Captain Henry Every – The Pirate Who Got Away

During the “Golden Age of Piracy,” the most successful pirates amassed huge fortunes over short periods of time and then died bloody deaths in combat, on the gallows, or in shipwrecks.  The one notable exception was Captain Henry Every. During just two years prowling the seas, Every and his band captured roughly a dozen vessels and made off with tens of millions of dollars in booty.

His exploits inspired songs, books and plays, including one called “The Successful Pyrate” that was performed on London stages for several years. Most astonishing of all—and unlike Blackbeard and many others—he did it all without getting captured or killed.

For a time, he was the most wanted criminal in the world for his plundering of a Mughal treasure fleet in 1695, yet he seemed to simply have vanished. Discoveries of Arabian coins found in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and North Carolina suggest that Captain Every and his crew may have found refuge in the British North American colonies.

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Fin Whales Found Dead Beneath HMAS Sydney at US Naval Base

As if anyone needed a reminder of how vulnerable whales are to ship strikes, when HMAS Sydney pulled into Naval Base San Diego over the weekend, it brought with it a grim cargo. The carcasses of two fin whales were dislodged from beneath the hull of the Royal Australian Navy destroyer. One whale was 20m long while the other was about 8m and are suspected to have been a mother and a calf.

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Cruise Line Threatens to Pull Out of Florida — When Politics and Policy Collide

Florida politics on Covid-19 vaccinations threatens to disrupt the cruise industry restart in Florida. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently announced guidelines for trial cruises with volunteer passengers to test safety measures, which will be required for each ship before resuming regular passenger voyages in US waters. To bypass the trial cruises, the CDC says at least 98% of crew members and 95% of passengers must have been vaccinated.

Almost simultaneously, the Florida legislature passed a law prohibiting businesses from asking whether employees or customers have been vaccinated against Covid-19. In response, Frank Del Rio, the CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd. said that the new law could cause the company to suspend Florida departures and move its ships elsewhere.

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Billionaire Jeff Bezos Spending $500 Million on Three Masted Superyacht

Yacht Eos, reported to be similar but smaller than Bezos’ new yacht.

Bloomberg is reporting that Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is spending upwards of $500 million to have a 417 feet (127-meter) long three-masted superyacht built at Oceano in the Netherlands.

Few details are available on the newbuilding, but reports are that it will have a second yacht as a tender and that the tender will be large enough to have its own helipad. (It has been suggested that the rigging on the superyacht would interfere with landing a helicopter.)

In terms of size, the new yacht will be roughly twice as long as the clipper ship Cutty Sark, and, in financial terms, will cost twice what Bezos paid when he purchased the Washington Post newspaper in 2013.

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Mysterious Gray Whale Die-Off On West Coast Continues

In early April, four gray whales were found dead in the San Francisco Bay area in a span of eight days. Last week another three dead gray whales washed ashore in the Bay area. Further north, a dead gray whale was also found on Klipsan Beach, WA, last week.

The deaths are a continuation of elevated gray whale strandings occurring along the west coast of North America from Mexico through Alaska since January 1, 2019. Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have declared the occurrences as an “unusual mortality event,” or UME, defined by the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act as an unexpected and significant die-off of a marine mammal species requiring an immediate response.

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HMS Victory Safely Berthed

Here is a new video from The National Museum of the Royal Navy describing the 20 year-long project to secure HMS Victory in her dock at Portsmouth’s Historic Dockyard.

As we posted back in August 2020, when HMS Victory went into drydock in the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard in 1922, she was supported by 22 steel cradles. In the almost 100 years that she has remained on the dock, the historic ship’s 3,500-tonne hull had been to slowly collapse in on itself. To save the ship, the cradles have been replaced by an innovative system of 134 “props” to distribute the load across the hull.

