The Wreck of the SS Terra Nova Discovered – An Appreciation of a Remarkable Ship

Posted on by August 21, 2012

Last week it was announced that the wreck of SS Terra Nova, the ship that had carried Robert Scott on his ill-fated quest to be the first to reach the South Pole, had been located off Greenland. In July, the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s flagship, the R/V Falkor, discovered the ship while testing testing its mutibeam mapping echosounders. The identify of the ship was confirmed by towed high definition video cameras. (See video at the end of the post.)

The media reports of the finding have focused on Robert Scott, which is not surprising as this year is the centenary of the death of Scott and the others on his expedition. Nevertheless, carrying Scott and his expedition to Antarctica was a very small part of the nearly 60 year career of the SS Terra Nova.

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Update: Diana Nyad Ends Her Attempt to Swim Between Havanna & Key West

Posted on by August 21, 2012

This morning Diana Nyad ended her fourth attempt, her third this year, to swim from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida after being buffeted by squalls and stung by jellyfish. She had been in the water for roughly 60 hours and had completeled about half of the 103 miles crossing.

Nyad quits swim after storm, jellyfish stings

Timbers from Jane Austen’s Brother’s Ship, HMS Namur, Found under Floorboards at Chatham Historic Dockyard

Posted on by August 20, 2012

I am very fond of William Faulkner’s maxim, “The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.”  What brought this to mind was recent news from the Chatham Historic Dockyard in Kent. Back in 1995, parts of a ship’s framing was found beneath six layers of floorboards in the wheelwright’s workshop.  After more than a decade of investigation the frames have now been identified as belonging to HMS Namur, a 90-gun second rate ship of the line, built at Chatham Dockyard and launched in 1756. She served the Royal Navy in various capacities until she was broken up in 1833.  The frames were identified by builder’s marks.  HMS Namur  took part in nine fleet actions – often as the flagship – in three campaigns.  The discovery of the timbers from the Namur is described on the dockyard website as “the single most important warship discovery in Northern Europe since that of the MARY ROSE”

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Red Hook Maritime Art & Artifacts for Sale at PortSide NY Fundraiser, Thursday 8/23/12

Posted on by August 19, 2012

If you are anywhere near New York harbor this Thursday, Redhook is the place to be. PortSide NY is vacating its pop-up office/gallery and is selling a fascinating range of art and artifacts. Paintings, photographs and illustrations by contemporary artists including Jonathan Atkin, Dennis Doyle, Jim Ebersole, Frank Hanavan, Bill Murphy, Naima Rauam, Christina Sun, and PortSide’s Director Carolina Salguero will be for sale, as will an intriguing range of artifacts and memorabilia from the famed Todd Shipyard, which started in Red Hook. Other items for sale are from Cowhey Brothers Marine Hardware, RMC Canvas & Rope (two Red Hook businesses which closed in 2005), The Beard Stores, and historic Red Hook break-bulk pier operations. A barrel full of late 20th century ship plans are also available. The sale runs through August 30th and kicks off with a reception from 6-9, Thursday on August 23rd, 145 Columbia Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231. Click here to learn more.

Red Hook Maritime Artifacts for Sale-PortSide fundraiser 8/23/12

 

Diana Nyad Making Fourth Attempt at Cuba to Florida Swim

Posted on by August 19, 2012

Starting a day earlier than planned, Diana Nyad, 62, began her fourth attempt yesterday afternoon to swim from Havana, Cuba to Key West Florida, a distance of 103 miles across open ocean.  Nyad swam 21.7 statute miles in her first 18 hours. The total swim is expected to take 60 hours.

Nyad progressing in historic swim attempt: ‘No stopping her now’

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Imperial Shag – Deep Diving Cormorant “Superbird”

Posted on by August 18, 2012

I am a big fan of cormorants. The ones I am most familiar with are the double crested cormorants common in North America.  The imperial shag cormorant, the double crested cormorants’ larger South American and Antarctic cousin, has been causing quite a stir of late. Scientists in Argentina recently attached a lipstick-size video camera to an imperial cormorant’s back and recorded footage of the bird diving 150 feet (46 meters) to the seafloor to catch a fish. No one thought that cormorants could dive that deep.  Some researchers are now calling the imperial shag – “superbirds.”

