Thanks to Captain Richard Bailey for mentioning the time ball on the Titanic Memorial in the Financial District of downtown New York City. We neglected to mention it in our post “Watching the Ball Drop — the Nautical Origins of a New Year’s Tradition.”
The memorial, a 60-foot tall lighthouse with a time ball on a staff rising above it, feels just slightly of place, as it is largely surrounded by buildings and several blocks from the East River, at the entrance of the South Street Seaport. It has not always been so landlocked, however. There is also a fascinating story behind the memorial.
In 1912, Denver socialite and philanthropist Margaret Brown rushed home from a trip to France on learning that her eldest grandchild was seriously ill. She immediately booked passage on the first available liner leaving for New York, the RMS Titanic.
In recognition of his accomplishments and service, 
A video for a Sunday afternoon. In March, the US Navy officially commenced Ice Exercise (ICEX) 2020 in the Arctic Ocean with the construction of a temporary ice camp, Camp Seadragon, and the arrival of two US Navy fast-attack submarines. 
A few years ago, we posted about the 
The pandemic has been brutal to the restaurant industry. Likewise, the small-scale oyster growers of Barnegat and Delaware bays have been extremely hard hit as restaurants cut back on their orders or shut down altogether. 
A new blue whale population has been discovered in the Arabian Sea and Western Indian Ocean according to a 
Almost a decade ago, the container ship
Every year, the 
Ship scrapping is a slow and methodical process. A ship is typically run up on the scrapping ways, which can be a concrete platform or a sloping sandy beach. As burners cut away the upper sections of the ship, it gets lighter and floats a little higher allowing winches to pull the ship a bit farther up the ways. As more steel is cut away the ship is pulled progressively farther ashore until the entire structure is reduced to scrap metal to be hauled away for resmelting in a local steel mill.