Image: Singapore Maritime Officers’ Union
Singapore has become one of the first states to prioritize seafarers to receive the Covid-19 vaccine. Nautilus International reports that more than 10,000 maritime workers are scheduled for vaccination by the end of January 2021 under the country’s Sea – Air Vaccination Exercise, including port workers, harbor pilots, cargo officers, marine surveyors, and marine superintendents who are required to work onboard ships.
The operator of the ex-Cunard Queen Mary has filed for bankruptcy raising concerns about the future of the converted luxury liner that has served as a tourist attraction and hotel in Long Beach, CA since 1972. The converted ship is owned by the City of Long Beach and has been managed by Eagle Hospitality, ex-Urban Commons, since 2016.
The Long Beach Post notes that this isn’t the first time a Queen Mary operator has filed for bankruptcy. A series of companies have failed to make the century-old ocean liner and its surrounding area profitable since it arrived in Long Beach in 1967.
Image: L. Sousa
It almost sounds like a bad horror movie. Scientists have recently discovered a new species of electric eel, Volta’s electric eel (Electrophorus voltai). Found in the rivers of South America, it not only is capable of producing 860-V electric shocks — the strongest electric discharge of any animal on Earth, but also hunts its prey in packs. While mammals including wolves and orcas are known to hunt in groups, the behavior is rare in fish, particularly in freshwater fish.
Until just last year, scientists thought that there was only one species of electric eel, which are not actually eels but a variety of knife fish. They also thought that electric eels were solitary predators, sneaking up on sleeping fish and stunning them with an electric shock before them before devouring them. In 2019, however, scientists discovered that there were at least three distinct species. The largest and most powerful of these was designated Volta’s electric eel.
Now, Volta’s electric eels have been observed conducting highly coordinated group hunts. Continue reading
Sea-Cargo now has bragging rights to the claim that their 12,251 gross tonne ro-ro, SC Connector, is “Norway’s largest sailing vessel.” The ship was recently refit with two rotor sails by Norsepower and battery banks from Norwegian Electric Systems. The ro-ro now has taller masts and greater tonnage than the Norwegian sail training ship, Statsraad Lehmkuhl, which can still claim the title of the “largest three masted barque from Norway.”
Perhaps the most interesting thing about the SC Connector, is how it succeeds in navigating under bridges and powerlines with its new 35-meter tall rotor sail rig. Continue reading
Yesterday, we posted about the Maersk Essen that recently lost 750 containers over the side in a storm in the North Pacific. An unknown number of containers still aboard the ship are believed to have been damaged during the storm. The ship was originally scheduled to dock in Los Angeles but has now been diverted to Port of Lázaro Cárdenas, where it is expected to spend some time alongside taking off damaged boxes on deck. The ship will also be surveyed for storm damage.
The ship was diverted due to extraordinary container port congestion in Southern California. The Port of Los Angeles, the busiest container port in the Western Hemisphere, is absolutely jammed with container ships. Recently, there were over 30 container ships at anchor in San Pedro Bay off Los Angeles and Long Beach waiting for berths. Container loading and discharge operations, designed for the fast turn-around of the ships in port, have slowed dramatically.
The ports have been doubly hit by the pandemic. Continue reading
In what is developing into a record winter for containers lost over the side, the Maersk Essen lost 750 containers overboard during a storm on January 16. An unknown number of boxes were damaged but still onboard. The loss occurred when the 13,100 TEU capacity ship on route from Xiamen, China to the port of Los Angeles, USA, reportedly during severe weather.
This is the third major loss of containers overboard in the Pacific in the past 90 days. At the end of October, the 14,052 TEU ONE Aquila, bound for Long Beach, lost 100 containers over the side in a storm. Then in late November, the sister ship ONE Apus lost a record of almost 1,900 containers in a North Pacific storm.
Volkswagen Group Logistics has switched the first of two chartered car carriers from burning heavy fuel to biofuel. The fuel is supplied by Netherlands-based GoodFuels and is produced primarily from used oil from restaurants and the food industry.
The car carrier Patara, owned by Depth RoRo, was refueled for the first time with 100% GoodFuels’ biofuel in mid-November 2020 and a second ship is due to follow at the beginning of 2021.
After a stressful week or two, here is something that is just fun. A documentary crew on a Pacific Offshore Expeditions outing last week, caught some amazing footage of sea lions surfing huge waves off Santa Barbara Island, California. The Facebook version, immediately below, is accompanied by the Surfaris’ hit, “Wipeout.” The Instagram video (after the page break) has no sound.
