Black History Month — David Debias, 8 Year Old Sailor on Old Ironsides

Posted on by February 16, 2020

Capture of H.M. Ships Cyane & Levant, by the U.S. Frigate Constitution

David Debias, was a free black youth from the north side of Beacon Hill in Boston. In 1814, at only 8 years old, he signed aboard the USS Constitution, nicknamed “Old Ironsides.” He was rated as a ship’s boy and was assigned as a servant to Master’s Mate Nathaniel G. Leighton. 

On the night of February 20, 1815, Debias served on USS Constitution during the battle in which Old Ironsides captured HMS Cyane and HMS Levant.

He sailed on board Levant, with Master’s Mate Leighton, as part of the prize crew.  Levant was subsequently captured by a British squadron on the way back to the United States and Debias and the rest of the prize crew were imprisoned in Barbados. With the end of the war in May, he returned home and was finally reunited with his family. His father collected $31.98 — the equivalent of roughly $550 today — for his young son’s seven months of service.

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Update: U.S. To Repatriate Most Americans on Quarantined Cruise Ship Diamond Princess

Posted on by February 15, 2020

Is the quarantine of the cruise ship Diamond Princess in Japan an effective way to control the spread of the virus known as COVID-19 , or is it facilitating the spread of the virus to other passengers and crew aboard the ship? Not enough is known about how the virus is spread for a definitive answer, nevertheless, the latter seems increasingly likely. One observer called the quarantine a “scary public health experiment.”

After initially saying that the ship was the safest place for the more than 400 American passengers, the US Embassy has reversed itself and announced plans to repatriate most American passengers from the ship.  

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Cruise Ship Contagions — From COVID-19 to Norovirus

Posted on by February 13, 2020

Spirit of Discovery turned away at Gibraltar

Are cruise ships giant incubators for spreading viruses and other microorganisms?  While the coronavirus has dominated the news recently, two cruise ships were turned away from ports after passengers and crew were stricken by the common norovirus.

We have been following the spread of the coronavirus, now officially named COVID-19, on the cruise ship Diamond Princess.  Currently, 218 people are confirmed infected on the ship, out of the 713 people tested. There are a total of approximately 3,500 people on board, so only about 20% of the passengers and crew have been tested.

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Navy Wants to Retire First Four, Still Almost New, Littoral Combat Ships

Posted on by February 12, 2020

In its recent budget proposal, the Navy announced its intention to retire the first four Littoral Combat Ships (LCS)  — the USS Freedom, USS Independence,  USS Fort Worth, and USS Coronado — which range in age from twelve to only six years old.  

The LCS were supposed to be cheap, flexible and multipurpose vessels capable of operating primarily in coastal waters. They have turned out to be expensive, unreliable and incapable of doing anything well. Many in the blue-water Navy refer to the LCS as “Little Crappy Ships.”  The LCS have been described as the program that broke the Navy. 

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Modern Flying Dutchman? Virus-Free MS Westerdam Turned Away by 5 Ports

Posted on by February 11, 2020

The legend of the Flying Dutchman tells of a ship that can never make port and is doomed to sail the oceans forever. The roughly 2,200 passengers and crew of Holland America’s MS Westerdam must feel a bit like the legendary Dutchman.  Despite have no recorded cases of the coronavirus aboard, the ship has been turned away by no fewer than five ports in Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Guam and most recently Thailand. 

The ship sailed from Hong Kong on February 1 for a 14-day cruise to Taiwan and Japan. So far the ship has made no port calls since Hong Kong, and it is unclear when the passengers will be able to disembark. Reports yesterday that the ship would dock in the port of Laem Chabang in Thailand and that the passengers would be allowed off the ship.  Nikkei Asian Review reports that amid heightened public concern, officials ultimately changed their minds citing public panic that has spread online over news of the virus, which has led to more than 1,000 deaths in China.

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Quarantined Cruise Ship Diamond Princess — Coronavirus Cases Nearly Double

Posted on by February 10, 2020

Overnight the number of passengers and crew onboard the cruise ship Diamond Princess who have tested positive for the coronavirus has nearly doubled, from 70 to 136. An additional 66 people on board the quarantined cruise ship have tested positive for the virus. Among those testing positive are 23 Americans. The ship is being held in quarantine in the port of Yokohama, Japan.

Only 336 of the roughly 3,600 people onboard had been tested as of Monday, according to the Japanese health ministry. Japan Times reports that the Japanese government is now preparing to test dozens of elderly passengers as it investigates potential issues with hygiene control on the infected ship.

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Update: Cruise Ship Coronavirus — Diamond Princess Still Quarantined, World Dream Passegners Disembark

Posted on by February 9, 2020

We recently posted about two cruises ships, the Diamond Princess and the World Dream, which were both under quarantine to attempt to limit the spread of the coronavirus. Now, the passengers and crew of the World Dream, which had been quarantined at the dock in Hong Kong, were allowed to disembark on Sunday after crew members tested negative for the virus.

