On Monday, November 22, 1869, the composite clipper ship Cutty Sark, built for the Jock Willis Shipping, Line was launched from the Scott & Linton shipyard on the River Leven in Scotland. The Cutty Sark, one of the last tea … Continue reading
Rick Spilman
Eastern Shipbuilding Group, Inc., Panama City, FL launched the SSG Michael H. Ollis, the first of three new 4,500-passenger ferries for New York City’s Staten Island Ferry system. The Ollis Class ferries will be double-ended, with an overall length of … Continue reading
Last March, we posted about a Foxtrot-class Soviet-era submarine for sale in Long Beach, CA. Known as the Scorpion, the diesel-electric patrol submarine built in the Soviet Union in 1971, has been a museum ship berthed next to the hotel-ship … Continue reading
When I bought my new-to-me old boat, I bought several booklets of paper charts covering the waters from the Chesapeake to Maine. Over the last few years, I have never used them. Never, not once. Instead, I have chart plotters … Continue reading
Deep-sea mining may provide the material necessary to create our latest and greatest electronics, electric cars and battery backup systems. The mining may also damage the environment and worsen climate change. In 2018, we posted about the discovery of huge … Continue reading
Friday night I had the great pleasure to meet Orly Orlyson and to watch the US premiere of Cosmic Birth, the remarkable documentary that he co-directed, at the Explorer’s Club in Manhattan. Orly is an entrepreneur and the founder of … Continue reading
The dive boat Conception was a death trap. It was a wooden vessel with a single narrow and steep stairway from the lower berthing deck and a small emergency exit hatch. When a fire broke out on September 2, 34 … Continue reading
A year ago, we posted about the search for a berth for the Liberty ship John W. Brown. Now, the ship, the last surviving troopship from World War II, must find a new home by the end of the year … Continue reading
On November 14, 1910, one hundred and nine years ago today, pilot Eugene Burton Ely successfully took off in a biplane from the deck of the light cruiser USS Birmingham in the waters off Norfolk, Virginia, becoming the first pilot … Continue reading
After several near boom years, the Maine lobster fishery is being slammed by the current trade war between the United States and China. From June 2018 to June 2019, after the duties were in place, live lobster exports to China … Continue reading
In recent weeks there been considerable interest generated by an application for a patent filed by the US Navy for a compact cold fusion nuclear reactor. For decades, “cold fusion” has been the holy grail of clean energy research. Progress … Continue reading
The submarine USS Grayback, one of the most successful US Navy submarines in World War II, has been located in 1,400 feet of water off Okinawa. The submarine was sunk in February 1944, on her tenth war patrol after sinking … Continue reading
The videos have been flying across the internet for several years. They are purported to be F-18 gun-camera footage taken in 2004 from planes flying off the carrier USS Nimitz and in footage from 2015 from planes off the USS … Continue reading
Last week, we posted a video promoting the Port of New York and New Jersey made in the 1950s. Here is a similar if very different video made by RKO focussing on the Manhattan waterfront around 1937, at the height … Continue reading
Apparently, lightning strikes twice as often over shipping sea lanes than over the ocean as a whole. Wired recently published an article about research that comes to that conclusion and suggests an answer to the question. They note that it … Continue reading
A three-year project to research Wind-Assisted Sail Propulsion (WASP) has been launched in Europe supported by €5.4Mn (about $6 million) in funding provided by the Interreg North Sea Europe program, part of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The project … Continue reading
A year ago we posted about the testing of two modern Rotor Sails installed on the MV Maersk Pelican, a 110,000 DWT Long Range 2 product tanker. The 30-meter tall and 5-meter diameter rotors were predicted to reduce fuel consumption … Continue reading
Suspected Niger River Delta pirates operating in the Gulf of Guinea have kidnapped 13 sailors from two ships in the last several days. The first abductions took place early Saturday morning at the port of Cotonou in Benin. Pirates kidnapped … Continue reading
For just over a century, an 80-foot long iron sand-dumping scow has been stuck on a rock in the raging currents of the Niagara River just upriver from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. After a powerful storm blew through … Continue reading
Here is a wonderful video from the 1950s focusing on the Port of New York, which the narrator proclaims is the “Best Port in the World.” It is wonderful to watch the old style cargo handling — hoisting bags, boxes, … Continue reading