Cormorant’s Amazing Deep Dive Video Footage

On Guerriere Day, USS Constitution Sails Again, Briefly

Posted on by August 18, 2012

USS Constitution battling HMS Guerriere

On August 19, 1812, the 44-gun USS Constitution met the 38 gun HMS Guerriere in single ship combat off the coast of Nova Scotia.  During the battle the Constitution earned her nickname “Old Ironsides” when the British 18 pound shot was seen to bounce off her oak planks. In the 35 minute battle, HMS Guerriere was defeated.  Guerriere was the first of five British warships that USS Constitution would capture or destroy during the war of 1812.

Tomorrow, on Guerriere Day, the 200th anniversary of the victory over HMS Guerriere, the two hundred and fifteen year old USS Constitution will set sail for the first time since 1997. It will be only the second time that the ship has sailed on her own in the last 131 years.  Her time under sail will not be very  long.   According to the US Navy press release “at approximately 11:30 a.m., the crew will set up to four sails and make toward open water for about 10 minutes.”

USS Constitution to Sail for First Time since 1997

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Bulk Carrier Ocean Breeze Driven Ashore in San Antonio, Chile in High Winds and Seas

Posted on by August 17, 2012

The bulk carrier Ocean Breeze came shore on Llolleo Beach, near the port of San Antonio, Chile yesterday in high winds and seas.  In a dramatic rescue, all 24 crew members were airlifted off the ship by Chilean Navy helicopters.   No serious injuries were reported, though the captain and one crew member remain in a hospital in San Antonio being treated for hypertension and hypothermia. The Ocean Breeze is 52,000 DWT and is carrying a cargo of grain. The ship is reported to be approximately 300 yards offshore.  Thanks to David for passing along the news.

Ocean storm causes cargo ship to run aground on Chilean beach

http://youtu.be/f_8vCKP2i6w

Stranded ship is buffeted by waves off Chilean coast

Freeze-Dried Shipwreck – Preserving La Salle’s La Belle

Posted on by July 19, 2014

Photo: AP Photo/Texas A&M University

When the Swedish warship Vasa was raised from the seabed in 1961, to prevent her her waterlogged timbers from shrinking and cracking, the hull was sprayed, inside and out, continuously with polyethylene glycol for 17 years, followed by 9 years of slow drying.  The British carrack Mary Rose has undergone a similar treatment.

Now, archaeologists at the Texas A&M University Center for Maritime Archaeology and Conservation are trying a new approach in preserving La Belle, a French ship built in 1684, which sank two years later in a storm on Matagorda Bay, about midway between Galveston and Corpus Christi, Texas.  Rather than using the lengthy and costly process of displacing the water in the ship’s timbers with polyethylene glycol, the Texas researchers will attempt to freeze-dry the hull.  La Belle was one of Robert de La Salle’s four ships when he explored the Gulf of Mexico.

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Somali Pirate Negotiator, Mohammad Saaili Shibin, Given 12 Life Sentences

Posted on by August 14, 2012

Mohammad Saaili Shibin

Yesterday, a federal judge in Virginia ordered Somali pirate Mohammad Saaili Shibin to serve 12 life sentences, 10 of which will run concurrently, while two are consecutive. Shibin was also ordered to pay $5.4 million in restitution.

Shibin, 50, has white hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He speaks several languages, including English.  He has never ventured out to sea or participated in an attack on a merchant ship. His job was to negotiate. He had previously negotiated the ransom for the MV Marida Marguerite, a German ship hijacked by the pirates in 2010.  When the American yacht Quest was hijacked in February 2011, Shibin researched online to determine how much the pirates would demand.  Things went terribly wrong onboard the Quest, when the pirates killed the owners, Jean and Scott Adam and the crew Bob Riggle and Phyllis Macay.  The attacking pirates were all captured or killed by Navy SEALS. Shibin was arrested in Somalia in April, 2011.

In April of this year Shibin was found guilty of all charges related to the hijacking and murders on the yacht Quest and the hijacking of the M/V Marida Marguerite.  Shibin is thought to be the highest-ranking Somali pirate ever captured, with direct connections to those who provide financing for the pirate operations.

