Happy Juneteenth! Juneteenth is the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Juneteenth is also the newest Federal holiday. The legislation was signed into law by President Biden in 2020. The holiday commemorates when emancipation … Continue reading
Tag Archives: texas
Tiny, beautiful, and dangerous blue dragon sea slugs are washing ashore on Texas beaches. The words “blue dragon” and “sea slug” do not seem to go together. The image of a dragon, of any color, and a slug just do … Continue reading
Happy Juneteenth, the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States. Juneteenth National Independence Day is also the newest Federal holiday. The legislation was signed into law by President Biden in 2020. The holiday commemorates when … Continue reading
In 2019, we posted about an 8,850-kilometer Atlantic sargassum belt from the Gulf of Mexico to West Africa. The floating mat of the brown buoyant seaweed had a devastating impact on beaches across the east coast of Mexico, the Caribbean, … Continue reading
The carrier USS Kitty Hawk has arrived at a scrapping yard in Brownsville, Texas after an epic 16,000-mile journey from Washington state. The carrier, too large to fit through the Panama Canal at over 280 feet wide, was towed around … Continue reading
One hundred and forty-three years ago today on October 27th, 1877, the three-masted iron-hulled merchant sailing ship Elissa was launched in Aberdeen, Scotland. She is now a museum ship at the Texas Seaport Museum. In honor of her birthday, here … Continue reading
Today is Juneteenth, the oldest nationally celebrated commemoration of the ending of slavery in the United States, when 155 years ago, emancipation arrived in Galveston, Texas by steamship. Here is an updated repost from a few years ago. Although the … Continue reading
Today is Juneteeth, a commemoration of the abolition of slavery in the state of Texas, in particular, and in the Confederate states in general, one hundred and fifty years ago today. On June 5, 1865, two Union Navy ships, USS Cornubia and … Continue reading
Yesterday we posted about Nannie Dee, the erotic yet frightening witch figurehead on the composite clipper Cutty Sark. The figurehead on Galveston’s tall ship, the 1887 barque Eliisa, is quite different. When the ship was restored in the early 1980s, she was … Continue reading
Last week we posted about a distress call to the Coast Guard reporting a yacht explosion off the New Jersey shore, which was an apparent hoax. The search and rescue operation which resulted is estimated to have cost over $300,000. Now the Coast … Continue reading
Update: The MS Carnival Triumph was allowed to sail as scheduled following last minute negotiations. The 2,758-passenger cruise ship MS Carnival Triumph was supposed to sail today for a five-day cruise to Yucatan and Cozumel. Instead, a Texas judge has ordered the ship … Continue reading
An Aframax tanker, the Eagle Otome, collided with an oil barge in the Sabine Neches Waterway at Port Arthur, Texas on Saturday. Initial reports suggested 12, 000 barrels of crude oil were unaccounted for, though local officials are now estimating that approximately 1,000 barrels … Continue reading
Last February, we posted about Dick Dowling and the battle of Sabine Pass. This weekend , September 12th and 13th, during “Dick Dowling Days” there will be re-enactments of the Civil War battle on the Sabine Pass State Historic Battleground … Continue reading
A windfall, a sudden and unexpected occurrence of good fortune, literally refers to fruit or timber knocked down by the wind. Here is an intriguing story of a literal windfall from the Maritime Texas blog. … Continue reading