Here is reminder of what the Southern Ocean can be like even in the Summer months. About a month ago the MS Veendam made a cruise from the Falklands to Patagonia and ran into a storm. Waves of over 30 … Continue reading
Category Archives: Lore of the Sea
This week Carnival Cruise Lines was awarded $24 million in a lawsuit with Rolls Royce related to the repeated failure of the “Mermaid Pods” on Carnival’s Cunard Line ship, Queen Mary 2. Last year about this time Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines reached a $65 million settlement … Continue reading
A Ukrainian sailor, on a Dutch ship in international waters steaming toward Houston, Texas, got into a fight with a fellow crew member New Year’s Eve and the next morning was found dead in his cabin. An autopsy is being performed to determine the … Continue reading
The USS Kittiwake, a 1945-vintage submarine rescue ship, was scuttled this week off Grand Cayman’s Seven Mile Beach in the Caribbean to become a destination for reef fish and sport divers. The ship settled onto the bottom on an even keel … Continue reading
The cruise industry continues to change. While Boston reported a record number of cruise passengers traveling through its cruise terminal in 2010, the city of Philadelphia is planning on turning its cruise terminal into an an Urban Outfitters retail store, having only two cruise ships scheduled to call … Continue reading
Despite the implication that nobody in the Navy brass has a sense of humor, there are lots of of fun videos floating around the ‘net made on US Navy ships that suggest otherwise. My personal favorites all tend to be lip-sincing … Continue reading
There is no bad time to read Melville. For the past 15 years in early January, the New Bedford Whaling Museum has a held a Moby Dick Marathon, an event which includes a non-stop reading of the great American novel. … Continue reading
Rather than pressuring the Japanese to stop whaling, the vigilante violence of the Sea Shepherds made it more difficult for Japanese diplomats to compromise in negotiations to reduce whaling according to documents released by WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks releases documents about anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd … Continue reading
This video, which was tweeted about by Sailing Magazine, stunned me. I had never seen an International Moth class boat and had frankly never imagined a hydrofoil boat of this size zipping about like some sort of otherworldly water creature. … Continue reading
The “Support Captain Owen Honors – USS Enterprise” Facebook page has over 11,000 supporters. Admiral John C. Harvey is not one of them. This afternoon, Admiral Harvey relieved Captain Honors of his command. Enterprise captain out; former Ike skipper … Continue reading
As Shakespeare noted, “the course of true love never did run smooth.” That was literally the case when, in early October, Tokelaun teenager Filo Filo, with two of his friends, set off to visit a young lady on the neighboring Fakaofo atoll, some sixty miles … Continue reading
An interesting if odd news item today: Cretan Tools Point To 130,000-Year-Old Sea Travel Archaeologists on the island of Crete have discovered what may be evidence of one of the world’s first sea voyages by human ancestors, the Greek Culture … Continue reading
Today is the first day back to work for many after a bit of time off for the holidays. And how has the New Year begun? More or less the same as the last year which just ended. On … Continue reading
It is difficult to imagine how anyone thought that this was a good idea. The XO (Executive Officer) on the nuclear powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise made a series of videos to “entertain the crew.” They were a bit on the raunchy side, involving … Continue reading
The 34th America’s Cup races will be sailed in San Francisco bay in 2013. San Francisco beat out Newport and an unnamed Italian port city. This will be the first time that America’s Cup races will be hosted by the city by the … Continue reading
In New York City tonight, just on the other side of the Hudson River from where I am now typing, roughly one million people gather in Times Square to watch a crystal ball being dropped on exactly midnight to celebrate the … Continue reading
Several news agencies are reporting that more than 600 crewmembers are aboard ten vessels trapped in the ice in the Sea of Okhotsk. More than 600 people aboard ice-trapped vessels in Sea of Okhotsk … Continue reading
While I don’t normally associate show tunes from “Guys and Dolls” with foul weather and tug boats, Captain Brucato‘s video does a great job of capturing a tug’s-eye view of the recent blizzard that hit the US East coast the day after Christmas. The Last Blizzard … Continue reading
The 160,000 dwt tanker Aegean Angel was en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Houston, Texas when it encountered heavy weather northeast of Bermuda on Thursday. A large wave is reported to have struck the ship, killing the captain and the … Continue reading
A weird dissonance between two cruise stories struck me recently. On one hand, Carnival Cruise Lines is “the official confetti sponsor of the Times Square New Year’s Eve 2011 celebration.” As reported by the the Maritime Executive “the sponsorship includes multiple opportunities to associate the … Continue reading