Somali Hostage Negotiator in S/V Quest and M/V Miranda Marguerite Piracies Sentenced to Multiple Life Sentences

Once Upon A Nuclear Ship – NS Savannah Documentary, the First But Not the Only Nuclear Merchant Ship

Posted on by August 14, 2012

A new documentary by Thomas Michael Conner, “Once Upon a Nuclear Ship,”  tells the story of the NS Savannah, the world’s first nuclear powered merchant ship.  It is an interesting and worthy tale to tell. Without having seen the documentary, however, the documentary web site seems to suggest that it may be a film targeted at nuclear enthusiasts, at least based on the copy that describes the NS Savannah as “once the diamond in the crown of the US merchant fleet only to be kicked to the curb by dimwitted politicians and bureaucrats.”  With all due respects, the reason that the Savannah, in particular, and nuclear merchant ships, in general, did not succeed is a bit more complicated than the actions or in-actions of “dimwitted politicians and bureaucrats.”

The film’s trailer also raises concerns.  Early on, it states that, “among all those ships who sailed all those seas, there was only one merchant ship powered by atomic energy,  the NS Savannah…”  That simply isn’t true. The NS Savannah was not the only  nuclear merchant ship . The NS Savannah was the first, put into service in 1962.  There were, however, three other nuclear power merchant ships, the German Otto Hahn, the Japanese Mutsu and the Russian Sevmorput, which is still in service, more or less.  The icebreaker Lenin, which began operation in 1959, claims the title as the first civilian ship with a nuclear power plant.

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Update: E-Ship 1 – Sailing Ship without Sails

Posted on by August 13, 2012

Photo: Lieven Van Assche

Two years ago, we posted about the delivery of the E-Ship 1, a ship built for Enercon, a German producer of wind turbines. The ship is intended to demonstrate energy saving technology as well as to deliver Enercon wind turbine assemblies to customers. The most unusual aspect of the ship are the four vertical columns, installed port and starboard on the bow and stern, which have been described as looking like four table legs sticking up into the air. These columns, 27 meters tall and 4 meters in diameter, are Flettner rotors. Making use of the Magnus effect, the rotors spin at high speeds and develop lift as the wind blows across them, creating, in essence, a sailing ship without sails.

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USS Porter Collides with VLCC M/V Otowasan Near Strait of Hormuz – the Disturbing Implications

Posted on by August 13, 2012

Photo: Defense Video and Image Distribution System

The Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer, USS Porter collided with the Japanese owned, Panamanian flag, Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC)  M/V Otowasan in the the Strait of Hormuz at around 1 am Sunday, local time.

While few details are currently available, the report of the collision is disturbing.  The M/V Otowasan is roughly 40 times larger than the destroyer by displacement and travels at less than half the destroyer’s speed.  The USS Porter is fitted with an Aegis Combat Missile Defense System which, through complex radar tracking and telemetry, is designed to shoot down an incoming missile with another missile. It is one of the highest-tech systems in service in the US Navy.  The ship is also fitted with conventional radar and navigational aids.  Nevertheless, the destroyer failed to avoid colliding with a much larger and much slower oil tanker.

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William Mariner, the Privateer Port-au-Prince & the Tongan Shipwreck

Posted on by June 12, 2015

Divers may have found the wreck of a British privateer, Port-au-Prince, which was sunk off the island of Lifuka  in the Ha’apai island group of Tonga, in December 1806. The ship was attacked by Tongan warriors on the orders of King Finau ‘Ulukalala II. The Tongans then salvaged iron and cannons from the ship before scuttling it.  Legend has it that the ship was carrying considerable treasure when it was sunk in the form of copper, silver and gold, along with silver candlesticks, incense pans, crucifixes and chalices.  The seizing of the Port-au-Prince was finally reported in Lloyd’s List in May 19, 1809. (Thanks to Michael Dunn for pointing it out.)

