Thomas Slade, Naval Architect & Mast Shipwright

Posted on by February 23, 2021

Thomas Slade, a pioneering naval architect and shipwright, died in 1771, 250 years ago today. While he is most famous for the design and construction of Admiral Horatio Nelson’s Victory, his larger contribution to the Royal Navy and even in Nelson’s victory at Trafalgar itself, can not be overstated.

N.A.M. Rodger wrote of Slade: The ships which [he] designed…were admirably suited to Britain’s strategic requirements…By common consent, Slade was the greatest British naval architect of the century…it was generally agreed (even by themselves) that his successors, though competent designers, never matched his genius.

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Luna Rossa Preps for Two Decades Old Rematch with Team New Zealand in the America’s Cup

Posted on by February 22, 2021

This weekend, the Italian team Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli decisively won the Prada Cup Final, eliminating INEOS Team UK by 7 races to 1. Luna Rossa is now preparing for the final America’s Cup races against Emirates Team New Zealand beginning on March 6th. The final races for the Cup between Luna Rossa and Team New Zealand will be a rematch 21 years in the making.

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

Posted on by February 12, 2021

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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Vaccinations at the USS Juneau Center, Remembering Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock

Posted on by February 20, 2021

Waiting in line for vaccinations at the site of Federal Shipbuilding. Manhattan skyline in the background.

My wife and I recently received the second of two shots of Covid-19 vaccine at a drive-through vaccination state set up at the USS Juneau Center, on the site of the old Federal Shipbuilding & Drydock Company in Kearny, NJ.

We followed a long line of cars snaking around the scattered warehouses until we reached the garage area where the line split into four lanes with multiple vaccination stations inside the garage doors, that opened to allow cars to enter and leave and then closed again to keep out the cold. We were vaccinated through our open car windows. The process was safe, efficient, and almost painless. 

The process was, for me at least, a bit surreal. The long line of cars inching their way around warehouses and past the skeletal remains of a huge fabrication building felt like a cross between waiting for a ride at Disney World and being on the set of a post-apocalyptic zombie movie. I wonder how many of those waiting to be vaccinated knew the history behind the USS Juneau Center or the largely barren industrial space that surrounds it.

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“An Apocalypse of Turtles” — Naval Air Station Corpus Christi Rescues Cold-Stunned Turtles

Posted on by February 19, 2021

Will Bellamy with his son Jerome rescued sea turtles in Texas. (Will Bellamy)

As bitterly cold weather left millions without power in Texas, the extreme cold has also been a disaster for wildlife, including sea turtles. Thousands of green sea turtles in the water of Laguna Madre off Corpus Christi have become stunned by the cold. The cold-blooded reptiles become immobile and unable to power their fins to warmer, deeper waters, putting them at risk of dying of predation or exposure, according to the National Park Service.

“It was like an apocalypse of turtles littered on the beach,” Will Bellamy, who came across the turtles, told The Washington Post in a phone interview Thursday.

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Navy Continues to Battle Covid-19, New Outbreak on USS Theodore Roosevelt

Posted on by February 18, 2021

Recently, three sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for the coronavirus, marking the second outbreak at sea on the ship within a year. 

In the spring of last year, the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt became the first US Navy ship to suffer a major Covid-19 outbreak. It started small. In early March, after a potential exposure to the virus in a port-call in Da Nang, one sailor tested positive for Covid-19. A few days later, four more tested positive. Soon dozens of sailors had tested positive and the ship was diverted to Guam. By April, almost one-quarter of the 4,865 sailors aboard the ship had tested positive for the virus, and one sailor had died from the disease.

The US Navy has gained considerable experience in managing shipboard Covid 19 infections but the battle against the pandemic continues. 

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Maersk To Operate First Carbon-Neutral Containership By 2023

Posted on by February 17, 2021

Today, A.P. Moller-Maersk, the largest container ship operator in the world, announced that it would launch the world’s first carbon-neutral cargo liner vessel in 2023 – seven years ahead of its initial 2030 target. They also noted that all future Maersk-owned new buildings will have dual-fuel technology installed, enabling either carbon-neutral operations or operation on standard very low sulfur fuel oil (VLSFO). 

In 2018, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) established targets for the shipping industry “to reduce CO2 emissions…, as an average across international shipping, by at least 40% by 2030, pursuing efforts towards 70% by 2050, compared to 2008.”

At the time, Maersk chose more ambitious goals for its own operations, announcing its intention to reduce its CO2 emissions by 60% by 2020 and to be wholly carbon neutral by 2050. 

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Admiral Nelson’s Letter Urged Mistress To Give Their Daughter New Smallpox Vaccine

Posted on by February 16, 2021

A recently unearthed letter from Admiral Horatio Nelson to his mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton, written in 1801, reveals Nelson recommending that their six-month-old baby daughter be given the smallpox vaccine developed by Edward Jenner just three years before.

It is difficult to overstate what a scourge smallpox was in previous centuries. The case-fatality rate varied from 20% to 60% and left most survivors with disfiguring scars. The case-fatality rate in infants was even higher, approaching 80% in London … during the late 1800s.

