Claude Choules, the last surviving combat veteran of World War I celebrated his 110th birthday with family and friends in Perth earlier this month. Though he served in two World Wars, the first in the Royal Navy and the second in … Continue reading
Category Archives: History
The US Coast Guard Barque Eagle, built in Hamburg, Germany, in 1936, arrived in Philadelphia on Friday, on the first stop of her 75th anniversary tour. The tall ship Eagle has landed _ in Philadelphia … Continue reading
The German submarine U-106 was believed to have hit a British mine when it sank on October 7, 1917 off the coast of the Netherlands. WWI submarine found off Dutch coast … Continue reading
Researchers believe that they may have found the location of the lost city of Atlantis in a coastal Spanish marsh. Plato described the legendary island-city in about 360 B.C. as having “in a single day and night … disappeared into the depths … Continue reading
When the sun was out the Vikings could navigate with “sun compass,” a sort of modified sundial. According to legend, when the sky was overcast the Vikings used a “sunstone.” A new study suggests that the sunstone might not … Continue reading
Commander Nigel Matthews Commander Nigel Matthews, who has died aged 89, survived being run over by an aircraft carrier and flew again the same day. Nigel Matthews died on December 19. His first wife died in 1977; he married, secondly, … Continue reading
Robert Prescott, a marine archeologist, believes that he has located the final resting place HMS Beagle. The Fate of HMS Beagle After Darwin´s Voyage to the Galapagos Islands HMS Beagle was the ship that sailed around the world with … Continue reading
The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Acushnet, oldest commissioned Coast Guard cutter, and the officially designated “Queen of the Fleet” will be sold as surplus at an online auction scheduled to end on March 16th. Current bidding is $66,000. (Updated 4/04) US NAVY … Continue reading
We have posted previously about the discovery of the Yukon Gold Rush iron sternwheeler A.J. Goddard which sank in a storm in Lake Labarge in October of 1901. Now with the discovery of a gramophone and three recordings, the music of the … Continue reading
The headline is great – World’s oldest aircraft carrier discovered rusting by the River Thames. So is the first sentence: “The worlds’ oldest aircraft carrier which was a precursor to today’s giant Navy vessels has been discovered – rusting by a … Continue reading
A glimpse at what trans-Atlantic travel used to be – the RMS Queen Elizabeth of 1948 Top Liner 1948 [iframe: title=”YouTube video player” width=”480″ height=”390″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/tN3jVlNBEWQ” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen] … Continue reading
Recently the New York Times on its “Answers to Readers’ Questions About New York” blog was asked, “Can you tell me anything about a Hudson River pirate named Sadie the Goat?” Sadie’s tale is worth retelling, whether or not she ever … Continue reading
Last November we posted about a plan by Finnish authorities to allow one or several modern breweries to replicate the recipe of beer found in a Baltic Sea shipwreck dated between 1800 to 1830. In addition to cases of champagne, the … Continue reading
If by some chance you choose not celebrate St. Valentine’s Day, or you have simply reached the limit of how many hearts and flowers you can tolerate, feel free to celebrate today as the Battle of Cape St. Vincent‘s Day. … Continue reading
Happy Valentines Day! Yesterday, the Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine held a sailor’s valentine workshop. (See our previous post.) Sailors’ valentines were traditionally octagonal wooden boxes with a glass front, with intricate symmetrical designs inside, often made of shells … Continue reading
The wreck of the whale ship Two Brothers, which sank 188 years ago on French Frigate Shoals, 600 miles northwest of Honolulu, was recently located by divers. The captain of the whale ship was George Pollard Jr., whose previous ship, … Continue reading
On this day, sixty nine years ago, the great French luxury liner SS Normandie caught fire at Pier 88 on the Hudson River in New York City. The fire burned out of control and the next day the ship capsized at the dock. … Continue reading
A wonderful post from John Edwards’ Ocean Liners blog. Captain John asks the question, “what if Hitler made a Titanic movie? ” He then answers it, “he did.” A heavily fictionalized and equally anti-British version of the … Continue reading
Divers in Ireland have located the intact hull of German World War I submarine, the UC42, in Cork harbor. The discovery of the intact ship came as a surprise as the submarine was believed to have been destroyed by Royal Navy divers with explosives in 1919. The … Continue reading
The Morgan Library & Museum in New York city has a new exhibition that opened on Friday, “The Diary: Three Centuries of Private Lives,” which chronicles three hundred years of diaries and journals of the famous and the obscure. In … Continue reading