Hybrid Cruise Ship Le Commandant Charcot Assists RRS Sir David Attenborough in Antarctic Ice

Posted on by February 16, 2022

Britain’s new polar expedition ship, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, encountered particularly difficult sea ice conditions during a resupply mission as part of the research ship’s first polar expedition. It was assisted in its attempt to deliver the supplies to support the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, by a new and distinctive expedition cruise ship, Le Commandant Charcot, operated by the French cruise company Compagnie du Ponant.

RRS Sir David Attenborough is capable of breaking through 1-meter thick ice at a speed of three knots. It is a Polar Class 5 vessel, classed as “ice-capable” but not an icebreaker. Le Commandant Charcot is an LNG-fueled electric hybrid icebreaker cruise ship; the first PC2 Polar Class cruise ship with the ability to break through ice up to 2.5-meter thick at a speed of three knots.

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Black History Month Repost — Harriet Tubman & the Great Combahee Ferry Raid

Posted on by February 15, 2022

Born a slave, Harriet Tubman escaped and would become a leading “conductor” on the “Underground Railroad” which helped slaves escape from bondage in the South to freedom in the North and in Canada, prior to the Civil War.  Nicknamed “Moses,” she is said to have made more than nineteen trips back into the slave-holding South to rescue an estimated 70 slaves. Tubman’s greatest rescue mission, however, came when she planned and help lead a Union riverboat raid at Combahee Ferry in South Carolina on the second of June, 1863, freeing over 720 slaves.

In honor both of Harriet Tubman and Black History Month, here is an updated repost about the Great Combahee Ferry Raid.

Tubman and black Union soldiers under the command of Union Colonel James Montgomery set off on three small Federal gunboats; the Sentinel, Harriet A. Weed, and John Adams; from Beaufort, South Carolina up the Combahee River. Tubman had scouted the route previously to identify the location of Confederate mines and troops and to determine where best to land to free the plantation slaves.  One of the gunboats, the Sentinel, ran aground shortly after leaving Beaufort while the other two continued upriver.

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Repost: Celebrating Frederick Douglass on Valentine’s Day — “I Will Take to the Water”

Posted on by February 14, 2022

Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of both the day and Black History Month, an updated repost about Frederick Douglass. But what does Valentine’s Day have to do with Frederick Douglass?  As a slave, Douglass never knew the date of his birth, so he chose to celebrate it every year on February 14th.

Frederick Douglass was born around 1818. From an early age, he developed a close attachment to ships and the sea. His path to freedom led directly through the docks and shipyards of Baltimore, Maryland.

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Update: The Weather Window That Never Opened, Sails of Change Postpones Jules Verne Attempt

Posted on by February 13, 2022

In November we posted about the maxi-trimaran Sails of Change (ex-Spindrift 2) and its crew of 11, waiting to set off from La Trinité-sur-Mer, in southwest Brittany, on their latest attempt to claim the Jules Verne Trophy. To win the trophy, they would have to beat the around the world record of 40d 23h 30′ 30″ set by Francis Joyon and his crew in 2017.

To beat the record, they needed exactly the right winds and weather to carry them through the first section of the route. Between November 1 and the end of January, they were waiting for a particular weather window that never opened. Lacking a suitable weather pattern for the maxi-trimaran to have a realistic chance of beating the record, team leaders Dona Bertarelli and Yann Guichard announced the end of voyage standby and their plans to start the attempt again later this year.

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Putin’s Yacht Graceful Makes Hasty Departure from Germany

Posted on by February 12, 2022

German media reports that the 83-meter yacht, Graceful, believed to be owned by Vladimir Putin, has made a hasty departure from Hamburg, Germany, bound for Russia, before finishing repairs and renovations at the Blohm and Voss shipyard. Some speculate that the move is meant to avoid confiscation or sanctions in the event Russia invades Ukraine and triggers reprisals. Graceful was spotted on a public maritime-traffic-tracking site sailing for Kaliningrad.

Graceful is the largest and most expensive of four yachts believed to be owned by Putin. The other yachts are the 57-meter Olympia, the 54-meter Chayka, and the 35-meter Petrel.  Collectively, the yachts are estimated to be valued at approximately $200 million.

Black History Month: Remembering Jesse L. Brown, First African-American Naval Pilot

Posted on by February 11, 2022

In honor of Black History Month, an updated repost about the first African-American pilot in the US Navy, Jesse L. Brown.

The story goes that when young Jesse Leroy Brown worked in the cotton fields of Mississippi beside his sharecropper father, whenever he would see a plane in the sky above, he would declare that one day, he would be a pilot. No one took him seriously.

Nevertheless, the young man, born in born in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, in 1926, made a name for himself as an athlete in high school and won honors as a math student. In 1944, Jesse Brown was enrolled as the only black student in the engineering program at Ohio State Univesity.