The passengers and crew of the Diamond Princess have not been so lucky. The number of passengers and crew who have tested positive for the virus has risen to 70. Those afflicted have been taken to Japanese hospitals for treatment, while the remaining 2,600 passengers and 1,000 or so crew are stuck aboard the ship for about another week until the quarantine period ends. The Diamond Princess which had been held offshore has returned to the dock at Yokohoma. An additional seven passengers were taken off the vessel with medical conditions unrelated to the virus.

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Black History Month — William Tillman and the Privateer Jefferson Davis

Posted on by February 8, 2020

A repost in honor of Black History Month. 

William Tillman was the first black hero 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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Ancient Skull May Be From Roman Admiral Pliny the Elder, Killed by Vesuvius Eruption

Posted on by February 7, 2020

Photo: Flavio Russo

A team of Italian researchers has concluded that the upper portion of a skull found near Pompeii 100 years ago, may indeed belong to Pliny the Elder. 

In 79 AD, Roman Admiral Gaius Plinius Secundus, known as Pliny the Elder, was with the Imperia fleet in the Bay of Naples on an anti-piracy patrol, when he witnessed the eruption at Mount Vesuvius. He immediately sailed to the port town of Stabiae, about 4.5 km from Pompeii to lead a rescue party for those fleeing the eruption. As he was leading a group of survivors to safety, Pliny was overtaken by a cloud of poisonous gas, and died on the beach. 

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Black History Month — Harriett Tubman & the Great Combahee Ferry Raid

Posted on by February 6, 2020

Harriet TubmanIn honor of Black History Month, here is a throwback Thursday repost of a story I think is well worth telling and retelling.  

Born a slave, Harriet Tubman escaped and would become a leading “conductor” on the “Underground Railroad” which helped slaves escape from bondage in the South to freedom in the North and in Canada, prior to the Civil War.  Nicknamed “Moses,” she is said to have made more than nineteen trips back into the slave-holding South to rescue more than 300 slaves.  Her greatest rescue mission, however, came when she planned and help lead a Union riverboat raid at Combahee Ferry in South Carolina on the second of June, 1863, freeing over 720 slaves.

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Two More Cruise Ships Quarantined with Coronavirus

Posted on by February 27, 2020

Two more cruise ships are being quarantined for 14 days each in hopes of limiting the spread of the coronavirus. Ten people aboard the Diamond Princess tested positive for the virus. Of these nine are passengers — two Australians, three Japanese, three from Hong Kong, and one from the U.S. — as well as one Filipino crew member. Those who tested positive will be taken ashore to local hospitals, leaving the roughly 2,660 passengers and 1,045 crew, under quarantine for two weeks. 

A second ship, the World Dream, is docked at Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Cruise Terminal with 1,800 people on board, the city’s Department of Health said Wednesday. 3,700 people are being held aboard pending more testing after three confirmed cases of coronavirus were reported.

After 72 Years, Last Voyages of the MV Astoria, ex Stockholm?

Posted on by February 4, 2020

Brittany Shammas of the Washington Post recently wrote that the ship originally built as MS Stockholm, just after World War II, is likely to be “nearing its final voyage.” The 72-year-old ship is one of the oldest cruise ships in service.

The ship has gone by many names. Including MS Stockholm, she has sailed as Völkerfreundschaft, Volker, Fridtjof Nansen, Italia I, Italia Prima, Valtur Prima, Caribe, Athena, and Azores. Since 2016 she has operated as Astoria, operated by Cruise and Maritime Voyages (CMV). CMV has announced that the 2020 season will be the old ship’s last.

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The Doomsday Glacier — the Thwaites Glacier Melting From Below

Posted on by February 4, 2020

As has so often been the case, predictions of the impact of climate change have been proven to be inaccurate. The problem is not that they have been too alarmist, but that they haven’t been alarmist enough. For the past several years, scientists have warned of the melting of West Antarctica’s Thwaites glacier, which now appears to be melting faster than had been feared.

As described by the BBC: Glaciologists have described Thwaites as the “most important” glacier in the world, the “riskiest” glacier, even the “doomsday” glacier. It is massive – roughly the size of Britain. It already accounts for 4% of world sea-level rise each year – a huge figure for a single glacier – and satellite data show that it is melting increasingly rapidly. 

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Update: US Coast Guard Officer Sentenced To 13 Years For Plotting Mass Murder

Posted on by February 2, 2020

About a year ago we posted about an active-duty US Coast Guard lieutenant accused of plotting attacks “to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.” Christopher Paul Hasson, 50, a self-avowed white nationalist, was arrested after federal investigators uncovered a cache of weapons, ammunition, and illegal drugs in his Maryland home. The court documents, also charged that Hasson was “a domestic terrorist, bent on committing acts dangerous to human life that are intended to affect governmental conduct.”

