Ben Talman, a reader and contributor to the Old Salt Blog, visited the Edwin Fox in Picton, New Zealand and took a series of wonderful photos of the historic ship. The Edwin Fox is an East Indiaman built in 1853 of teak in Calcutta, India. … Continue reading
Tag Archives: New Zealand
On July 10, 1985, agents of the French government planted mines and blew up Greenpeace‘s Rainbow Warrior in the port of Auckland, New Zealand to prevent the ship to be used to protest a planned French nuclear test in Moruroa. Fernando Pereira, a photographer, drowned … Continue reading
A waka, a 600 year voyaging canoe, was recently found on the New Zealand’s South Island’s West Coast. The results of a study by University of Auckland researchers appeared recently in the US Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The waka, … Continue reading
The 70′ schooner Nina and her crew of seven have been reported missing. They sailed on May 29, from Opua in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand bound for Newcastle, Australia. They were last hear from on June 4th, 370 nautical miles west … Continue reading
During World War II, the United States worked to develop a “bat bomb” that consisted of an air dropped canister containing Mexican free-tailed bats with a small timed incendiary bombs attached to their tails. Work on the bat bomb was cancelled due to the … Continue reading
Spade-toothed beaked whales (Mesoplodon traversii) are so rare that they had never been seen alive. Until recently, the only evidence of their existence were portions of three skulls found in 1872 and in the 1950s in New Zealand and in 1986 … Continue reading
Daina Shipping, owner of the container ship MV Rena, has been fined NZ $300,000 (US $246,000) for discharging harmful substances after the Liberian flagged ship, ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga, New Zealand in early October of last year. The ship subsequently broke up … Continue reading
On October 5, 2011, the containership MV Rena ran aground on Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga, resulting in one of the worst maritime environmental disasters in New Zealand history. Yesterday, in a New Zealand court, the captain, Mauro Balomaga, and second officer, Leonil Relon, were … Continue reading
Last April we posted, Slavery at Sea ? Abuse of Sailors on New Zealand Chartered Fishing Vessels. Secret papers reveal the government has allowed fishermen from poor countries to be exploited in New Zealand waters. Workers are fishing in rusting boats turned … Continue reading
Three stories this weekend of oil spills, a successful oil transfer and opportunities lost in mitigating a spill. Two barges collided on the Mississippi River on Friday upriver from New Orleans. A roughly 3,500 barrel capacity double hulled tank barge suffered damage … Continue reading
Laura Dekker’s sailboat, Guppy, now flies a New Zealand flag from her stern. Laura has struck the Dutch colors as the bureaucrats who tried and initially succeeded in stopping her solo voyage have returned to pester her and her family once more. They … Continue reading
In early October, the MV Rena, a container ship owned by the Greek shipping company Costamare Inc, ran hard aground on the Astrolabe Reef in in the Bay of Plenty off New Zealand’s North Island. When she struck the reef, the Rena was … Continue reading
The clean-up continues on the MV Rena which ran hard aground on Astrolabe Reef near Tauranga, New Zealand on October 5, 2011. The remaining oil has been pumped off and efforts are beginning to remove the container cargo from the stricken ship. Roughly forty containers have been … Continue reading
The Liberian flagged container ship, MV Rena, which ran aground on the Astrolabe Reef off Tauranga, New Zealand last week is continuing to suffer structural cracking and is continuing to spill bunker oil and losing containers overboard. Several beaches on the … Continue reading
Bad weather is adding to an already bad situation as salvage and clean up crews struggle to staunch the flow of oil from the container ship, MV Rena, which has been grounded on Astrolabe Reef in New Zealand’s Bay of Plenty near Tauranga for … Continue reading