Charles Spencer, writing for the Telegraph, had a hunch. After reviewing the Royal Shakespeare Company’s trilogy of Shakespeare’s “shipwreck” plays last month, he found himself wondering whether the Bard spent his so-called “lost years” before his arrival in London, as a sailor. He has now come to the conclusion that his hunch holds water, so to speak, based primarily on the work of the late Professor A.F. Falconer of the University of St. Andrews.
Professor Falconer wrote two books in the 1960s detailing his conclusion that Shakespeare was, at one time, a sailor. His Shakespeare & the Sea followed by A Glossary Of Shakespeare’s Sea And Naval Terms Including Gunnery demonstrate the depth of understanding of the nautical world evident in Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. Sadly, both books are long out of print and hard to find.
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The Dragon Harald Fairhair is the largest Viking longship to be built in modern times. (See our previous post: 
Representatives of Titan-Micoperi presented their plans to raise the Costa Concordia from where she sank after running aground off the island of Gilgio last January. Titan-Micoperi is the consortium of Titan Salvage, the Crowley-owned specialist marine salvage company, and Italian marine contractor Micoperi, which was 
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Aargh. Once again, the junk food of maritime events, another “pirate” festival. This one is being sponsored by one of my favorite museums, the 
In March, the European Union Naval Force was authorized to attack Somali pirates in coastal waters and ashore. On Tuesday, 
We recently posted “
The museum ship 
One hundred and fifty years ago today, 
A settlement has been reached in the civil lawsuit over the deaths of two Hungarian tourists and other passenger injuries when a barge pushed by a K-Sea tug, Caribbean Sea, struck the disabled “Duck boat” DUKW 34 at anchor in the Delaware River off Philadelphia on July 7, 2010. Szabolcs Prem, 20, and Dora Schwendtner, 16, who were visiting Philadelphia, died in the crash on the Delaware River. The families of the two tourists who died when the duck boat was run down will split $15 million paid for by Ride the Ducks, the firm which operates the amphibious touring vehicles, and K-Sea Transportation Partners, which owned the tug. An additional $2 million will also be divided among 18 other survivors of the accident.
Last month we 