One hundred and fifty years ago today, Robert Smalls, a 23 year old mulatto slave, who served as the pilot of the Confederate armed transport, CSS Planter, led eight fellow slaves in an audacious flight to freedom. They seized the CSS Planter, steamed it out past the batteries and forts of Charleston harbor and turned it over to the Union naval blockade. Smalls would go on to become the first black Captain of a U.S. Navy vessel, a South Carolina State Legislator, a Major General in the South Carolina Militia, a five-term U.S. Congressman and a U.S. Collector of Customs. This weekend Robert Small’s descendants are gathering in Charleston to mark the 150th anniversary of Smalls’ daring escape.
Harper’s Weekly of June 14, 1862 recounts the escape:
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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 
Sailing and sipping single malt scotch are among two of my favorite activities, (though not necessarily at the same time.) It does seem fitting that 
Claude Holloway died recently at the age of 93. He was one of the most successful motor torpedo boat commanders in the Mediterranean in the Second World War, earning a Distinguished Service Cross for his part in the Caorle Point action of April 1945, in which the 28th MTB Flotilla sank five enemy ships with six torpedoes. He also played a major role in rescuing dozens of sailors in the 1943 
In 1865, the 
The 98-foot-long solar powered catamaran 
Seventy yeas ago, the Japanese and navies of the United States and Australia fought the 
One of the most beautiful and most interesting tall ship sailing today, at least to my eye, is the three-masted barquentine 
This Saturday, we will witness a perigee full moon, often called by the press, a “supermoon.” The full moon at its perigee, or closest approach to earth, will appear 16% bigger and will exert 42% more tidal force than a more typical full moon. Usually these “perigean tides” are only an inch or so higher or lower than normal. Local tidal conditions can amplify the effect, which is still usually no more than a 6″ change in high or low tide.