The seven-masted iron schooner Thomas W. Lawson, delivered in 1902, is remembered as the largest schooner ever built and the largest pure sailing vessel, in terms of tonnage, to ever sail. Mostly, however, she is remembered for her rig. She was the only seven-masted schooner in commercial service. She carried primarily coal and oil in her short career. She was lost off the island of Annet, in the Isles of Scilly, in a storm on December 14, 1907, killing all but two of her crew of eighteen and a harbor pilot. Her cargo of 58,000 barrels of light paraffin oil caused one of the first large marine oil spills.
Each of the masts, as well as each of the 27 sails, had to have names. But how does one name seven masts? Looking into it, I found that according to Lars Bruzelius’ The Maritime History Virtual Archives, at least, eleven different naming schemes were used to keep track of the masts. That is right, eleven different sets of names for the seven masts.
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When I arrived in New York back in the mid-70s, a vast fleet of tugs swarmed across the harbor like so many water beetles. Most kept busy assisting ships in docking. Now there are fewer but larger ships, many with bow thrusters, so fewer tugs are needed to get them to their berths.
In early May, 
British archeologists have located the wrecks of two
The Bermuda Triangle nonsense continues, as does the media’s fondness for dramatic headlines, whether or not there are any facts to support them. The most recent silliness is about late ice age methane explosions. The UK’s Daily Mail headline reads: “
Peter Stanford, an icon of maritime historical preservation in the United States, died yesterday at the age of 89. In 1967, Peter and his wife Norma founded the 
On March 25th, 1921, the US Navy ocean-going tug, 
In describing the internet, people often talk of “the cloud.” We connect through over an ethernet, where ether is an archaic term from the Latin aethēr meaning “the upper pure, bright air.” But as they say in Brooklyn, fuhgeddaboutit! Most of the internet is beneath the sea carried by submarine communications cables. 
The 
The wreck of the Esmeralda, a ship from Portuguese explorer