail once again on her attempt to circumnavigate the globe singlehanded. While she has received the support of leading Australian sailors and sports champions, she is also sailing into a storm of criticism. A recent investigation by Maritime Safety Queensland of the collision earlier this month was highly critical of her lack of preparation, planning and sailing skills.
Jessica Watson’s safety checklist reveals she’s out of depth
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Saint-Tropez Races Bid Summer Adieu
According to legend, a bet in 1981 between two yachtsmen at a fashionable Saint-Tropez restaurant led to a race between Pride, an American-owned Swan 44 sailboat and Ikra, a French-owned International 12-meter rival.
On Sunday, about 300 modern and classic yachts and more than 3,500 crew members will gather in this small Mediterranean port for the start of Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez, a weeklong sail fest that has grown from that first race 28 years ago.
See also: Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez – Racing for the Traditional Classes