Hasson called for “focused violence” to “establish a white homeland” and dreamed of ways to “kill almost every last person on earth.” He compiled a spreadsheet hit list of prominent Democratic politicians including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Hasson was indicted last year and pleaded guilty to firearms and drug charges. He was sentenced Friday to 13 years in federal prison.

Remembering Jesse L. Brown, First African-American Naval Pilot

Posted on by February 1, 2020

In honor of Black History Month, a post about the first African-American pilot in the US Navy, Jesse L. Brown.

The story goes that when young Jesse Leroy Brown worked in the cotton fields of Mississippi beside his sharecropper father, whenever he would see a plane in the sky above, he would declare that one day, he would be a pilot. No one took him seriously.

Nevertheless, the young man, born in born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1926, made a name for himself as an athlete in high school and won honors as a math student. In 1944, Jesse Brown was enrolled as the only black student in the engineering program at Ohio State Univesity.

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In the Absence, Academy Award Nominated Short Documentary on the MV Sewol Sinking

Posted on by January 31, 2020

On the morning of April 16, 2014, the ro-ro/passenger ferry MV Sewol, traveling from Incheon to Jeju in South Korea, capsized and sank. Of the 476 passengers and crew, 304 died, including 250 students on a class trip. Questions as to why the overloaded and unstable ferry was allowed to sail, combined with the inept rescue and recovery efforts, directly contributed to the impeachment of South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Now a gripping documentary, In the Absence, directed by Yi Seung-Jun and Gary Byung-Seok Kam, looks at the events of the sinking and its aftermath. The documentary has been nominated for an Academy Award for Documentary (Short Subject).  The 28-minute documentary allows the tragic story to unfold using radio transmissions between the ship and the Korean Coast Guard, along with video and commentary by survivors, their families, civilian rescue divers, and poignantly, even the victims, captured from video on cell phones recovered from the sunken ferry.    

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6,000 Held Aboard Costa Cruise Ship Over Coronavirus Concerns

Posted on by January 31, 2020

UPDATE: The illness which sickened a passenger was determined not to be the coronavirus and the 6,000 passengers and crew were allowed to disembark from the Costa Smeralda. Two cases of the coronavirus, not related to the cruise ship, were diagnosed in Rome, however.

USA Today is reporting that an estimated 6,000 passengers and crew are being held onboard the Costa Smeralda cruise ship while medical teams run diagnostic tests for the Wuhan coronavirus on a 54-year-old of Chinese nationality and a traveling companion who have been quarantined. 

The traveling companions reportedly boarded the ship on Jan. 25 in Savona, Italy, and one of them developed fevers and difficulty breathing, according to a person familiar with the situation but not authorized to speak publicly. Continue reading →

Albatrosses Tracking Illegal Fishing

Posted on by January 29, 2020

Four years ago, we posted about an attempt to use “big data” to crack down on illegal fishing. Google partnered with SkyTruth and Oceana to produce a new tool, Global Fishing Watch, to track global fishing activity. The problem is that to avoid detection, boats fishing illegally often turn off their AIS (Automatic Identification System) to avoid detection. The Google project uses satellite data to provide detailed vessel tracking and aims to harness the power of citizen engagement to tackle overfishing.

A recent study led by Henri Weimerskirch, a marine ornithologist at the French National Center for Scientific Research, takes a more hands-on, or perhaps, wings-on approach. Weimerskirch and his colleagues have outfitted nearly 200 albatrosses with tiny 65-gram GPS trackers that detect marine radar signals. While illegal fishing boats may choose to turn off their AIS transponders, it seems likely that they will keep their radars on for navigation.

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William P. Frye, First US Ship Sunk in WWI, 105 Years Ago Today

Posted on by January 28, 2020

On January 28, 1915, the US flag four-masted bark William P. Frye was sunk off the coast of Brazil by the Imperial German Navy raider SMS Prinz Eitel Friedrich. As a US-owned vessel, William P. Frye was a neutral ship. The US would not enter the war until over two years later, in April 1917.

Nevertheless, because the bark had sailed with a cargo of wheat from Seattle, Washington bound for Falmouth, England, Max Thierichens, the commander of the German cruiser declared the cargo to be contraband, as it could be used to feed English troops. He demanded that the cargo be dumped overboard. The crew started discharging the approximately 5,000 tones of grain. When they had not completed the job by the next day, the German commander ordered all crew and passengers off the ship, had scuttling charges set, and sank the square-rigger. William P. Frye was the first American vessel sunk during World War I.

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