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Descendants of the Clotilda, the Last Slave Ship, Commemorate Discovery of the Wreck

Posted on by February 10, 2022

For several years, we have followed the search for and the ultimate discovery of the schooner Clotilda, believed to be the last ship to carry enslaved Africans to the United States. Now, descendants of the survivors are commemorating the discovery of the wreck of the infamous slave ship and the resilience of the 110 captives who survived the voyage. 

The international slave trade had been illegal in the United States since 1807. Nevertheless, in the autumn of 1859, or the summer of 1860, depending on the source, Captain William Foster brought the schooner, Clotilda, into Mobile Bay with a cargo of 110 captives from West Africa. Federal authorities had been tipped off to the arrival of the schooner. Fearful of criminal charges, Captain Foster arrived in the river at night and transferred his human cargo to a riverboat, then burned and scuttled the Clotilda. 

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Flagship Niagara to Sail Again in 2022

Posted on by February 9, 2022

Officials from the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission (PHMC) have confirmed that Brig Niagara, Pennsylvania’s Flagship, will sail the Great Lakes again this summer.

Erie News Now reports that because of concerns over COVID-19, Niagara hasn’t sailed since 2019 — except to travel to dry dock in Cleveland for some critical maintenance and repairs.

In a news release issued in December by the Flagship Niagara League, as the freshly repaired and repainted brig returned to the Port of Erie, officials said, “Once inspected by the U.S. Coast Guard, dockside tours will resume at the Erie Maritime Museum.  Next year, (2022) Niagara will return to her normal schedule of sail training and sailing to all five Great Lakes as part of Tall Ships Challenge in 2022.”

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Update: Crystal Serenity and Crystal Symphony Arrested in the Bahamas

Posted on by February 8, 2022

In late January, we posted about how the cruise ship Crystal Symphony, which had been bound for Miami, suddenly changed course and diverted to the Bahamas, after a United States federal judge ordered the ship seized over a lawsuit regarding unpaid fuel bills. Not long after, the Crystal Symphony followed the Serenity‘s example.

Admiralty law has caught up with the errant ships. Both the Crystal Serenity and Crystal Symphony are now in Freeport, Bahamas and both ships have been arrested for unpaid bills.

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Iceland to End Whaling by 2024 Citing Falling Demand & Continued Controversy

Posted on by February 7, 2022

The government of Iceland has announced an end to commercial whaling by 2024.

“There are few justifications to authorize whale hunting beyond 2024,” when current quotas expire, Minister of Fisheries and Agriculture Svandís Svavarsdóttir said in an op-ed in Friday’s Morgunblaðið newspaper.

The minister wrote it was “undisputed” that whale hunting had not had much economic significance to Iceland in recent years, with no big whale caught in the last three years, except for one minke whale in 2021.

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More Than 100,000 Dead Fish Dumped Off The Coast Of France After Trawler Spill

Posted on by February 6, 2022

The Dutch-owned Margiris supertrawler, the second largest fishing vessel in the world, dumped more than 100,000 dead blue whiting in the Bay of Biscay off France’s Atlantic coast near La Rochelle, last Thursday.

The Pelagic Freeze-Trawler Association (PFA) — which represents the vessel’s owner — released a statement on Friday saying that around 5.50am on 3 February 2022, an amount of blue whiting was involuntarily released into the sea from the Margiris vessel, due to a rupture in the cod-end part of its net. Such an accident is a rare occurrence and in this case was caused by the unexpectedly large size of the fish caught. In line with EU law, the incident and the quantities lost have been recorded in the vessel’s log book and reported to the authorities of the vessel’s flag state, Lithuania.

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Billionaire Bezos’ Really Big Boat and the Rotterdam Railroad Bridge

Posted on by February 5, 2022

Last Wednesday, it was widely reported that Rotterdam would dismantle the center span of a historic railroad bridge to allow the 417-foot-long, three-masted sailing yacht built for billionaire Jeff Bezos to access the sea. The fully rigged superyacht apparently has too great an air-draft to safely fit beneath the Koningshaven Bridge, which has a clearance of 131 feet over the Nieuwe Maas River. 

On Thursday, the City of Rotterdam walked back plans to dismantle the historic Koningshaven Bridge, known locally as De Hef, saying that a decision had not yet been made.

“The company that built the ship didn’t yet ask for a permit so there is not an issue at this moment. When they ask for the permit, then we have to make a decision if we allow it or not, and how, and things like that,” the spokesperson told CBS MoneyWatch.

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Endurance22 Expedition, Search for Shackleton’s Lost Ship Beneath the Ice, Gets Underway

Posted on by February 5, 2022

Endurance trapped in the ice.

