Today marks the 100th year anniversary of the Great Boston Molasses Flood, which inundated Boston’s North End sending a wall of molasses, killing 21 and injuring 150.
The Purity Distilling Company built a large molasses storage tank on Commercial Street in Boston’s North End to store molasses until it could be distilled into alcohol. In early January 1919, just a few days before the disaster, a ship had discharged a full load of molasses into the tank. When the cargo was discharged, the weather was cold, only around 4 degrees F. Then on January 15th, the temperature rose suddenly to an unseasonably warm 40 degrees.
The molasses began to expand stressing the steel of the 54 high and 90-foot diameter tank. The tank groaned and wept molasses from the tank seams under the load. Then at around 12:30 in the afternoon, when the streets were occupied with workers from the distillery and local factories breaking for lunch, there was a sound like gunfire as the tank’s rivets popped and the steel plates ripped open. The tank collapsed, dumping 2,300,000 US gallons of molasses in a 25-foot high wall of molasses surging through the streets at a speed estimated to be 35 mph (56 km/h). Twenty-one died and 150 were injured.
Much of the media have taken the claims of Boyan Slat at face value. The young Dutch engineer has claimed that his design for a series of floating ocean booms will clean the oceans of plastic. The BBC headline in 2014 which read, “
A new analysis published in the journal 
In August of 1772, a powerful hurricane devastated much of the Leeward Islands in the Caribbean. On the island of St. Croix, the town of Christiansted was virtually leveled. An impoverished 17-year-old clerk, who worked for a local merchant, 
The Dungeness crab season opened late in the Northwest, starting last Friday, January 4th. The weather was terrible, with high winds and waves. Conditions were especially challenging on river bars, where the river’s current opposing the ocean waves can raise monstrous breakers. 
I am very excited by a new series, “
The effort to save the Falls of Clyde has suffered at least a temporary setback. Last 
On New Year’s Eve 1918, over 200 men crowded the dock at the port of Kyle of Lochalsh waiting to the board the 
In 2010, 16-year-old 
Around 1,800 nautical miles northwest of Oahu, the car carrier Sincerity Ace is adrift and on fire. Sixteen of her Philippine crew have been rescued, while four are feared dead and one remains missing. The fire broke on on Monday on the Panamanian flag car carrier operated by Mitsui OSK Lines, traveling from Japan bound for Hawaii. The cause of the fire is still unknown. 
Here is a wonderful sea story which appears to be more or less true. 
Sometimes the events of the day seem downright surreal. Yesterday, I read about the US Coast Guard cutter Campbell which 
Recently, teams of 
On Wednesday, 71-year-old French adventurer Jean-Jacques Savin set off to cross the Atlantic in an unlikely craft — a barrel. He departed from El Hierro, one of the Canary Islands, west of Morocco, in a barrel-shaped capsule with the intention of drifting, carried by the winds and currents, across the Atlantic Ocean. He hopes to arrive in the Caribbean in about three months. The barrel in which he is drifting is 10 feet long and 6 feet 8 inches wide, built of epoxy and plywood and ballasted with concrete.
Approximately 42,000 active-duty military members of the Coast Guard remain on duty during the partial government shutdown that began Saturday, but they will work without pay until further notice, according to a statement from a Coast Guard spokeswoman.