Tragic Launching of HMS Albion, 1898, Caught on Film

Posted on by April 25, 2025
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On June 21, 1898, HMS Albion sat on the launching ways at the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company at Blackwall. The launching that would soon end in tragedy was also one of the first disasters to be captured on film. An updated repost.

The Albion was the largest warship ever launched on the Thames and the first battleship built for the Royal Navy in the shipyard in more than a decade. An estimated 30,000 people packed into the yard ­to see the Duchess of York launch the Royal Navy’s latest ship-of-the-line. Local schoolchildren were given the day off to attend the launch. In the crowd were two crews operating motion picture cameras ready to film the launching.

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Ships in Bottles — A Bit of the History and Lore

Posted on by April 18, 2025
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A Facebook video by my friend Frank Hanavan showing him inserting a ship in a bottle (after the page break) got me thinking about, well, ships in bottles. When, where and why did sailors start putting ships in bottles? After looking into the history of ships in bottles (or SIBs, as the aficionados refer to them), I don’t claim to have all, or even most, of the answers but I have come across some interesting lore. An updated repost.

The first mention of objects in bottles dates back to 1719. A German artist, musician and magician, Matthias Buchinger, built models, although not necessarily of ships, inside bottles. He was also well known as an illustrator and engraver, all of which was remarkable given that he was born without arms or legs. He was also quite the lady’s man, having married four times and having at least 14 children by eight women.

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Captain Henry Every – The Pirate Who Got Away

Posted on by April 18, 2025
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During the “Golden Age of Piracy,” the most successful pirates amassed huge fortunes over short periods and then died bloody deaths in combat, on the gallows, or in shipwrecks.  The one notable exception was Captain Henry Every. While his career as a pirate lasted only two years and was vastly successful, unlike other well know pirates, Every got away.

During just two years prowling the seas, Every and his band captured roughly a dozen vessels and made off with tens of millions of dollars in booty. His exploits inspired songs, books and plays, including one called “The Successful Pyrate” that was performed on London stages for several years. Most astonishing of all—and unlike Blackbeard and many others—he did it all without getting captured or killed.

For a time, he was the most wanted criminal in the world for his plundering of a Mughal treasure fleet in 1695, yet he seemed to simply have vanished. Now discoveries of Arabian coins found in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and North Carolina suggest that Captain Every and his crew may have found refuge in the British North American colonies.

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Salt in their Veins — a Short Documentary About the Bajo of Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia

Posted on by April 19, 2025
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Salt in their Veins is a breathtaking and thought-provoking short documentary by German photographer & filmmaker Rita Hencke. The documentary explores the lives of the Bajo people of Southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, descendants of sea nomads with a deep connection to the marine environment. Once ocean-roaming fishers and traders, the Bajo now face the stark realities of overfishing, pollution, and biodiversity loss as they adapt to life in coastal villages and stilted homes.

Salt in Their Veins has been internationally recognized, earning awards such as Best Direction at the 2024 Environmental Film & Screenplay Festival.

Salt in their Veins

When the Frigate USS Stein Was Attacked by a Colossal Squid

Posted on by May 7, 2025
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Last month, we posted about the first-ever confirmed image of a colossal squid in the deep ocean. Ironically, the first colossal squid caught on camera was anything but colossal. It was a juvenile of only about 1 foot in length. Here is an updated repost of an account of a US Navy frigate that appears to have been attacked by a full-grown colossal squid.

The legend of the Kraken, a giant cephalopod from Greek and Norse mythology that attacked ships and dragged sailors to their doom, is many hundreds of years old. In 1978, the US Navy frigate USS Stein sonar dome was attacked by what appears to be a Kraken-like creature, which could have been a colossal squid.

USS Stein was underway when her anti-submarine sonar gear suddenly stopped working. On returning to port and putting the ship in a drydock, engineers observed many deep scratches in the sonar dome’s rubber “NOFOUL” coating. In some areas, the coating was described as being shredded, with rips up to four feet long. Large claws were left embedded at the bottom of most of the scratches.