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Migaloo, “Rockstar” White Whale, Sighted Off New South Wales

There are reports that Migaloo, an all-white humpback whale, has been sighted off the South Coast of New South Wales, Australia, on his annual migration from Antarctica to Queensland. Migaloo is considered by many to be a “rockstar” and is arguably the world’s most famous living whale.

First sighted in 1991, the all-white whale is among some 35,000 humpback whales that migrate north to subtropical waters where they mate and give birth. The timing of the migration depends on water temperatures, sea ice, predators, and the availability of food. 7news.com.au notes that this year, Migaloo is early.

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Update: Marine Corps Suspends General Over Deadly AAV Accident

Photo: Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Daniel Barker/Navy

The Marine Corps suspended Maj. Gen. Robert F. Castellvi last week as it investigates his role in the sinking of an amphibious assault vehicle (AAV) that killed eight U.S. Marines and one Navy sailor.  

Marine Corps investigation, released in March, determined that the two-star general “bears some responsibility” for the incident in which a 35-year-old armored amphibious assault vehicle (AAV) sprang numerous leaks and sank off the coast of California last July. The investigation report concluded that the deaths were the result of poor training, a vehicle in “horrible condition,” and lapsed safety procedures in a rush to deploy an operational AAV platoon.

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Large Pods of North Atlantic Right Whales Sighted in Cape Cod Bay

WWLP-22News reports that at least 160 North Atlantic right whales were spotted in Cape Cod Bay and along South Shore at the end of last week. Given that the highly endangered species are estimated to number fewer than 400 animals, the right whale sightings in the area are extremely impressive. 

The Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries has extended the small vessel speed restriction in Cape Cod Bay through May 15, 2021. Small vessels (less than 65’) are required to travel at speeds no greater than 10 knots in this area. Right whales are highly susceptible to injury and death due to vessel collision. A complementary federal speed restriction in the area applies to vessels 65’ and greater until May 15.

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Mermaiding — Freediving with a Tail Goes Global

The title of an article in CNN was intriguing — Why so many people in China are becoming mermaids. The article featured a recent event described as the “largest underwater mermaid show” that set a Guinness World Record at the Ambassador Lagoon inside China’s Atlantis Sanya resort on the island of Hainan.

Apparently, mermaid diving, also known as mermaiding, has become very popular in China. Akin to freediving, the would-be mermaids don’t wear a tank or use any external aids except for their mermaid tail. While the name may imply females, men are also joining in the fun.

Mermaiding’s popularity is not limited to China, however. Continue reading

VindØ – The World’s First Energy Island To Be Built Off Denmark

Denmark is planning on building three offshore wind farms with 200 turbines with a 3 GW capacity 100 kilometers off the coast in the North Sea.  Later phases of the project include an additional seven wind farms with 470 turbines.  On its completion, the entire project will have a capacity of 10 GW. 

To manage and service these new wind farms, Denmark has decided to build an artificial island to serve as an energy hub 80 kilometers from the shore of the Jutland peninsula. The artificial island will be owned by a public-private partnership through the VindØ consortium

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Sailor Finally Released From Abandoned Ship After Four Years

First Officer Mohammed Aisha had been stranded on the “cursed” MV Aman, for almost four years onboard, stuck off the Egyptian coast. He has finally been freed and has flown home to Syria.

The BBC reports that it began in July 2017, when the MV Aman was detained at the Egyptian port of Adabiya. The cargo ship was held because it had expired safety equipment and classification certificates.

It should have been easy enough to resolve, but the ship’s Lebanese contractors failed to pay for fuel and the MV Aman‘s owners in Bahrain were in financial difficulty.

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Bob Bartlett and His “Little Morrissey” — Voyage to Greenland

We recently posted about the schooner Ernestina-Morrissey, ex Ernestina, ex Effie M. Morrissey, beginning a new chapter as a sail training vessel for the Massachusetts Maritime Academy. Here is a repost of a documentary, narrated by the polar explorer, Captain Bob Bartlett, describing a voyage to Greenland in the schooner he refers to as his “Little Morrissey.”

