Photographs have come out of the bow damage to the container ship Ever Given after she ran hard aground in the Suez Canal, blocking the critical waterway for six days last March. The images were taken in Qingdao, China, where the ship is awaiting repairs.
One observer noted that the bottom of her bulbous bow looks like a dropped pumpkin.
The United States Maritime Academy at King’s Point has paused Sea Year, a program that sends cadets to sea aboard commercial ships, after a female midshipman at the school shared an account in September of being raped by a crew member while serving at sea. This is the second suspension of the program in the last six years over allegations of sexual harassment and assault.
In a post on the website of an advocacy group, and in a subsequent interview with the Washington Post, the woman described being assaulted and having to spend several more weeks onboard with her alleged attacker.
The worst way to determine the position of a previously uncharted seamount is to run into it underwater. That is apparently what happened to the Seawolf-class attack submarine, USS Connecticut, when it hit an object while submerged on October 2.
“The investigation determined USS Connecticut grounded on an uncharted seamount while operating in international waters in the Indo-Pacific region,” 7th Fleet spokesperson Cmdr. Hayley Sims told USNI News in a Monday afternoon statement following an earlier version of this post. “Commander, U.S. 7th Fleet will determine whether follow-on actions, including accountability, are appropriate.”
Horse Sand Fort Image: Graham Horn
Between 1865-80, four forts were built in the Solent to protect Portsmouth and its harbor from sea attack and bombardment. Locally known as “Palmerston’s Follies” after the Prime Minister of the time, they were built in response to an invasion scare that was long over by the time the forts were completed.
Recently, one of the four forts, Horse Sand Fort, was sold by businessman Mike Clare for £715,000. In American real estate parlance, Horse Sand Fort might be referred to as a “fixer-upper.” The 200′ diameter round fort with two floors, referred to as “derelict” by the BBC, is in need of considerable refurbishment.
“Have you heard of a ship called the good Reuben James?” (If you do, it may be from the Woodie Guthrie song.) The destroyer USS Reuben James was sunk by a German torpedo while on convoy duty 80 years ago yesterday, roughly a month before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the US entry into the world war against the Axis powers.
When the war in Europe broke out in September 1939, the United States declared its neutrality while at the same time establishing combined air and ship “Neutrality Patrols.” The fact that US naval ships were escorting English ships and had orders to “shoot on sight” German submarines, meant American neutrality was honored more in the breach than observance.
Thousands of dead crabs, lobsters, and fish washed up recently along Teesside beaches on the UK’s North East coast. Waist deep piles of seaweed and dead and dying crustaceans and fish have been reported. Variously described as the “worst case ever seen” and “apocalyptic,” an investigation is underway to attempt to determine the cause.
An Environment Agency spokesperson said: “Samples of water, sediment, mussel and crab have been collected and are being sent to our labs for analysis, to consider whether a pollution incident could have contributed to the deaths of the animals.”
On Halloween, Sunday, October 31, at 2:30 Pacific Time (5:30 Eastern TIme), William Pint and Felicia Dale are hosting Spooky Songs of the Sea in an online live streaming Facebook event. They will perform songs about ghostly sailors, haunted ships, cursed captains, and other scary favorites of the season. Anyone on or off Facebook is welcome to tune in. For more information and to join the event, click here.
For years, we have been following the valiant efforts to keep the battleship USS Texas afloat at its berth in the Buffalo Bayou at the San Jacinto Battleground Historic Site in La Porte, Texas. Now, the Battleship Texas Foundation has announced that the historic ship, commissioned in 1914 and the last surviving dreadnought as well as the only battleship in existence today that fought in both World War I and World War II, will move to a drydock in 2022 for critical repairs.
From the announcement:
The Battleship Texas Foundation (BTF) has selected Gulf Copper & Manufacturing Corporation’s Galveston shipyard as the location for the repair of the Battleship Texas. With the support of the Battleship Texas Foundation and Valkor Energy Services (BTF’s project management and engineering firm for the ship repair), Gulf Copper recently acquired a floating drydock capable of lifting the Battleship Texas out of the water for necessary and extensive hull repairs.
Golden Ray & SS Normandie
The last section of the car carrier Golden Ray has been removed from St. Simons Sound near Brunswick, Georgia, and is on its way to a scrapyard. The 656-foot car carrier was carrying 4,100 vehicles when it capsized in September 2019. The cost of the ship, cargo, and wreck removal totaled roughly one billion US dollars.
Commander Efren Lopez, US Coast Guard Federal On-Scene Coordinator, said that the salvage of the Golden Ray was “the largest wreck removal in US history,” in a briefing on Tuesday. While the salvage was certainly massive, it is not clear that the removal was the “largest in US history.”
In one of the stranger maritime stories of late, the Ecuadorian Navy announced that last week, their sail training ship, the three-masted barque Guayas stopped and captured a drug-laden high-speed craft; a low profile vessel (LPV) powered by three outboard motors. While not submersible, the craft is colloquially referred to as a “narco-sub.” Four crew aboard the LPV – three Ecuadorians and a Colombian – were arrested. The cargo, likely cocaine of between 1.5 and 6 tons based on the imagery released, is carried in the forward hull, surrounded by fuel tanks.
The incident took place in international waters between the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of Colombia and Ecuador’s Insular Exclusive Economic Zone (IEEZ), which surrounds the Galapagos islands, on Oct. 22.
One of the traditions of US icebreakers operating in the Arctic is “ice liberty.” When an icebreaker encounters a thick ice floe, the crew is allowed liberty to get off the vessel to walk about or play games from touch football to hockey.