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On the 80th Anniversary VE Day, Remembering the “Shetland Bus”

Posted on by May 7, 2025
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Some of the “Shetland Gang” crew pictured at the pier in Scalloway in 1944

On this, the 80th Anniversary of VE (Victory in Europe) Day,  the Liberation Convoy 2025 of five historic Norwegian veteran vessels, alongside partners from both Norway and the United Kingdom, is commemorating Anglo-Norwegian heroism on the North Sea during the Second World War. The ships sailed in convoy from Bergen, Norway to Lerwick, Shetland, where they are celebrating 8 May, Liberation Day. Following the ceremony, the vessels will split up to visit as many ports as possible before returning to Norway.

These historic ships are commemorating the convoys nicknamed the “Shetland Bus” made up of fishing boats and other small vessels that sailed from Scotland’s most northerly islands to deliver valuable cargo and special agents across the North Sea to coves and fishing ports 200 miles away along the coast of Norway, following the invasion of Norway in April 1940.

Crossings were mostly made during the winter under the cover of darkness. This meant the crews and passengers had to endure very heavy North Sea conditions, with no lights and constant risk of discovery by German aircraft or patrol boats. There was also the possibility of being captured whilst carrying out the mission on the Norwegian coast.

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Murder Arrest on Cruise Ship MSC Virtuosa

Posted on by May 7, 2025
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The Independent reports that a 57-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder after an altercation on a cruise ship in which another man, 60, died.

Police rushed to the Southampton Docks on Monday morning to arrest the Exeter resident, after the cruise ship returned to shore.

The 60-year-old man died on the MSC Virtuosa after an altercation on Saturday evening shortly after the ship left Southampton, police said. The ship returned to the city on Monday after the death on British waters, before police arrested the suspect.

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Was the ‘Enormous Serpent’ of HMS Daedalus in 1848 a “Sei” Monster?

Posted on by April 18, 2025
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An updated repost of an odd bit of history.

One of the most interesting accounts of a sea serpent is that of the HMS Daedalus in 1848. When sailing in the South Atlantic, some 300 miles from the coast of present-day Namibia, officers and crew aboard the ship saw what they described as an enormous serpent swimming with its head four feet above the water and roughly another sixty feet of the creature extending back in the sea. Captain McQuahoe also said that “[The creature] passed rapidly, but so close under our lee quarter, that had it been a man of my acquaintance I should have easily have recognized his features with the naked eye.” According to seven members of the crew, it remained in view for around twenty minutes. Lt. E.A. Drummond recorded the events in his diary the day he observed them and also made sketches of what he saw.

What makes the sighting so unusual is the length of the observation, the number of witnesses and that several Royal Navy officers were among that number. Three professional drawings of the creature, based on the captain’s account, were later published. Sketches made by Lt. Drummond finally turned up in 1977.

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Empress of China — Opening Trade With China in 1784

Posted on by April 23, 2025
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Given the economic damage caused by needless trade wars, it is worthwhile to recall the Empress of China, the ship that opened trade with China, the United States’ first trading partner.

The new nation had won its independence from Great Britain but had lost much of its foreign trade. The economy slumped. The American banker Robert Morris decided to venture into new markets. If the British wouldn’t sell Americans tea from India, then Americans would buy tea from China. He hired a newly built three-masted privateer of 360 tons, renamed the ship the Empress of China, and outfitted her for commerce. 

On February 22, 1784, Washington’s birthday and just over a month after Congress ratified the peace treaty, the Empress of China sailed from New York harbor bound for Canton. The Empress carried cargoes worth $120,000 including lead, 2,600 animal skins, fine camel cloth, cotton, Spanish silver coins, and a few barrels of pepper. The ship also carried 30 tons of ginseng, a root that grew wild in North America and was considered by the Chinese to have healing properties.

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The Tragic Sinking of the SS Cap Arcona, 5,000 Concentration Camp Prisoners Killed

Posted on by April 25, 2025
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SS Cap Arcona in 1927

Eighty years ago on May 3, 1945, the German liner SS Cap Arcona, serving as a prison ship, was sunk by Royal Air Force fighter bombers in the Baltic Sea. Almost 5,000 prisoners from Nazi concentration camps who were being transported aboard the ship, were killed. Tragically, the attack took place as the war was ending. It was three days after Hitler’s suicide and only one day before the unconditional surrender of the German troops in northwestern Germany. Also attacked were the prison ships Thielbek and Deutschland. All the prisoners and crew were saved on the Deutschland, but an 2,000 additional prisoners died on the Thielbek.