Tonga Shipwreck Could Be Legendary Pirate Ship Port-au-Prince

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10,000 Square Mile Floating Island in the Pacific

Posted on by August 11, 2012

I received an e-mail a few weeks ago with some intriguing photos. (Click on any of the thumbnails above for a larger image.)  The e-mail was titled “AMAZING SIGHT IN THE SOUTH PACIFIC, SPECTACULAR.”  It was one of those e-mails that had been forwarded over and over again and had no sources and no date. It would be hard to say whether the photographs were current or from years ago. Nevertheless, they were fascinating. The photographs were taken from a yacht that had encountered what appeared to be a beach, stretching as far as the eye could see in the middle of the South Pacific.   It turned out that it was floating pumice, the volcanic rock formed when lava erupts underwater.

Update:  The photos above date from at least 2006.   They apparently first appeared on the Fredrik and Crew on Maiken blog and were taken near Late Island, southwest of Vavaʻu in the kingdom of Tonga. (Thanks to Phil Leon for the heads up.)

In a similar event, the New Zealand Navy is now reporting a “pumice raft” covering an area of roughly 10,000 square miles, an area only slightly smaller than the nation of Belgium, floating in the Pacific about 1,000 miles off the New Zealand coast.
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Legendary Cable Layer, Chamarel (ex CS Vercors), On Fire & Abandoned Off Namibia’s Skeleton Coast

Posted on by August 10, 2012

France Telecom-Orange announced today that an unexplained fire had broken out on Thursday on the cable laying ship, the Chamarel, in the Atlantic Ocean off Namibia’s Skeleton Coast in the Atlantic Ocean.   The crew of 56 abandoned ship after attempts at firefighting failed to control the blaze.  The crew was picked up by a Namibian fishing vessel and taken to Walvis Bay. No injuries were reported.  The ship was returning from making repai to the Sat3/WASC/Safe submarine cable which connects Portugal and Spain to nine West African countries, circles around the southern tip of Africa, and connects to India and Malaysia.

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2,000 Year Old Roman Shipwreck Found Near Genoa

Posted on by August 10, 2012

Tipped off by fisherman who caught amphorae in their nets, the wreck of a Roman merchant ship, believed to date from between the 1st century B.C. and the 2nd century, has been located in 230 feet of water near the Italian port city of Genoa.  The ship is believed to have been carrying around 200 jars, known as amphorae.  Tests on recovered amphorae suggest that they were carrying pickled fish, grain, wine and oil. Thanks to Phil Leon for passing along the news.

Roman ship found laden with cargo

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Update: MSC Flaminia Seeking Port of Refuge

Posted on by August 9, 2012

In the middle of July, we posted about a fire and explosion on the  6,750 TEU container ship MSC Flaminia in the mid-Atlantic, resulting in the death of one of the crew and one crew member missing and presumed dead.  The surviving crew abandoned the ship. The fire was subsequently brought under control by three salvage tugs and brought under tow back toward Europe.

For the last week or so, however, the ship and her escorting tugs have been in a holding position 150 miles off Land’s End while the ship’s owners plead with UK, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal  to allow the ship to enter their coastal waters.

“I think it’s ridiculous that a ship sailing under a German flag in this situation can’t get permission from countries in the European community,” said Helmut Ponath, head of NSB shipping company.

Burned cargo ship sails the Atlantic

EPA and the Ports of New York and LA Work to Limit Air Pollution from Ships

Posted on by August 9, 2012

Consider these two statements:

  1. Ships are the most energy efficient way to transport goods.  They also have the smallest carbon footprint per ton of any means of transport.
  2. Ships are major polluters. One large container ship emits as much sulfur-oxide as fifty million cars.

Which statement is true? They both are. Ships are incredibly energy efficient and most large ocean going ships burn very dirty fuel.  The comparison between the container ship and the cars is more than a bit unfair as the most gasoline around the world now has a very low sulfur content. In terms of other pollutants ships are cleaner than cars or trucks. Ships emit far lower CO2 per ton carried than either truck or automobiles, for example. Nevertheless, residual fuel, often referred to as Bunker C, is very dirty and highly polluting.

Recently the Environmental Protection Agency( EPA) and the US ports of New York and Los Angeles have taken steps to limit the scope and impact of that pollution.   Landmark EPA regulations to reduce air pollution from ships off the East and West coasts of North America went into effect on August 1st.  Ships operating in US coastal waters will now be required to burn a lower sulfur fuel. Environmental groups are pleased, while some in the cruise industry are not. As reported by Scientific American:

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