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Happy Presidents’ Day – Lincoln’s Improved Camel Patent

Posted on by February 16, 2021

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

Posted on by February 14, 2021

Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of both the day and Black History Month, 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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“Colossal” Deepwater Fish Found Off Japan, Named After Sumo Wrestlers

Posted on by February 13, 2021

A recently discovered large predatory fish found in deep water off the coast of Japan is a reminder that we know more about the surface of the Moon or Mars than we do about the deep oceans.

In 2016, marine biologists brought up a strange, large fish from 8,000 feet below the surface in Suruga Bay, on the Pacific coast of Honshū in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. The fish was over a meter long and weighed 25 kg. Subsequently, three more fish of the same type were also caught. While large bony fish are not uncommon in shallow water, they are relatively rare in the deep ocean. 

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On Chinese New Year — A Virtual Prayer to Mazu, Goddess of the Sea

Posted on by February 12, 2021

Today is Chinese New Year when we bid goodbye to the Year of the Rat and say hello to the Year of the Ox. While not directly related to the New Year, it also seems a good time to say a prayer, at least figuratively or perhaps virtually, to the Goddess Mazu, the Taoist and Chinese Buddhist goddess of the sea and protector of sailors, fishermen, and travelers. Mazu is said to be worshipped in over 20 countries by more than 200 million people. Traditionally, one prays to Mazu for peace and safety, both worthwhile goals in this New Year. 

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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 which he used to run the British blockade, bringing trade goods to Nantucket and ports on the Massachusetts coast.

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Sailors on Japanese Submarine Soryu Use Cell Phones to Call For Help After Collision With Bulk Carrier

Posted on by February 10, 2021

Sailors on the Japanese submarine Soryu had to use their cell phones to call for help after the sub surfaced beneath a Chinese bulk carrier and damaged its radio mast, disabling its communications. Three of the submarine’s crew sustained minor injuries in the crash, which occurred on Monday, government officials said. 

From photos provided by Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force, the vessel also suffered damage to its diving planes. The bulk carrier, identified as the Hong Kong-registered 93,000 dwt MV Ocean Artemis, was not damaged. Crew on the bulker are reporting not to have felt the impact of the collision.

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Black History Month: Absalom Boston, Whaling Ship Captain & Merchant

Posted on by February 16, 2021

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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Mystic Seaport in the Solitude of Winter

Posted on by February 8, 2021

In June, we posted drone footage of Mystic Seaport as it was gradually reopening after being shut down by the pandemic. The grass was summer green, the river was shimmering deep blue, and the masts and spars of historic ships rose against a pale sky and billowing clouds. 

Here is a very different view of the seaport, capturing the solitude of winter. 

The Solitude of Winter

Black History Month: Remembering Raye Montague, Barrier-Shattering Navy Ship Designer

Posted on by February 7, 2021

In honor of Black History Month, an updated repost about the barrier-shattering naval engineer Raye Montague, who died at the age of 83 in 2018.

At the age of 7, she was inspired to become an engineer after she toured a captured World War II German submarine with her grandmother.  As an African-American girl, however, she was told that becoming an engineer was simply not an option.

Thirty years later, Raye Montague became the first person to use a computer program to rapidly develop a preliminary ship design for the U.S. Navy. The design process had previously taken the Navy two years. Montague completed the preliminary design of the Oliver Hazard Perry Class frigate in less than 19 hours. Her accomplishment revolutionized the way the Navy designs ships and submarines. 

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The Wellerman & the Cross Cultural Whaling History of New Zealand

Posted on by February 6, 2021

We recently posted about the Wellerman and the Sea Shanty Boom on TikTok. We noted that of all the recent strangeness, the most pleasant and least expected has been the explosion of sea shanties on TikTok. It all began when Scottish postman and aspiring musician, Nathan Evanss, began posting shanties and sea songs on the video streaming service TikTok. 

Since then, there has been a bit of confusion in some quarters about what the song, the Wellerman is about. (This should not be a surprise, as there are often disagreements about sea shanties, including even what constitutes a sea shanty.) Some have taken the lyric, “Soon may the Wellerman come, to bring us sugar and tea and rum,” as a reference to the infamous Atlantic Triangle Trade which involved trading slaves, sugar, and rum.

Fortunately, the Wellerman has nothing whatsoever to do with the Atlantic slave trade. Continue reading →

Vendee Globe: Clarisse Cremer Finishes 12th, First Woman to Finish, Breaks Solo Female Record

Posted on by February 5, 2021

Clarisse Cremer is the 12th Vendee Globe racer to cross the finish line in Les Sables d’Olonne, having completed the solo, non-stop around the world race in 87 days, 02 hours, 24 minutes, and 25 seconds.

She is the first female skipper to complete the 2020-2021 race. Her time broke Ellen MacArthur‘s solo non-stop record for a female skipper of 94 days 4 hours, which MacArthur set when she took second in the 2000-2001 Vendée Globe. 

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Black History Month — William Tillman and the Privateer Jefferson Davis

Posted on by February 4, 2021

A repost in honor of Black History Month. 

William Tillman was one of the first black heroes of the American Civil War. He was not a soldier but rather a 27-year-old  cook-steward on the schooner S.J. Waring.  On July 7, 1861, the schooner was captured by the Confederate privateer Jefferson Davis while about 150 miles from Sandy Hook, New York.  Captain Smith, the master of the S.J. Waring was taken aboard the Jefferson Davis, and a five-man prize crew was put aboard the schooner, with orders to sail her to a Southern port where the ship and her cargo would be sold.

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