Captain Bartlett sailed with Robert Peary in his expeditions to the North Pole. Bartlett sailed the schooner Morrissey in twenty voyages to the Arctic.  In total, Bartlett spent more than 50 years mapping and exploring the waters of the Arctic and led over 40 expeditions, more than anyone before or since.  While this film is dated 1947, it was shot on an earlier voyage north, as Captain Bartlett died in 1946.

Effie M Morrisey (Ernestina) Coastal Schooner 1947 Classic Film

Wood From a 17th Century Shipwreck Gives Guitars a Unique Sound

We recently posted about two “heritage desks” built for the Vice President of the United States and the Secretary of the Navy from timbers and fittings from the USS Constitution and several other historic ships. The CBC recently had an account of guitars made from shipwrecked timber:

When Greg Fleming was looking for some old wood to make a new guitar, he knew just where to look. What he didn’t know for a while was just how old that wood was.

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Comparing Carbon Footprints — Ships, Planes, Trucks & Germany

We recently posted “No, 15 Large Ships Do Not Pollute More Than All the Cars in the World.” It was based on a claim made by Dr. James Corbett in 2009, that only addressed sulfur pollution. Enthusiastic journalists picked up on the catchy claim and said that 15 large ships create more total pollution than all the cars in the world. The problem with that assertion is that Corbett’s rough calculation did not, among other things, include the trillion-tonne gorilla in the room, the carbon footprint of cars vs ships. Cars actually produce far more greenhouse gases than ships.

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Faux Fish — Fighting Seafood Fraud

Do you know what you are getting when you buy fish in a store or order it prepared in a restaurant? It isn’t always easy. An analysis of 44 recent studies of more than 9,000 seafood samples from restaurants, fishmongers, and supermarkets in more than 30 countries, performed by Guardian Seascape, found that 36% were mislabelled, exposing seafood fraud on a vast global scale.

The Guardian reports that many of the studies used relatively new DNA analysis techniques. In one comparison of sales of fish labeled “snapper” by fishmongers, supermarkets, and restaurants in Canada, the US, the UK, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, researchers found mislabelling in about 40% of fish tested. The UK and Canada had the highest rates of mislabelling in that study, at 55%, followed by the US at 38%.

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No, 15 Large Ships Do Not Pollute More Than All the Cars in the World

In 2009, Dr. James Corbett, a professor of marine policy at the University of Delaware, came up with what he describes as a thought experiment. He compared the sulfur dioxide produced by the largest container ship burning the dirtiest bunker fuel with that of an automobile burning the cleanest fuel. He concluded that under this hypothetical case, 15 of the world’s largest container ships produced as much sulfur pollution as all the world’s 760 million cars. A memorable factoid, but of questionable veracity.

BBC’s program/podcast More or Less: Behind the Stats with Tim Harford, examines the shortcomings of this thought experiment. To listen to the podcast, click the banner below. Otherwise, read on.

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Update: Debris From Missing Indonesian Submarine Located

The Indonesia Navy announced that it has located debris from the missing submarine KRI Nanggala 402, indicating that the submarine sank with the loss of 53 crew. 

API reports that military chief Hadi Tjahjanto said the presence of an oil slick, as well as the discovery of debris near the location of KRI Nanggala 402′s last dive on Wednesday off the island of Bali, were clear proof the vessel had sunk. Indonesia earlier considered the vessel to be only missing.

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Frantic Search For Missing Indonesian Submarine KRI Nanggala-402

The Indonesian submarine KRI Nanggala 402, with a crew of 53, disappeared on Wednesday during exercises off the coast of Bali, sparking a frantic search to locate the stricken vessel. Australia, India, Malaysia, Singapore, and the United States have sent specialized ships or aircraft in response to Indonesian requests for assistance.

If the submarine was still intact, officials said it would only have enough air to last until early Saturday morning.

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