This year as the icebreaker USCGC Healy transited the Northwest Passage for the first time since 2005, ice liberty was canceled. In the melting Arctic, no ice floe was thick enough to be suitable.
“A lot of the floes had melt ponds with holes in them like Swiss cheese,” said Capt. Kenneth Boda, commander of the Seattle-based icebreaker told the Seattle Times. “We couldn’t get the right floe.”
In 1960, the archaeological remains of Norse buildings were discovered at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. Until recently the settlement date was estimated within about a sixty-year span around 1000 CE. On Wednesday, scientists published a study in the journal Nature pinpointing the arrival date to 1021 CE, or 470 years before Christopher Columbus reached the Bahamas in 1492.
Archaeologists identified three trees at the site that were cut with metal tools, which the Norse had, while indigenous peoples did not. The archaeologists were able to accurately date when the trees were cut based on markings on the tree rings from a rare solar storm — called a Miyake event — that took place in 992 or 993 A.D. With the date of that inner ring fixed, “all you need to do is count to when you get to the cutting edge,” said Michael Dee, a study co-author from the University of Groningen.
The USS Constitution left its berth in the Charleston Navy Yard last Friday for a short cruise in Boston Harbor. CBS Boston reports that the ship fired a 21-gun salute while carrying 120 newly-trained Navy sailors. The sailors were recently selected to advance to the rank of chief petty officer.
As part of the Navy’s Heritage Week Training, the sailors lived aboard the ship, which is the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat.
On Thursday, Water’s Soul, an 80-foot tall sculpture by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa was dedicated on the Hudson River in Jersey City. Located directly across the river from Lower Manhattan, Water’s Soul depicts the serene face of a young woman holding a finger to her lips in silent contemplation.
“Water is a marvelous metaphor for humanity,” Plensa said. “One drop of water is quite alone, like a single person, but many drops together can create a tidal wave, and form immense rivers and oceans. When individuals come together to exchange ideas and create community, we can build something incredibly powerful.”
The pier is now open for year-round public access, located in Newport, a mixed-use development in Jersey City. Continue reading
The coin was found by Diana Davis, head of conservation at the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Photo: PA Media
Happy Trafalgar Day, one day late. A story for Trafalgar Day, plus one.
When one of the masts of Nelson’s flagship HMS Victory was removed for restoration work, a conservator found a Victorian-era coin that had been placed beneath the mast for good luck, 127 years ago. The coin, a farthing, dates to 1894, the year a set of masts were installed on the ship after the previous ones became rotten.
The BBC quotes HMS Victory’s principal heritage adviser Rosemary Thornber called the coin “invaluable”.
Following an investigation of the fire that destroyed the US Navy amphibious assault ship USS Bonhomme Richard, Admiral Bill Lescher, the Navy’s No. 2 officer said, “The loss of this ship was completely preventable.”
USNI News reported that a cascade of failures – from a junior enlisted sailor not recognizing a fire at the end of their duty watch to fundamental problems with how the U.S. Navy trains sailors to fight fires in shipyards – are responsible for the five-day blaze that cost the service an amphibious warship, according to an investigation into the July 2020 USS Bonhomme Richard (LHD-6) fire.
Nine major shippers including Amazon, Ikea and Unilever have signed an “ambition statement” to pledge to only move cargo on ships using zero-carbon fuel by 2040. This pledge is part of a new initiative by the non-profit Aspen Insititute called Cargo Owners for Zero-Emission Vessels or coZEV.
From the coZEV website: coZEV was created because no single cargo owner can drive this transition alone. coZEV utilizes the power of companies’ combined voices, capacity for innovation, and economies of scale to drive change.
Through collaboration among cargo owner companies and maritime supply chain partners, coZEV believes companies can decarbonize their own maritime freight by 2040 and help catalyze full sector decarbonization by 2050 at the latest.
While under tow in the Guayas River, near Guayaquil, Ecuador, the 250′ long Brazilian sail training ship Cisne Branco was carried sideways in the current into a pedestrian bridge that connects Guayaquil to Santay Island. The sailing ship damaged its rigging, resulting in the dismasting of the fore t’gallast mast in the allision.
An Ecuadoran naval tug sent to assist the Cisne Branco was subsequently caught sideways in the river current and capsized. Fortunately, the tug crew was reported to be rescued without injury. Likewise, no injuries were reported on the sail training ship or the other tug involved in the accident.
In early October, a crack in a pipeline off the coast of Huntington Beach, California spilled some 3,000 barrels (126,000 gallons) of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean. On Saturday, the US Coast Guard announced that it had determined that the container ship MSC Danit had dragged its anchor in heavy weather on January 25, 2021, “in close proximity to a subsea pipeline, which was subsequently discovered to be the source of the Orange County oil spill on October 2, 2021.”
Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) marine casualty investigators boarded the container ship MSC Danit in the Port of Long Beach on Saturday.
The environmental monitoring group Skytruth was able to pull up AIS tracks of the container ship as its anchor dragged across the pipeline during the storm. Continue reading
Alaric Bond was kind enough to pass along an article from the Eastbourne Herald titled, Killer ‘jellyfish’ which can grow to 160ft long are washing up on Britain’s beaches. While more common in tropical waters, Portuguese man o’ wars have been drifting ashore near tourist areas in Cornwall, Sennen Beach, and Porteras Cove.
The man o’ war have no independent means of movement and often move with the winds or sea currents. They are known to wash up on British shores between September and December.
Fortunately, while the article itself, about Portuguese man o’ war, is quite good, the headline writer is arguably guilty of some level of hyperbole. Continue reading