An intriguing item from Jim Klein on the Marine History List. They are now filming the search for the cannons from the Beeswax wreck. From the Beeswax Wreck Project site:
One of the most popular mysteries of the Oregon Coast has been the identification of the “Beeswax Wreck” at Nehalem Beach, in Tillamook County. Identified over time by various researchers as either a Chinese or Japanese junk, a Spanish galleon, a Portuguese trader, or a lost English or Dutch pirate vessel, we have been able to determine that the ship was in fact a Spanish Galleon of the Manila Trade. Nehalem Indian oral histories and the journals of the earliest traders in the area indicate that the galleon wrecked prior to European settlement and indeed most European exploration of the Pacific Northwest.
The site has been buried for the last 100 years. However, blocks of beeswax are occasionally found by beachcombers in the sand dunes adjacent to the site.
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The first offshore wind farm in the United States has been approved by Washington. The Cape Wind project is a proposed 130 turbine wind farm in Nantucket Sound. It has been opposed for years by home owners in Cape Cod who claim, in essence, that it would ruin their view of the ocean. Recently, the Wampanoag tribe has made, essentially, the same claim. They say that the wind farm would obstruct their view of the sunrise for sacred ceremonies. The tribe, as well as groups in Cape Cod, have promised future lawsuits to block the project.
I’ve always been a fan of Baltic traders. They were serious working craft. They aren’t necessarily graceful but do possess a certain robust beauty. The schooner 
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There is an interesting conflict going on over the
Recently almost one hundred endangered right whales were observed feeding in the waters of Block Island Sound. Given that only between 350 and 400 of the North Atlantic Right Whales are believed to currently exist, the gathering was quite unusual.
This week
It is feeling like spring in New York harbor. Earlier this month a harbor seal was seem enjoying the sun on an old pier on the Jersey City side of the Hudson. Harbor seal were once common in New York harbor but were hunted and finally driven out. In 2006, after an absence of over 100 years, the first seals began returning to the outer harbor. This year a young seal appears quite comfortable in the inner harbor directly across from lower Manhattan.
Sarah Breton, 45, from Essex, has been appointed as Captain of the 1,200 P&O cruise ship Artemis. As such she is the first female captain in P&O’s 173 year history and the first female captain of a cruise ship in Britain.
Experts estimate that anywhere from 2,000 to 10,000 shipping containers fall off ships each year. The problem is that they do not all necessarily sink. Some remain afloat, just on the surface, almost invisible to an observer from a ship. Now a draft report of the official inquiry into the sinking of the sail training vessel Asgard II suggests that the a collision with a shipping container may account for the hull damage observed on the wreck.