At about 6 PM on Sunday, the American Magic yacht Patriot was rounding the final mark in Race 3 of Round Robin 2, of the Prada Cup in Aukland, NZ, when disaster struck. The wind increased from 12 knots to 23 knots in just 40 seconds. The boat accelerated to 47 knots, was briefly airborne, and then crashed and capsized, doing serious damage to the hull, and coming close to sinking. Fortunately, none of the crew was injured.
With the concerted efforts of boats from the local harbor patrol, Coast Guard, and each of the three other race competitors, the flooding was brought under control. At one point there were said to be sixteen pumps in use to bring the water level under control. The flooding was from a hole caused by a section of the carbon fiber hull shearing on impact in the sudden crash stop from almost 50 knots. Patriot was towed back to the dock at 10:45 PM NZDT.
Now a race has begun to repair and rebuilt the Patriot in time to compete in the next round of races. Continue reading
Originally posted in award-winning maritime historian Joan Druett’s World of the Written Word. Reposted with permission.
I was saddened to learn that Tim Severin, a truly remarkable man who was a living inspiration, passed away last month.
The Irish Times has a feature on his life, focused (of course) on his first big hit, The Brendan Voyage.
Tim was born in Assam, India, the son of an English tea planter — that planter being an employee, not the owner of the plantation, as his son was always anxious to point out. As was usual in those days, Tim was sent to boarding school in England at the age of seven. One cannot help but wonder how his mother felt to wave goodbye to such a small boy, but it is easy to imagine how tough it must have been for the boy himself, English boarding schools being notorious. Was he bullied? Probably. There would have been an emphasis on toughness and survival instincts, which would have served him very well in the strange adventures ahead.
Saildrone‘s new 72’ long Surveyor is described as the world’s most advanced uncrewed surface vehicle (USV), equipped for high-resolution mapping of the ocean seafloor.
The Saildrone Surveyor is a step up from the 22′ long Saildrone Explorer, yet both combine wind and solar power to perform autonomous long-range data collection in the harshest of ocean environments. The Saildrone wing technology enables a mission duration of up to 12 months, without the need to return to land for maintenance or refueling. The 22′ Saildrone Explorer travels at an average speed of two to three knots and can reach top speeds above eight knots; the 72′ Saildrone Surveyor travels at ten knots.
An updated repost, a look back at the twin miracles on the Hudson from twelve years ago today. On January 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549 made an emergency water landing in the Hudson River. If the plane’s pilots, Captain Chesley “Sulley” Sullenberger and First Officer Jeffrey Skiles had not glided the plane in at exactly the right angle and airspeed, it is likely that the plane would have broken apart and that all the 155 passengers and crew aboard could have died.
The landing is often called the “Miracle on the Hudson.” There was, however, a second miracle on the Hudson that day. Remarkably, New York harbor commuter ferries began arriving at the flooding plane less than four minutes after the crash. Had it not been for the ferries’ rapid rescue of the passengers from the icy waters, the “miracle” might have ended as a tragedy.
Of all the strangeness that has already transpired in 2021, the most pleasant and least expected has been the explosion of sea shanties on TikTok. If you are not familiar with TikTok, it is a social networking platform that is used to make and share short-form videos. Recently, it has been awash in sea shanties.
Why have sea shanties become so popular on TikTok? It seems to have all begun with Scottish postman and aspiring musician, Nathan Evanss. (Evans is his last name, but he uses the name Evanss online.) During the pandemic, the 26-year-old began posting songs to TikTok, mostly covers of Scottish folk tunes. He was modestly popular attracting around 10,000 views per song. One viewer requested a sea shanty “Leave Her Johnny, Leave Her” which remarkably got over a million views. Evanss decided that sea shanties were worth looking into.
His next shanty, “The Scotsman” attracted 2.8 million viewers. Then things went a bit crazy when he posted “The Wellerman” in December that has now been watched 4.3m times.
Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday aboard the littoral combat ship USS Detroit
The US Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday was blunt when he was recently quoted saying, “I don’t mean to be dramatic, but I feel like if the Navy loses its head, if we go off course and we take our eyes off those things we need to focus on, I think we may not be able to recover in this century.”
Paul McCleary writing in Breaking Defense observes that for months, Gilday has been pointing to the extremely expensive failures of the Littoral Combat Ship, Ford-class carrier, and Zumwalt destroyer — all of which are years behind schedule and billions over budget — as a cautionary tale for what is to be avoided in building new ships.
