It has been a long and difficult journey for the world’s oldest surviving clipper ship, the City of Adelaide. The ship has still not quite found a home. In 2014, the ship was rescued from likely scrapping and carried by … Continue reading
Category Archives: Current
Almost a month ago, the bulk carrier Solomon Trader was driven onto a reef on Rennell Island in the Solomon Islands by Cyclone Oma. Since then the 74,000 DWT ship has been leaking oil which threatens to destroy a world … Continue reading
What does death metal music sound like to you? Apparently to sharks, death metal sounds like struggling fish. (Funny, that is kind of what it sounds like to me too.) Recently a documentary crew for the Discovery Channel experimented with … Continue reading
Earlier this month we posted that the State of Hawaii Department of Transportation (HDOT) Harbors Division had filed a public notification that the historic windjammer, Falls of Clyde, was being offered for sale by auction. The auction ended yesterday with no successful … Continue reading
The Norwegian frigate Helge Ingstad, which collided with the tanker Sola TS near Bergen, has now largely been raised from where it sank last November. The ship has been moored to the two crane lifts Gulliver and Rambiz which were used … Continue reading
Great news! Congress has restored $675 million in funding for new Coast Guard icebreakers that Homeland Security had diverted last year to build a border wall with Mexico. The funding is not coming a moment too soon. The US has … Continue reading
On May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old slave, who served as the pilot of the Confederate armed transport, CSS Planter, seized the steamer, sailed it out past the batteries and forts of Charleston harbor and turned it over to the Union naval blockade. Smalls … Continue reading
Each year more than 9 million tons of plastic makes its way into the oceans of the world. Plastic debris in ocean garbage patches is growing exponentially. By one estimate, there will be more plastic than fish in the ocean … Continue reading
Here is a wonderful video of a 26′ long pyrosome, a translucent worm-like creature, videoed off the coast of New Zealand. Pyrosomes, which can grow up to 30′ long are, of course, are not actually worms. They are not even … Continue reading
Two years ago we posted about the ASW Continuous Trail Unmanned Vessel (ACTUV), Sea Hunter, a 132′ long autonomous drone trimaran designed to track enemy submarines, being developed by the US Navy. The unmanned ship reached a major milestone recently after sailing autonomously … Continue reading
Disturbing news. An active-duty US Coast Guard lieutenant has been accused of plotting attacks “to murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country” according to court documents filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland on Tuesday. Christopher Paul Hasson, … Continue reading
We have been following the careers of the “starship sailors” Mark and Scott Kelly for several years now. The twin brothers from New Jersey are both graduates of merchant maritime academies, both became Captains in the Navy, and both subsequently became NASA astronauts … Continue reading
We recently posted that the Oliver Hazard Perry Rhode Island (OHPRI) organization had taken a “strategic pause” to rethink its strategy for the financial sustainability of the SS Oliver Hazard Perry, the largest civilian Sailing School Vessel in the United States. Now, the organization has announced a new … Continue reading
On a cold winter Sunday on the banks of the Hudson River, here is a video from the New Zealand summer about the restoration of one of the oldest yachts in the island nation, the 115-year-old Ariki. For additional photos … Continue reading
The owner of a USB memory card, which was found in a pile of leopard seal scat, has been located. Last week we posted about USB memory card that was buried in a pile of leopard seal scat near Oreti Beach … Continue reading
It was a long-shot from the beginning. The Weddell Sea Expedition 2019 had dispatched the icebreaking polar-supply and research-vessel SA Agulhas II to study Antarctica’s Larsen C ice sheet. While in the area, the expedition attempted to locate Sir Ernest … Continue reading
On Throw-Back Thursday and Valentine’s Day, here is a repost from a few years ago of a series of Valentine Islands, not all of which are tropical. Are they islands of love on the storm-tossed seas of life? Sadly, they … Continue reading
The Oliver Hazard Perry, the largest civilian Sailing School Vessel in the United States, has offered programs in New England in the Summer and headed south in colder months. Recently, however, the operation ran a deficit approaching $1 million. Rather than … Continue reading
Walter H. Munk, world-renowned oceanographer and geophysicist, has died at 101 at his home in San Diego. Referred to by many as “Einstein of the sea“, Dr. Munk’s work ranged from predicting wave heights on beaches for an amphibious landing in … Continue reading
Scientists have identified a huge magma plume under the Galapagos archipelago using an array of floating robotic seismometers. In other news, the acronym writers have been working overtime. The robotic seismometers used in study have been named Mobile Earthquake Recording in Marine Areas by Independent … Continue reading