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“A Collision at Sea…” the Most Famous Thing Thucydides Never Said

Posted on by April 30, 2025
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Thucydides is often said to have first written in his epic history, The Peloponnesian War, “A collision at sea can ruin your entire day, ” While the statement is unquestionably true, Thucydides never wrote it. Fred Shapiro writing in Freakonomics attempts to  trackdown the origin of the mis-quote: Quotes Uncovered: When Ships Collide. An updaated repost.

Herb Caen of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote about this on Feb. 14, 1971. He said: Continue reading →

Super Hornet Fighter Aircraft Slides Off Carrier Harry S. Truman Into Red Sea

Posted on by April 30, 2025
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An F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter jet slipped off the hangar deck of the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, deployed in the Red Sea on Monday. The tow tractor that had been moving the aircraft also went over the side in the incident. Fortunately, only a single sailor suffered minor injuries. The aircraft, which, according to the Navy cost more than $60 million, is reported to have sunk. 

Sailors were towing the aircraft into place in the hangar bay of the carrier when the ship was reported to have made a hard turn in response to incoming Houthi fire.  The exact details of the turn the Truman made to avoid the Houthi fire have not been released, but the Nimitz-class carriers can take on a substantial list in a high-speed turn.

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Good Ship Fata Morgana Hovering Above the Horizon

Posted on by April 19, 2025
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David Morris was taking a walk along the coast near Falmouth, Cornwall, in the UK, when he saw what looked to be a large tanker hovering in the air above the horizon. He documented what he witnessed with several photographs.  Apparently, Mr. Morris saw a “superior mirage” also known as a Fata Morgana. 

The BBC quotes meteorologist David Braine said the “superior mirage” occurred because of “special atmospheric conditions that bend light”.

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Massive Explosion at Iranian Port Kills at Least 40, Injures Over 1,000

Posted on by April 27, 2025
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A massive explosion and fire on Saturday rocked the Port of Shahid Rajaei in southern Iran, killing at least 40 people and injuring more than 1,000 others. Helicopters and aircraft dumped water from the air on the raging fire through the night into Sunday morning.  

The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an official as saying the explosion was likely set off by containers of chemicals, but did not identify the chemicals. The agency said late Saturday that the Customs Administration of Iran blamed a “stockpile of hazardous goods and chemical materials stored in the port area” for the blast.

There are reports that the explosion is linked to a shipment of a chemical ingredient used to make missile propellant.

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Diver Buys World War I Shipwreck of the SS Almond Branch on Facebook for £300

Posted on by April 25, 2025
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It is amazing what one can buy online these days.  Recently, Dom Robinson, 53, a diver and shipwreck aficionado from Portsmouth, Hampshire, saw an ad on Facebook Marketplace for a World War I shipwreck for sale for just £300. He couldn’t resist, so he snapped up the wreck of the 3,000-tonne SS Almond Branch.

SS Almond Branch, a steam-powered cargo ship built in 1896, was torpedoed by German submarine UB-57 near Mevagissey on November 27, 1917, and has rested 58m underwater off the coast of Cornwall ever since. 

Every shipwreck has a legal owner. In Britain, the government sold a number of them into private hands to be salvaged after the end of the Second World War.

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Alessandro Tosetti Sailing ULDB 65′ Aspra in Global Solo Challenge Attacked by Orcas in Strait of Gibraltar.

Posted on by April 24, 2025
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 Last Saturday, Italian sailor Alessandro Tosetti was returning from sailing Aspra, a ULDB 65′, in the Global Solo Challenge, when his boat was attacked by orcas in the Strait of Gibraltar.  Tosetti describes the attack in his race blog.

“I had prepared for the storm and never imagined that a group of orcas would attack me in the Strait of Gibraltar. Large animals about 5 meters long, a family group, I’m told, that for about half an hour battered Aspra, especially its rudder.