Depending on which news report you listen to, the aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford either can’t reliably land planes and is continuing in its dubious status as a “$13 billion berthing barge,” or, more optimistically, it may be ready to deploy sooner than expected. Which is correct? Only time will tell. It is possible that both are right.
Not only is the Ford the world’s largest aircraft carrier, and the largest warship ever constructed in terms of displacement, she is also the most expensive and one of the most delayed. Commissioned in 2017, her first deployment is expected to be sometime in 2022.
The Navy is also taking a very different tack regarding airpower. They are outfitting certain amphibious assault ships as “Lightning Carriers,” a sort of hybrid aircraft carrier flying the Marine Corp’s F-35B Lightning II short take-off and vertical landing stealth strike-fighter planes. The Lightning fighters can be carried on the new America-class amphibious assault ships or the older Wasp-class ships.
A video clip for a Monday. During a practice match against British challenger INEOS Team UK, Peter Burling, Team New Zealand skipper, lost control of the AC75 Te Rehutai during a gybe. While sailing at about 35 knots, the boat took a nose-dive and rolled on its beam ends. Remarkably, there were no reported injuries or significant damage to the boat.
Sometimes size matters. We have recently seen ever-larger container ships delivered from Asian shipyards. This year, the HMM Algeciras claimed the title of the world’s largest container ship with a carrying capacity of 24,000 TEUs. It is one of twelve eco-friendly container vessels delivered or under construction at Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering in Ulsan, Korea.
Bigger is not always better, of course. The Ultra Large Crude Carrier (ULCC) tanker Seawise Giant, later Knock Nevis, at 565,000 DWT was by many standards just too large. It was too large, for example, to transit the English Channel at a full load. After a long and generally successful career, it was scrapped in 2009 and no tanker has been built as large since.
These thoughts on size were triggered by a new and larger offshore wind turbine design developed by GE. The Haliade-X offshore turbine features a 14 MW, 13 MW, or 12 MW capacity, 220-meter rotor, a 107-meter blade. By comparison, in recent years the average offshore wind turbine capacity has been around 3.6 MW. Relatively newer turbine designs installed off Block Island and off Virginia have used 6 MW turbines, less than half the capacity of the Haliade-X.
Here is a fascinating short video of British riveted steel shipbuilding in the 1940s. The shipyard in the film is the Burntisland Shipbuilding Company in Fife. The ship being built is thought to be either the MV Dalhousie or the SS Ger-y-Bryn. Both ships were sunk by German vessels by April 1943. Thanks to W. H. Bunting for pointing out the video.
Shipbuilding – 1940’s British Council Film Collection – CharlieDeanArchives
Last October, the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard completed the year-long dismantling of the US Navy nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Narwhal (SSN-671). Commissioned in 1969, the submarine was a one-of-a-kind, an experimental design that would become one of the most successful boats of her era. She was the quietest attack submarine in the U.S. fleet in the 1970s and was routinely deployed to watch Soviet submarines in the Atlantic and around Soviet-supported satellite states in the Mediterranean Sea.
Sound is the enemy of a stealthy submarine. The technologies developed for the Narwhal have helped make US submarines among the quietest in the world’s navies. What made the Narwhal so quiet?
As the race is on to distribute Covid-19 vaccines around the globe, horseshoe crabs, or more specifically, horseshoe crab blood, is playing a major role in ensuring that the vaccines are safe to be injected into peoples’ arms. In fact, horseshoe crab blood plays an important role in the safety of all vaccines, but the surge in demand for Covid-19 vaccines is raising new concerns about potential overharvesting. Here is a repost updated for the pandemic from about a year and a half ago.
Horseshoe crabs are an ancient variety of arthropods, which are not actually crabs. Having remained largely unchanged in about 450 million years, the horseshoe crab is considered by many to be a living fossil. One of the reasons that horseshoe crabs have survived so long is that they have a highly robust immune system. Indeed, the horseshoe crab’s bright blue blood has remarkable antibacterial properties.
The good news for humans, and the bad news for horseshoe crabs, is that amebocytes in the horseshoe crab blood are highly sensitive to tiny amounts of bacteria and will coagulate around as little as one part in a trillion of bacterial contamination. Limulus Amebocyte Lysate, or LAL, a compound processed from horseshoe crab blood is used to test for contamination of anything that might go inside the human body: every shot, every IV drip, and every implanted medical device.