In early January, we posted about two memorial Antarctic expeditions on the 100th anniversary of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s death. One of the expeditions, Endurance22, organized by the Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust, hopes to locate, survey, and film the wreck of Endurance, Shackleton’s ship that sank after being crushed in Antarctic pack ice.  The expedition on the South African icebreaking polar supply and research ship, SA Agulhas II, is expected to depart from Cape Town, South Africa for Antarctica’s Weddell Sea, tomorrow, on 5th February 2022. 

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Two Novice Female Rowers Smash Transatlantic Record in Talisker Race

Posted on by February 3, 2022

Photo: Atlantic Campaigns Pennybird SWNS

Congratulations to rowers Jessica Oliver and Charlotte Harris who finished five days ahead of their nearest rivals in the pairs category of the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge when they rowed into Antigua on January 26 after starting from La Gomera in the Canary Islands last December 12. They also smashed the previous female pairs world record by five days, setting a new record of 45 days, 7 hours and 25 minutes in the 3,000-mile race.

Remarkably, when Oliver and Harris began training for the race, described as the “world’s toughest row,” in early 2020, they had zero rowing experience. 

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Remembering Robert Smalls – Former Slave, Pilot of the Planter, First Black Captain in the US Navy & US Congressman

Posted on by February 2, 2022

Here is a story well worth retelling; an updated repost in honor of Black History Month; the remarkable story of Robert Smalls.

On May 13, 1862, Robert Smalls, a 23-year-old 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.  

Harper’s Weekly of June 14, 1862, recounts the escape:
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SpaceX Launch Scrubbed Due to Cruise Ship in Exclusion Zone

Posted on by February 1, 2022

On Sunday, 30 seconds before the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket was due to take off from Florida, the launch was scrubbed when a cruise ship sailed into the launch hazard area. Royal Caribbean’s Harmony of the Seas ventured into the Falcon 9 rocket’s flightpath exclusion zone, forcing SpaceX to stand down from the mission. 

Florida Today reports that launch engineers, counting down to a 6:11 p.m. EST liftoff from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, waited as long as possible for the Coast Guard to resolve the situation but ultimately ran out of time to meet the instantaneous window’s deadline. It marked the fourth delay for the mission that was previously scrubbed due to inclement weather around Launch Complex 40.

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Irish Fishermen Threaten To Disrupt Russian Naval Exercises, Russia Backs Down

Posted on by January 31, 2022

Russia planned on holding naval exercises off the coast of Ireland. Fishermen from County Cork on Ireland’s southern coast saw the exercises as a threat to their livelihood and threatened to continue fishing as usual, despite the threatened use of naval artillery and rockets in the area. They stated, “Our presence is our protest.”

Remarkably, the Russia military backed down, announcing the exercises would be moved as “a gesture of goodwill” after appeals from the Irish government and the fishermen, “with the aim not to hinder fishing activities.”  

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Study Shows Bottom Trawling Releases As Much Carbon As Air Travel

Posted on by January 30, 2022

Photo: Alex Proimos, CC BY 2.0

A ground-breaking study suggests that bottom trawling, a fishing practice in which heavy nets are dragged along the seabed, may be releasing more than a billion metric tons of carbon every year, which is comparable to carbon dioxide produced by the entire aviation industry.

The carbon is released from the seabed sediment into the water, and can increase ocean acidification, as well as adversely affecting productivity and biodiversity, the study said. Marine sediments are the largest pool of carbon storage in the world.

The report – Protecting the global ocean for biodiversity, food and climate – is the first study to show the climate impacts of trawling globally. It also provides a blueprint outlining which areas of the ocean should be protected to safeguard marine life, boost seafood production and reduce climate emissions.

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Update: Iceberg A68a, Gone But Not Forgotten

Posted on by January 29, 2022

Iceberg A68a, once the world’s largest iceberg, is now gone, broken up into chunks too small to track. While the iceberg is recent history, scientists are still studying its impact.

In 2017, a massive iceberg broke off from Antarctica’s Larsen C ice-shelf. The iceberg, which would be designated as A68a, weighed roughly one trillion tons and measured 4,200 sq km, or almost the size of the state of Delaware.

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Researchers Discover Vast Icefish Colony with 60 Million Nests Beneath Antarctica’s Weddell Sea

Posted on by January 28, 2022

In February 2021, researchers on the German research vessel Polarstern discovered, quite by accident, the largest fish breeding area ever found near the Filchner Ice Shelf in the south of the Antarctic Weddell Sea. A towed camera system filmed thousands of nests of icefish of the species Neopagetopsis ionah on the seabed, more than a thousand feet below the surface.

The discovery is described in a paper in the most recent edition of Current Biology.

Scitechdaily reports that the mapping of the area suggests a total extent of 240 square kilometers, which is roughly the size of the island of Malta. Extrapolated to this area size, the total number of fish nests was estimated to be about 60 million. “The idea that such a huge breeding area of icefish in the Weddell Sea was previously undiscovered is totally fascinating,” says Autun Purser, deep-sea biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI) and lead author of the current publication.

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