I had positioned myself in a southern corridor with few ships to get some rest! The attack began with blows. I followed the procedure I had read: turned off the autopilot and sonar, lowered the sails… it was all in vain, after the first hits, the hydraulic part of the autopilot exploded with all the oil in the bilge, the cables tangled on the quadrant… adrift in the middle of the Strait with ships passing by.

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On Shakespeare’s Birthday — Was Shakespeare a Sailor?

Posted on by April 23, 2025
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There is much that we do not know about William Shakespeare. The exact date of his birth was not recorded, but is most often celebrated worldwide on April 23rd.

One of the biggest mysteries about William Shakespeare, however, is the period referred to as his “Lost Years,” when he completely disappears for more than seven years. When he was 21 years old, Shakespeare was married with three children and living in the small town of Stratford in England. Seven years later, he was living in London as resident playwright and part owner of a theater company. Nobody knows just what Shakespeare was doing for all those years in between.

Charles Spencer, writing for the Telegraph, had a hunch. After reviewing the Royal Shakespeare Company’s trilogy of Shakespeare’s “shipwreck” plays last month,  he found himself wondering whether the Bard spent his so-called “lost years” before his arrival in London, as a sailor. He came to the conclusion that his hunch holds water, so to speak, based primarily on the work of the late Professor A.F. Falconer of the University of St. Andrews.
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Recreating Bronze Roman Naval Rams from Punic War Using Ancient Techniques

Posted on by April 21, 2025
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A team of archaeologists has just recreated a bronze Roman naval ram using ancient fabrication techniques. The ram design was critical in the establishment of Roman naval superiority in the Mediterranean.

The primary weapon used on naval galleys in the Mediterranean for close to a millenium (c. 500 BCE–500 CE) was the bronze ram. The use and devastating force of the ram is described in the ancient accounts of sea battles, but examples of the ancient weapon itself were not discovered by archaeologists until the 1980s. Then, beginning in 2010, archaeologists found twenty-seven bronze warship rams off Sicily, at the site of the battle of the Aegates, (also known as the battle of the Egadi Islands),a Roman naval victory over Carthage of 241 BC that marked the end of  the First Punic War.

The rams, originally mounted on the bows of Roman triremes, quadriremes, and quinqueremes are highly-engineered three-bladed bronze castings.  Exactly how these ancient naval rams were made has been the subject of debate among archeologists since they were discoverd. Initial speculation suggested that the rams were cast in bronze using the sand-casting method with wooden molds. Further examination, however, ruled out this method. The lost-wax method was then proposed as the technique by which rams were made.

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Five Drown, Two Missing as Powerful Waves Batter Australia’s Coast

Posted on by April 19, 2025
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The BBC reports that five people have drowned after huge waves hit parts of Australia at the start of the Easter weekend.  Two others are missing off the coasts of New South Wales and Victoria.

On Saturday, the body of a man was found in the water near Tathra in southern New South Wales. It came a day after a 58-year-old fisherman and two other men were found dead in separate incidents in the state.

Rescuers are searching for a man who was washed into the water near Sydney. Also on Friday, one woman drowned and a man is missing after their group was swept into the sea in San Remo in Victoria.

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First Ever Confirmed Image of a Colossal Squid in the Deep Ocean Happens to be Really, Really Small

Posted on by April 18, 2025

A colossal squid has been caught on camera for the first time in the deep sea by an international team of researchers steering a remotely operated submersible. Ironically, the first colossal squid caught on camera was anything but colossal.

Adult colossal squid have been estimated to have a maximum total length between 10 meters (33 ft) and 14 meters (46 ft).  The squid on video was not colossal, despite its species designation. It was a juvenile of only about 1 foot in length.

The young colossal squid in the video was swimming around 600 meters down, Dr. Kat Bolstad, a deep-sea cephalopod biologist, said, not in the deeper waters where adults likely dwell. Other deep-sea squids spend their early lives in shallower waters, she said. Having a transparent body may help the baby swim undetected by predators before it descends as an opaque, reddish adult to the darker ocean.

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